Four out, one in
Jan. 6th, 2013 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solrosanSummary: Four nights Sherlock and John go out and one night they stay in.
Notes: I wrote this for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pipmer1 for 2012 December ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
holmestice. Many thanks to zedille for always being there in my time of need and to laurtew for making sure I don’t make a fool out of myself.
-x-
It wasn’t the most exciting match ever, and it was quite cold, but it was a long time since John had been to a big sports event, and he was quite enjoying it. Even with a grumpy Sherlock as company. Sherlock, on the other hand, was wondering if it was possible to have a minor stroke without noticing. If it was, he would say that was the reason he had agreed to this in the first place, but something in John’s posture kept Sherlock sitting quietly in his seat.
He just wished John would be quiet, too.
“No, that’s…! Offside!” John called out, along with a lot of the other people in the stadium.
“John,” Sherlock said, glaring at him to make him shut up.
“What? He was clearly offside. Didn’t you see?” John pointed at something unspecific on the pitch.
“No.” Sherlock shook his head. “And only partly because I don’t know what constitutes ‘offside’.”
Still with one eye on the pitch John started to explain. “When a player is closer to the other team’s goal line than the last outfield player and—“
“I don’t care.” Sherlock held up a hand in front of John’s face. “Stop filling my head with absurdities.”
John shook his head, smiling, and turned his full attention back to what was happening down on the pitch. He was still a bit shocked that Sherlock had come with him – it hadn't been that long since their last case.
When the referee blew his whistle some twenty minutes later, Sherlock jumped to his feet. “Finally,” he muttered.
“Sherlock.” John grabbed his coat, looking just a little bit sympathetic. “That was just half-time.”
“You mean I have to sit through another eternity of… of… that!” Sherlock gestured towards the pitch, almost hitting a woman in the head.
“45 minutes, and yes, you promised.”
Sherlock made a small sound and fell back down on his chair. “John, if you kill me I won’t be upset.”
John chuckled. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
“I’ve had dinners with Mycroft more enjoyable than this.”
John shook his head, laughing quietly, and wondered what either of them had really expected.
When the final whistle sounded and John got to his feet, Sherlock looked at him as if to ask if it was actually over this time. John tilted his head and looked at Sherlock for a long time before answering, trying to decide something. Then he smiled. “I’m glad you came with me.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Walking past John to follow the stream of people leaving, Sherlock rolled his eyes. He made sure John stayed behind him the entire way out of the stadium, because he couldn’t stop himself smiling. The fact that John had appreciated this almost made it worth sitting outside in freezing weather for two hours.
-x-
“You’re not wearing that,” Sherlock said from the doorway, as John got out his dark grey suit.
“Oh, really?” John put the suit down on the bed. “Then what am I wearing?”
Sherlock sighed theatrically, and walked over to John’s wardrobe. “The black one.”
Now it was John’s turn to sigh. He hated that suit: it made him feel like an undertaker. He hadn't been very keen on this evening to start with, but Sherlock’s excitement made him keep his feelings to himself.
They were going to listen to the London Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall. Their last client had given them the tickets, and it was probably the first time Sherlock had said 'thank you' without being prompted to.
Sherlock handed John the black suit. “Can I trust you to pick a shirt and tie by yourself?”
“Blue shirt, Mickey Mouse tie, right?”
“No.” Sherlock’s eyes narrowed.
“White shirt, black tie,” said John, smiling. “You can go and change, I’ll manage all on my own.”
Sherlock looked suspiciously at him, but with a short nod, he decided that they didn’t have time to argue about it.
About five minutes later, John knocked on Sherlock’s opened bedroom door. “Will I do?”
Sherlock inspected him through the mirror, nodding once before turning back to insert his cufflinks. “Yes, that’ll do.”
“Come here,” John said, walking up to Sherlock and taking the cufflinks from him. Sherlock let John put them in without protest. After inspecting John’s work, Sherlock reached out and centred John’s tie knot ever so slightly.
“Done?” John asked with a wide smile.
“Yes.” Sherlock reached for his jacket, and after one last inspection in the mirror, they left for the Barbican.
Their seats were very good, and the orchestra was fantastic. Even John had to admit that. Sherlock leaned against their shared armrest, seemingly completely absorbed by the music. At one point, as the audience applauded, he leaned closer to John.
“Brahms worked on this symphony for almost fifteen years,” Sherlock whispered. “After the first few performances he burned it and rewrote it before letting it be published.”
“Duncan Ferguson has received the most red cards in the Premier League,” John whispered back.
Sherlock snorted and turned his attention back to the orchestra, but John saw a hint of a smile on his lips. After the concert, when they were standing on the pavement waiting for a cab home, John noticed that the smile was still there. Sherlock, on the other hand, was miles away, still hearing the music.
“Someone enjoyed this,” John said, bumping Sherlock lightly with his shoulder.
Sherlock nodded. “They were really good.”
“We should do this again.”
Sherlock frowned, looking at John as if he thought he had misheard him. “But you found it terribly boring.”
“Not ‘terribly, ’” John said with a smile. “How come you don’t do this more often?”
“I don’t know.” Sherlock opened the cab door for John. “Time. Money. Bad conductors?”
“We should do this again,” John said once again as the cab started.
Sherlock didn’t answer, but he smiled out the window the whole way back to Baker Street.
-x-
“More wine?” Sherlock asked, as he waved the waiter over to their table.
John smiled. “Are you trying to get me drunk, Sherlock?”
“It wasn’t my original intention, but I can surely try if you’d like.”
John didn’t have time to do more than shake his head before the waiter arrived and Sherlock ordered a second bottle of red wine. They had had two murder cases in that one week. For John, that was a record, but Sherlock insisted that he once had solved three murders and a robbery in six days.
When the waiter left, Sherlock pointed at John’s plate with his fork. “Are you going to eat that?”
“No, go ahead.” John pushed the plate across the table with a smile. It never ceased to amaze him how much Sherlock managed to eat once a case was over.
“You’re going to get a stomach ache,” John said, when Sherlock decided to order dessert.
“Nonsense,” Sherlock said, lifting his re-filled wine glass in a toast.
John raised his glass as well. “You are trying to get me drunk.”
Sherlock smiled not-so-innocently. “Nonsense.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” John said, smirking. “I was a medical student.”
“And you don’t think that I’ve built up some resistance to psychotropic substances over the years?”
John’s smile disappeared, and he put down his glass. Sherlock frowned, but waited to say anything until after he had received his dessert.
“John,” he said, slowly pushing his fork through the cake. “I’m not your sister. I’m not an alcoholic, and drinking won’t lead to cocaine.”
John leaned back and peered at Sherlock to decide if he believed him. “Fine, but give me some of that cake. It looks delicious.”
Sherlock smiled, handing him the fork. “You know, you can always tell the quality of an Indian restaurant by the number of—“
“Don’t even try,” John interrupted, and give him back the fork. “Do you remember when you could ‘always tell the quality of a sushi place by the state of the doormat’, and we both got food poisoning?”
“That was an unfortunate miscalculation.”
“Just admit that you guess when it comes to restaurants.”
Sherlock looked insulted. “I never guess.”
John glared at him. “Food. Poisoning.”
Sherlock pretended not to hear him, and poured him more wine even though his glass was mostly full. John shook his head, smiling, and waved at the waiter to come over again. If they were going to do this, they were going to do it right, with something stronger than red wine.
In the end, neither of them remembered how they got home.
-x-
“Christ,” John muttered, taking off the tinsel a young Detective Sergeant had wrapped around his neck as soon as they had entered Scotland Yard’s Christmas party. John rubbed his neck.
“Does it itch?” Sherlock asked, handing him his jacket.
“You have no idea.”
Sherlock smirked. “Do I have to remind you whose idea it was to come here in the first place?”
“Well, Lestrade invited us,” John said, pressing the lift button three times. “If someone invites you to a party, you show up.”
“If I did everything Lestrade told me, I wouldn’t solve that many cases.” Sherlock reached out and stopped John from pressing the button a fourth time. “That won’t get the lift here any faster.”
“I can bloody well try,” John said, pressing the button with his other hand. “If I hear Last Christmas one more time I will personally strangle every single person here.”
“I thought I was the borderline serial killer,” Sherlock said. “And as much as I sympathise, I strongly advise against going on a killing spree while inside Scotland Yard.”
“If I kill everyone in Homicide, then maybe no one will know how to deal with it.”
Sherlock chuckled, shaking his head, but he was just as pleased as John to hear the lift's soft bing and see the doors open.
John kept on complaining the entire way down. The decoration, the music (again), the people, the conversation…. Sherlock listened in silence, wondering if anything had been satisfactory tonight and how much of John's annoyance came from the fact that yesterday Harry had cancelled their Christmas plans.
“And another thing,” John continued his rant as they left the building. Sherlock placed a hand on his arm, interrupting.
“John.”
“What?”
Sherlock looked up at the sky. It wasn’t until John did the same that he noticed that it had started to snow. There were tiny flakes, and they melted almost before the touched the ground, but it was snowing nonetheless.
John held out his hand to catch the snowflakes. Nothing but drops of water gathered on his hand, but he smiled. “I haven’t seen snow since… since before….”
“Since before Afghanistan,” Sherlock ended the sentence for him.
“Yeah.” John smiled at Sherlock before looking up at the sky again. “Since before Afghanistan.”
They stood there a moment, watching the snow fall, and relishing the fact that the only sounds they heard were traffic and not Christmas music. Then, without a word, Sherlock put his hands in his pockets, and started to walk.
“Where are you going?” John asked.
Sherlock turned around, walking backwards. “Home.”
“You’re walking back to Baker Street?” John started to walk after him. “That’s at least an hour.”
“Thirty minutes. Tops,” Sherlock said, turning around to walk straight again when John had caught up.
“But—“
“It’s snowing, John.”
John smiled. He couldn’t argue with that and he had really missed snow. He suspected Sherlock knew that.
-x-
John woke up in a most uncomfortable position on the sofa. He sat up, pulling off the blanket someone – Sherlock – had placed over him. Everything hurt, his back, his neck, his bad shoulder…. He rolled his left shoulder with a tormented expression. The cracking of the joint was loud enough to make Sherlock look over from the window where he was playing the violin.
“Are you all right?” Sherlock asked, lowering the instrument.
“Yes. How did the film end?”
“I have no idea. I turned it off as soon as you fell asleep.”
John hid a yawn behind his hand. “And when was that?”
“Two, three hours ago.” Sherlock shrugged, putting the violin down on the coffee table. “You really know how to pick them.”
“Yeah, because The Seventh Seal would have kept me awake.”
“At least I wouldn’t have turned that one off,” Sherlock said, frowning as John grimaced again. “Are you sure you’re not in pain?”
“Just… stiff,” John lied, slowly changing the direction of his shoulder rotations.
Sherlock looked concerned. “I can help you, if you like?”
“No, thank you.” John looked up at him. “The last time you tried that, I was sore for a week.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Sherlock said, sitting down next to John and turning him so that his back was facing him. Then they both slowly and carefully removed John’s jumper.
Sherlock put his hands on John’s back. “Relax.”
“I don’t trust you,” John mumbled, tilting his head to the right to give Sherlock more space.
Sherlock smirked, moving one hand gently over John’s shoulder before pressing down hard with his thumb. John cried out in pain, trying to squirm away from Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock reduced the pressure.
“Ouch….” John sat up straight again and took a deep breath, preparing for Sherlock pressed on the same spot again. John bit his lip to muffle his swearing.
“Relax.”
“It’s not easy when you’re hgnnnn… hurting me,” John said, through clenched teeth.
Sherlock rested his hands on John’s shoulders. “Do you want me to stop?”
“God, no.”
“Masochist.” Sherlock rolled his eyes, but he smiled as he made John squirm again and moved on to massaging John’s other shoulder.
After ten minutes, Sherlock patted John lightly on the shoulders to signal that he was done. John rotated his left shoulder and turned around to face Sherlock.
“Thank you,” John said, smiling. He didn’t know the last time he had been this relaxed.
“You’re welcome.” Sherlock massaged his own hands, looking at John’s shoulder. “I had expected to feel more scar tissue.”
“Well,” John said, pulling the T-shirt so that Sherlock could see his scar.
Sherlock tilted his head and peered at it as if it was evidence. John endured the scrutiny by looking at a point slightly to the left of Sherlock’s head. John didn’t know what Sherlock had expected or what knowledge he had of gunshot wounds, surgical scars or scar tissue in general, but he knew that there was nothing extraordinary about his scar. The most remarkable thing was probably that it was on his shoulder and not someone else’s.
After a while, when John didn’t want to be goggled at anymore, he covered his shoulder again and met Sherlock’s eyes. “So, any conclusions?”
“I’m glad you were shot.” Sherlock was dead serious, but John’s shocked expression made him uncomfortable.
“I’m not.”
Sherlock sighed. Apparently, that statement hadn’t come across the way he had intended it to. “John, I didn’t mean that I—“
“I am, however,” John said, cutting Sherlock off, “glad I let Mike buy me that cup of coffee.”
They both smiled, averting their eyes when the silence became too long.
John cleared his throat and patted Sherlock on the knee. “Come on. Let’s go to bed. We can watch the rest of the film later.”
Sherlock grunted. “Can we please not do that?”
“Fine,” John said, and got up. “There’s a friendly between England and Wales on telly tomorrow?”
“We have a case tomorrow.”
“How do you know?”
Sherlock got up and picked up his violin. “I’ll create one before I sit through another night of football.”
“Fine, no football,” John said again, smiling. “Just please don’t kill anyone?”
“Who said thatI would be the one doing the killing?” Sherlock asked, and when John looked confused he started to play Last Christmas.
John laughed. “You know, you're the only person I could kill right now.”
“Whatever gets me out of watching football,” Sherlock said, letting the Christmas song change to the melody he had been playing when John had woken up.
“So you’re not going to bed?”
Sherlock shook his head.
John shook his head too, as he watched Sherlock walk back slowly to the window. John recognised the melody now: it was the part of the one from the concert, the one that had been burned or something. It made him smile and sit back down on the sofa.
Sherlock gave him an odd look, but he kept on playing until he heard John snoring quietly. For the second time that night, Sherlock picked the blanket off the floor and tucked John in on the sofa.
It didn’t really matter what they spent their nights doing, Sherlock realised. Concerts or football, parties or dinners, or just falling asleep on the sofa after an uneventful evening. As long as they did it together, everything was a little bit less dull. A little more enjoyable. And he was fairly sure John felt the same way.
“Good night, John,” Sherlock whispered. “I’m glad you survived.”
Notes: I wrote this for
pipmer1 for 2012 December holmestice. Many thanks to zedille for always being there in my time of need and to laurtew for making sure I don’t make a fool out of myself.-x-
It wasn’t the most exciting match ever, and it was quite cold, but it was a long time since John had been to a big sports event, and he was quite enjoying it. Even with a grumpy Sherlock as company. Sherlock, on the other hand, was wondering if it was possible to have a minor stroke without noticing. If it was, he would say that was the reason he had agreed to this in the first place, but something in John’s posture kept Sherlock sitting quietly in his seat.
He just wished John would be quiet, too.
“No, that’s…! Offside!” John called out, along with a lot of the other people in the stadium.
“John,” Sherlock said, glaring at him to make him shut up.
“What? He was clearly offside. Didn’t you see?” John pointed at something unspecific on the pitch.
“No.” Sherlock shook his head. “And only partly because I don’t know what constitutes ‘offside’.”
Still with one eye on the pitch John started to explain. “When a player is closer to the other team’s goal line than the last outfield player and—“
“I don’t care.” Sherlock held up a hand in front of John’s face. “Stop filling my head with absurdities.”
John shook his head, smiling, and turned his full attention back to what was happening down on the pitch. He was still a bit shocked that Sherlock had come with him – it hadn't been that long since their last case.
When the referee blew his whistle some twenty minutes later, Sherlock jumped to his feet. “Finally,” he muttered.
“Sherlock.” John grabbed his coat, looking just a little bit sympathetic. “That was just half-time.”
“You mean I have to sit through another eternity of… of… that!” Sherlock gestured towards the pitch, almost hitting a woman in the head.
“45 minutes, and yes, you promised.”
Sherlock made a small sound and fell back down on his chair. “John, if you kill me I won’t be upset.”
John chuckled. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
“I’ve had dinners with Mycroft more enjoyable than this.”
John shook his head, laughing quietly, and wondered what either of them had really expected.
When the final whistle sounded and John got to his feet, Sherlock looked at him as if to ask if it was actually over this time. John tilted his head and looked at Sherlock for a long time before answering, trying to decide something. Then he smiled. “I’m glad you came with me.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Walking past John to follow the stream of people leaving, Sherlock rolled his eyes. He made sure John stayed behind him the entire way out of the stadium, because he couldn’t stop himself smiling. The fact that John had appreciated this almost made it worth sitting outside in freezing weather for two hours.
-x-
“You’re not wearing that,” Sherlock said from the doorway, as John got out his dark grey suit.
“Oh, really?” John put the suit down on the bed. “Then what am I wearing?”
Sherlock sighed theatrically, and walked over to John’s wardrobe. “The black one.”
Now it was John’s turn to sigh. He hated that suit: it made him feel like an undertaker. He hadn't been very keen on this evening to start with, but Sherlock’s excitement made him keep his feelings to himself.
They were going to listen to the London Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall. Their last client had given them the tickets, and it was probably the first time Sherlock had said 'thank you' without being prompted to.
Sherlock handed John the black suit. “Can I trust you to pick a shirt and tie by yourself?”
“Blue shirt, Mickey Mouse tie, right?”
“No.” Sherlock’s eyes narrowed.
“White shirt, black tie,” said John, smiling. “You can go and change, I’ll manage all on my own.”
Sherlock looked suspiciously at him, but with a short nod, he decided that they didn’t have time to argue about it.
About five minutes later, John knocked on Sherlock’s opened bedroom door. “Will I do?”
Sherlock inspected him through the mirror, nodding once before turning back to insert his cufflinks. “Yes, that’ll do.”
“Come here,” John said, walking up to Sherlock and taking the cufflinks from him. Sherlock let John put them in without protest. After inspecting John’s work, Sherlock reached out and centred John’s tie knot ever so slightly.
“Done?” John asked with a wide smile.
“Yes.” Sherlock reached for his jacket, and after one last inspection in the mirror, they left for the Barbican.
Their seats were very good, and the orchestra was fantastic. Even John had to admit that. Sherlock leaned against their shared armrest, seemingly completely absorbed by the music. At one point, as the audience applauded, he leaned closer to John.
“Brahms worked on this symphony for almost fifteen years,” Sherlock whispered. “After the first few performances he burned it and rewrote it before letting it be published.”
“Duncan Ferguson has received the most red cards in the Premier League,” John whispered back.
Sherlock snorted and turned his attention back to the orchestra, but John saw a hint of a smile on his lips. After the concert, when they were standing on the pavement waiting for a cab home, John noticed that the smile was still there. Sherlock, on the other hand, was miles away, still hearing the music.
“Someone enjoyed this,” John said, bumping Sherlock lightly with his shoulder.
Sherlock nodded. “They were really good.”
“We should do this again.”
Sherlock frowned, looking at John as if he thought he had misheard him. “But you found it terribly boring.”
“Not ‘terribly, ’” John said with a smile. “How come you don’t do this more often?”
“I don’t know.” Sherlock opened the cab door for John. “Time. Money. Bad conductors?”
“We should do this again,” John said once again as the cab started.
Sherlock didn’t answer, but he smiled out the window the whole way back to Baker Street.
-x-
“More wine?” Sherlock asked, as he waved the waiter over to their table.
John smiled. “Are you trying to get me drunk, Sherlock?”
“It wasn’t my original intention, but I can surely try if you’d like.”
John didn’t have time to do more than shake his head before the waiter arrived and Sherlock ordered a second bottle of red wine. They had had two murder cases in that one week. For John, that was a record, but Sherlock insisted that he once had solved three murders and a robbery in six days.
When the waiter left, Sherlock pointed at John’s plate with his fork. “Are you going to eat that?”
“No, go ahead.” John pushed the plate across the table with a smile. It never ceased to amaze him how much Sherlock managed to eat once a case was over.
“You’re going to get a stomach ache,” John said, when Sherlock decided to order dessert.
“Nonsense,” Sherlock said, lifting his re-filled wine glass in a toast.
John raised his glass as well. “You are trying to get me drunk.”
Sherlock smiled not-so-innocently. “Nonsense.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” John said, smirking. “I was a medical student.”
“And you don’t think that I’ve built up some resistance to psychotropic substances over the years?”
John’s smile disappeared, and he put down his glass. Sherlock frowned, but waited to say anything until after he had received his dessert.
“John,” he said, slowly pushing his fork through the cake. “I’m not your sister. I’m not an alcoholic, and drinking won’t lead to cocaine.”
John leaned back and peered at Sherlock to decide if he believed him. “Fine, but give me some of that cake. It looks delicious.”
Sherlock smiled, handing him the fork. “You know, you can always tell the quality of an Indian restaurant by the number of—“
“Don’t even try,” John interrupted, and give him back the fork. “Do you remember when you could ‘always tell the quality of a sushi place by the state of the doormat’, and we both got food poisoning?”
“That was an unfortunate miscalculation.”
“Just admit that you guess when it comes to restaurants.”
Sherlock looked insulted. “I never guess.”
John glared at him. “Food. Poisoning.”
Sherlock pretended not to hear him, and poured him more wine even though his glass was mostly full. John shook his head, smiling, and waved at the waiter to come over again. If they were going to do this, they were going to do it right, with something stronger than red wine.
In the end, neither of them remembered how they got home.
-x-
“Christ,” John muttered, taking off the tinsel a young Detective Sergeant had wrapped around his neck as soon as they had entered Scotland Yard’s Christmas party. John rubbed his neck.
“Does it itch?” Sherlock asked, handing him his jacket.
“You have no idea.”
Sherlock smirked. “Do I have to remind you whose idea it was to come here in the first place?”
“Well, Lestrade invited us,” John said, pressing the lift button three times. “If someone invites you to a party, you show up.”
“If I did everything Lestrade told me, I wouldn’t solve that many cases.” Sherlock reached out and stopped John from pressing the button a fourth time. “That won’t get the lift here any faster.”
“I can bloody well try,” John said, pressing the button with his other hand. “If I hear Last Christmas one more time I will personally strangle every single person here.”
“I thought I was the borderline serial killer,” Sherlock said. “And as much as I sympathise, I strongly advise against going on a killing spree while inside Scotland Yard.”
“If I kill everyone in Homicide, then maybe no one will know how to deal with it.”
Sherlock chuckled, shaking his head, but he was just as pleased as John to hear the lift's soft bing and see the doors open.
John kept on complaining the entire way down. The decoration, the music (again), the people, the conversation…. Sherlock listened in silence, wondering if anything had been satisfactory tonight and how much of John's annoyance came from the fact that yesterday Harry had cancelled their Christmas plans.
“And another thing,” John continued his rant as they left the building. Sherlock placed a hand on his arm, interrupting.
“John.”
“What?”
Sherlock looked up at the sky. It wasn’t until John did the same that he noticed that it had started to snow. There were tiny flakes, and they melted almost before the touched the ground, but it was snowing nonetheless.
John held out his hand to catch the snowflakes. Nothing but drops of water gathered on his hand, but he smiled. “I haven’t seen snow since… since before….”
“Since before Afghanistan,” Sherlock ended the sentence for him.
“Yeah.” John smiled at Sherlock before looking up at the sky again. “Since before Afghanistan.”
They stood there a moment, watching the snow fall, and relishing the fact that the only sounds they heard were traffic and not Christmas music. Then, without a word, Sherlock put his hands in his pockets, and started to walk.
“Where are you going?” John asked.
Sherlock turned around, walking backwards. “Home.”
“You’re walking back to Baker Street?” John started to walk after him. “That’s at least an hour.”
“Thirty minutes. Tops,” Sherlock said, turning around to walk straight again when John had caught up.
“But—“
“It’s snowing, John.”
John smiled. He couldn’t argue with that and he had really missed snow. He suspected Sherlock knew that.
-x-
John woke up in a most uncomfortable position on the sofa. He sat up, pulling off the blanket someone – Sherlock – had placed over him. Everything hurt, his back, his neck, his bad shoulder…. He rolled his left shoulder with a tormented expression. The cracking of the joint was loud enough to make Sherlock look over from the window where he was playing the violin.
“Are you all right?” Sherlock asked, lowering the instrument.
“Yes. How did the film end?”
“I have no idea. I turned it off as soon as you fell asleep.”
John hid a yawn behind his hand. “And when was that?”
“Two, three hours ago.” Sherlock shrugged, putting the violin down on the coffee table. “You really know how to pick them.”
“Yeah, because The Seventh Seal would have kept me awake.”
“At least I wouldn’t have turned that one off,” Sherlock said, frowning as John grimaced again. “Are you sure you’re not in pain?”
“Just… stiff,” John lied, slowly changing the direction of his shoulder rotations.
Sherlock looked concerned. “I can help you, if you like?”
“No, thank you.” John looked up at him. “The last time you tried that, I was sore for a week.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Sherlock said, sitting down next to John and turning him so that his back was facing him. Then they both slowly and carefully removed John’s jumper.
Sherlock put his hands on John’s back. “Relax.”
“I don’t trust you,” John mumbled, tilting his head to the right to give Sherlock more space.
Sherlock smirked, moving one hand gently over John’s shoulder before pressing down hard with his thumb. John cried out in pain, trying to squirm away from Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock reduced the pressure.
“Ouch….” John sat up straight again and took a deep breath, preparing for Sherlock pressed on the same spot again. John bit his lip to muffle his swearing.
“Relax.”
“It’s not easy when you’re hgnnnn… hurting me,” John said, through clenched teeth.
Sherlock rested his hands on John’s shoulders. “Do you want me to stop?”
“God, no.”
“Masochist.” Sherlock rolled his eyes, but he smiled as he made John squirm again and moved on to massaging John’s other shoulder.
After ten minutes, Sherlock patted John lightly on the shoulders to signal that he was done. John rotated his left shoulder and turned around to face Sherlock.
“Thank you,” John said, smiling. He didn’t know the last time he had been this relaxed.
“You’re welcome.” Sherlock massaged his own hands, looking at John’s shoulder. “I had expected to feel more scar tissue.”
“Well,” John said, pulling the T-shirt so that Sherlock could see his scar.
Sherlock tilted his head and peered at it as if it was evidence. John endured the scrutiny by looking at a point slightly to the left of Sherlock’s head. John didn’t know what Sherlock had expected or what knowledge he had of gunshot wounds, surgical scars or scar tissue in general, but he knew that there was nothing extraordinary about his scar. The most remarkable thing was probably that it was on his shoulder and not someone else’s.
After a while, when John didn’t want to be goggled at anymore, he covered his shoulder again and met Sherlock’s eyes. “So, any conclusions?”
“I’m glad you were shot.” Sherlock was dead serious, but John’s shocked expression made him uncomfortable.
“I’m not.”
Sherlock sighed. Apparently, that statement hadn’t come across the way he had intended it to. “John, I didn’t mean that I—“
“I am, however,” John said, cutting Sherlock off, “glad I let Mike buy me that cup of coffee.”
They both smiled, averting their eyes when the silence became too long.
John cleared his throat and patted Sherlock on the knee. “Come on. Let’s go to bed. We can watch the rest of the film later.”
Sherlock grunted. “Can we please not do that?”
“Fine,” John said, and got up. “There’s a friendly between England and Wales on telly tomorrow?”
“We have a case tomorrow.”
“How do you know?”
Sherlock got up and picked up his violin. “I’ll create one before I sit through another night of football.”
“Fine, no football,” John said again, smiling. “Just please don’t kill anyone?”
“Who said thatI would be the one doing the killing?” Sherlock asked, and when John looked confused he started to play Last Christmas.
John laughed. “You know, you're the only person I could kill right now.”
“Whatever gets me out of watching football,” Sherlock said, letting the Christmas song change to the melody he had been playing when John had woken up.
“So you’re not going to bed?”
Sherlock shook his head.
John shook his head too, as he watched Sherlock walk back slowly to the window. John recognised the melody now: it was the part of the one from the concert, the one that had been burned or something. It made him smile and sit back down on the sofa.
Sherlock gave him an odd look, but he kept on playing until he heard John snoring quietly. For the second time that night, Sherlock picked the blanket off the floor and tucked John in on the sofa.
It didn’t really matter what they spent their nights doing, Sherlock realised. Concerts or football, parties or dinners, or just falling asleep on the sofa after an uneventful evening. As long as they did it together, everything was a little bit less dull. A little more enjoyable. And he was fairly sure John felt the same way.
“Good night, John,” Sherlock whispered. “I’m glad you survived.”
