hsavinien

Title: Jellyfish are Irrelevant to the Study of John

Author: H. Savinien
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Sherlock belongs the BBC, the Doyle estate, and the actors. I claim nothing in the creation of this fanwork.
Word count: 450
Summary: Sherlock and John negotiate bedtime activities.

***

John flipped a page. Sherlock glanced at the text – biology mixed with sociology and a touch of anthropology, steal later, currently uninteresting. He curled on his side next to John and slid a bare leg over John's hip.

“Did you need attention?” John asked dryly.

“No.” Sherlock cataloged the freckles on John's shoulder and pressed a careful fingertip to the bruises he'd mouthed (marched) up John's trapezius to his jaw last night. John's cock twitched under the pressure of his leg. That was interesting. Perhaps John was paying him attention. Sherlock reached for it experimentally. John batted his hand away without looking.

“What'd I tell you?”

Sherlock grimaced. “'Involuntary physical response is not consent and previous consent does not imply current or future consent.' I know that, John, I'm not an imbecile. I've been on rape cases before,” he added.

John pressed a kiss to Sherlock's temple. “Right, lesson well-remembered. Put it in practice; I'm reading. Either stop thinking about groping me or piss off out of my room until I've finished my chapter.”

“John,” Sherlock breathed in his best cajoling tone.

“And don't give me the fake seduction voice, I'm not a witness.” John elbowed Sherlock under the ribs, olecranon digging in uncomfortably.

Sherlock subsided. “May I touch your hair?” he asked, grudgingly.

John hummed. “All right. Don't pull.”

Sherlock ran his fingers over John's scalp, then up from his hairline behind his ear against the grain, examining the roots. More freckles there, an isoceles triangle that never saw the sun now that John no longer bothered with a regulation-short haircut. A few spots too; perhaps John ought to switch shampoos. He opened his mouth to suggest it, but John laughed at some turn of phrase in his book and Sherlock turned his attention to the jostle of John's warmth against him. He fixed on the skin at the corner of John's eye, lined (radiating, radial pattern, taxon Radiata...irrelevant) and surface-iridescent like a beetle or a petrol-slick, the natural oils of his skin catching the light of the bedside lamp. Sherlock counted the individual hairs of John's eyebrow and mentally timed the quiver of the eyelid beneath as John scanned the text.

John shifted suddenly, shutting his book and rolling away from Sherlock to put it on the table under the lamp. He turned back and fixed Sherlock with an interrogative look. “Right then, did you have something in mind for the rest of the evening?”

“Don't be obtuse, John.”

John grinned. “Sorry. Would you like to have sex?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, only a little irritably. “Would you care to join me?”

“I would, in fact.” John kissed him.