"Lovely place you've got here," John says as they are ushered through the front door by Melanie, whose missing boyfriend also happens to be this week's favorite suspect. After a moment of awkward silence, John elbows Sherlock none-too-subtly in the ribs (something he is, aggravatingly, at an ideal height to do).
"Hmm? Oh, yes, a nice flat," Sherlock agrees.
"A good deal nicer than ours, anyway," John says, "providing there aren't any body parts in the toaster."
Melanie blinks, and then rallies with a whispered, "Oh, are the two of you...?" in Sherlock's direction.
Sherlock considers this for a split second and then, taking in the pink wallpaper and the romance novel splayed open on the kitchen table, says, over John's halfhearted protests, "Yes, actually. How'd you guess?"
Instead of answering, the girl begins to wax poetic about her "darling" Max who is, in all likelihood, the architect of a stunningly gruesome double murder. Sherlock makes distantly impressed noises and examines the mantle with his magnifying glass until he registers that silence has fallen over the room. John coughs.
Sherlock rises from his crouch near the fireplace. Evidently the vapid Melanie requires conversational reciprocation. He may or may not take the opportunity to describe his doctor in rather glowing terms (brave and loyal and a good deal less stupid than I had every right to expect all make an appearance). John is considerably pinker by the end of it, which Sherlock decides is just fine.
----
By Sherlock's unfailingly precise count, over the next four months their Grand Love Affair (as John has taken to calling it) gains them invaluable information in three cases, and useful information in no less than twelve. It causes young women to giggle at John and mutter about "all the lovely ones being taken or, you know," and stern old ladies to harangue Sherlock with impromptu lectures about the care and feeding of John Watson. It inspires four looks from Lestrade which Sherlock might go so far as to term fond, it is responsible for Anderson choking on his coffee, and it moves Donovan to lay a sympathetic hand on John's shoulder and shake her head. It also accrues for them two free bottles of wine at two separate restaurants, which is a rather nice perk.
Things probably would've carried on in much the same fashion except that one Thursday evening as they consume a celebratory, case-closed meal of takeout Chinese, John mutters something which sounds suspiciously like, "You don't always need an excuse you know."
It is just barely possible that five minutes later their hands brush across the table and do not move apart.
Sherlock - Sherlock/John - Less Than Clandestine - 2/2
"Hmm? Oh, yes, a nice flat," Sherlock agrees.
"A good deal nicer than ours, anyway," John says, "providing there aren't any body parts in the toaster."
Melanie blinks, and then rallies with a whispered, "Oh, are the two of you...?" in Sherlock's direction.
Sherlock considers this for a split second and then, taking in the pink wallpaper and the romance novel splayed open on the kitchen table, says, over John's halfhearted protests, "Yes, actually. How'd you guess?"
Instead of answering, the girl begins to wax poetic about her "darling" Max who is, in all likelihood, the architect of a stunningly gruesome double murder. Sherlock makes distantly impressed noises and examines the mantle with his magnifying glass until he registers that silence has fallen over the room. John coughs.
Sherlock rises from his crouch near the fireplace. Evidently the vapid Melanie requires conversational reciprocation. He may or may not take the opportunity to describe his doctor in rather glowing terms (brave and loyal and a good deal less stupid than I had every right to expect all make an appearance). John is considerably pinker by the end of it, which Sherlock decides is just fine.
----
By Sherlock's unfailingly precise count, over the next four months their Grand Love Affair (as John has taken to calling it) gains them invaluable information in three cases, and useful information in no less than twelve. It causes young women to giggle at John and mutter about "all the lovely ones being taken or, you know," and stern old ladies to harangue Sherlock with impromptu lectures about the care and feeding of John Watson. It inspires four looks from Lestrade which Sherlock might go so far as to term fond, it is responsible for Anderson choking on his coffee, and it moves Donovan to lay a sympathetic hand on John's shoulder and shake her head. It also accrues for them two free bottles of wine at two separate restaurants, which is a rather nice perk.
Things probably would've carried on in much the same fashion except that one Thursday evening as they consume a celebratory, case-closed meal of takeout Chinese, John mutters something which sounds suspiciously like, "You don't always need an excuse you know."
It is just barely possible that five minutes later their hands brush across the table and do not move apart.