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I.
The first time it happened, it was actually a complete accident. To be fair, accidents while experimenting that made John mad were fairly common occurances. But it wasn't often that Sherlock rendered a whole level of their flat uninhabitable.
Thankfully, John had been at work when the problem started.
The thing was, Sherlock hadn't thought they would be able to escape. And he'd brought a lot of them – an excessive amount, now that he reconsidered the number based on the fact they had escaped and were loose in the flat. Sherlock hadn't even noticed they'd escaped for the majority of the day, because he'd been distracted by a cold case from Lestrade.
Maybe John would be impressed that he'd caught a murderer thirty years after the fact instead of angry that Sherlock had loosed thousands of bedbugs on their living quarters.
He only had half an hour before John was back from the surgery – forty minutes if he stopped to get a paper and some milk from Tesco on his way home. There were too many bedbugs, and they'd had the entire day to spread out and infest the house.
Sherlock didn't even bother trying to find them all – he immediately called Mrs. Hudson – warning her not to enter the contamination zone, of course, and had her call an exterminator. In his mind, he decided that the whole lower level of 221b was infested, but considered that upstairs, where John's room was, might be safe.
Next, Sherlock considered that it was possible that he himself was contaminated with bedbugs, because he'd been in their environment for several hours. First, he checked himself obsessively in the mirror every five minutes to see if he had any tell-tale red bite marks. Second, he stripped off all of his clothes, dumped them in the contaminated zone, and left. They couldn't hide on his person if he wasn't wearing any clothes.
And that's why, when John arrived home at 5:43 in the evening, Tesco bag in hand, he found Sherlock sitting naked on the stairs, drinking a cup of tea and reading the newspaper he'd filched from Mrs. Hudson's flat.
John stopped short, and Sherlock said quickly, "Don't go in the flat, it's overrun by bedbugs. I've taken precaution to make sure I don't cross-contaminate the rest of the house. The exterminator can't be here until tomorrow morning, so you'll have to make due with not showering until tomorrow."
"Idiot. You're so lucky I..." John said, and shook his head without finishing the thought. "What are you going to wear?"
"Are you bothered by my state of nudity, John?" Sherlock asked.
"No, I just thought that since we can't even enter most of our flat, we should go out to get dinner," John said reasonably.
"We could just get take-out," Sherlock suggested.
John seemed strangely complacent about the fact their flat was mostly uninhabitable, and didn't even complain as the two of them ate Chinese out of take away boxes on the stairs. John had gone upstairs while they were waiting and found Sherlock a t-shirt and shorts to wear. They invaded Mrs. Hudson's flat to watch some telly, and Mrs. Hudson admonished Sherlock's carelessness.
Sherlock, lying on Mrs. Hudson's couch with his feet in John's lap as they watched telly, didn't notice that the evening was creeping up on them and that eventually John would want to sleep. When John yawned and slowly got to his feet, Sherlock followed him all the way up the stairs to his room, and John didn't protest.
"I hope you don't snore," was all John said, as he tossed Sherlock an extra pillow.
Then, John climbed into one side of the bed (Sherlock's mind shied away from calling it "his" side, as it implied that Sherlock had a "side" in John's bed), turned over, and sighed as he settled in for the night.
Sherlock approached the other side of the bed with some trepidation. He hadn't had to share a bed anytime in the past three-odd decades of his life. He had no idea how his transport would react in sleep to bed-sharing. Especially with John.
Sherlock lifted the sheet, and John grunted.
"Hurry and get in, you're letting the cold in!" John mumbled.
Sherlock tumbled into the bed, causing the mattress to jump beneath them. John grunted again and told him to just bloody settle already. Sherlock quickly positioned himself, clenched up in a tight ball. John, who was quickly slipping off to sleep next to him, didn't make any other comment on Sherlock's unplanned presence in his bed that night.
Slowly, Sherlock relaxed into the mattress, and he buried his nose in the comforter.
Unsurprisingly, it smelled of John.
Sherlock, who fully expected to stay awake all night lying next to John instead found himself drifting off. There were worse things than falling asleep next to John Watson, and so Sherlock allowed himself to succumb to sleep
The next morning, John made everyone eggs using Mrs. Hudson's kitchen (and eggs, but no one mentioned that), and Sherlock ate his portion without complaint, considering the sudden possibilities he'd never thought of before the bed bug incident.
He needed more data.
II.
Sherlock hadn't planned on having a jewel thief smash him over the head with a priceless antique vase that evening, but somehow, it was working out far better than expected. He was a tad too dizzy to stand up at the moment, but he watched with no small amount of pride as John easily took the thief to the floor. Watching John in action was marvelous, and as he'd recently suffered a head injury, he really had no other choice but to remain where he was and watch.
Sherlock ignored the museum curators histrionics in favour of watching John hold the thief's arm behind his back as he sat across the backs of his knees to prevent his escape. He was so engaged with Watson-watching that he didn't notice as Sally Donovan got an arm under him and half-lifted half-dragged him out to the back of an ambulance.
"I'm fine," he protested.
"You're bleeding everywhere," Sally said, crossing her arms.
"Head injuries bleed a lot. Where's John?" Sherlock went to stand, and the whole world swirled around him.
Sally put him back in the ambulance.
"John?" Sherlock asked blankly.
"Definitely a concussion," one of the ambulance attendants asserted.
They wanted to take him to the hospital without John, and so Sherlock stirred up quite a fuss unil John was located and brought to him.
"You can release him into my custody, I'll watch him," John assured the disgruntled and slightly bruised attendants. "I'm a doctor, I know how to take care of patients who've suffered a concussion."
"You're welcome to him," one of them said, shooting him a glare before they shut the ambulance and left.
"Come on, Sherlock, Donovan has offered us a ride back to Baker street," John said.
"Don't like police cars," Sherlock muttered.
"Well, too bad, we already established that taxis don't take people covered in blood."
"We could take the tube," Sherlock said.
"You have a concussion," John reminded him.
"The stars weren't staying in the sky where they belonged," Sherlock allowed, nodding.
"Come on, you git."
Sherlock didn't really remember most of the ride back to Baker street, just that John let Sherlock rest his head on John's shoulder and that his fingers carding through Sherlock's hair felt rather nice. The next thing he knew, he was in his own bed, and somehow miraculously dressed in pyjamas.
"You're lucky they let you come with me," John said. "You couldn't tell them the name of our current prime minister."
"As if that's of any importance," Sherlock said.
To his surprise, after John settled Sherlock into bed, he climbed onto the other side and lay down, albeit on top of the sheets and still dressed.
"What are you doing?" Sherlock asked in confusion.
"I have to wake you up in two hours to reassess your condition," John said. "Since I hate tromping up and down the stairs at night, I'm just going to stay here and read while you sleep."
"Wouldn't it be better if you also wore your sleepwear?" Sherlock asked.
"Not very professional," John said, lips pursing.
"As if I give a toss about that," Sherlock sighed, then sank down into his bed. "Besides, you're tired and your shoulder hurts after wrestling the thief to the ground. The position you're currently in will exacerbate it."
John, who had been lying on his side, head propped up on one elbow, grimaced.
"You're right, as usual," he said fondly. "Try and sleep, I'll be here when you wake up."
John left his room, and Sherlock could hear him rummaging around upstairs, getting changed and ready for bed. Sherlock's head still hurt, and he knew that a person with a concussion was supposed to rest as much as possible to help with the recovery process. John had work tomorrow, so Sherlock resigned himself to a long, boring day of nothing the next day. He sighed and put his head down on the pillow. Sleep came surprisingly quickly.
Strangely, Sherlock didn't much mind getting woken up every two hours when it was John doing it. He wanted to write down the data, but the first time he'd fumbled for a notepad in the bedsite table next to him, John had shot him a quelling look, and he'd stopped. Right, rest.
No matter if his brain was supposed to be resting, he couldn't help but deduce John every time he woke up.
The first time, John had still been awake as Sherlock slept away next to him. He had finished ninety-four pages of his latest murder mystery novel and kept an eye on the clock using his mobile.
The second, John had read an additional forty-five pages and fallen asleep with the reading light on, book still open to the spot. His phone alarm woke him up, and Sherlock at the same time.
Thirdly, John hadn't even bothered trying to keep reading. He'd turned the reading light off, reached over Sherlock to put his book on Sherlock's bedside table, and fallen asleep. He got through one full REM cycle in between alarms.
By the time morning came, John was awake again, but hadn't left Sherlock's side. Sherlock didn't even have to ask, he just knew that John had called into work and was staying home with him today. With a small smile, Sherlock went back to sleep, looking forward to waking up in Doctor Watson's care.
III.
It was the screaming that woke Sherlock up.
It was the most awful thing that Sherlock had heard, and he was out of his bed and up the stairs to John's room before he'd really thought the entire process through or even come to the realization of what was happening.
Once he reached John's closed bedroom door, he suddenly knew what was wrong.
John was in the grips of a PTSD-fuelled nightmare, and Sherlock had to be very careful in his approach to waking John up. He had a brief moment of regret for his absent violin, which he'd left in the care of Mycroft (or, more likely, one of his minions) after John's wedding, and which he'd never retrieved. In the past, he'd played songs until John woke up.
There was something different about this nightmare. Sherlock had woken John from countless nightmares after they had first met. But none of those instances compared to what he was listening to now.
He braced himself and slowly opened the door. John was whimpering wordlessly in his sleep, twisting and turning erratically. His t-shirt was drenched in sweat, and his teeth were clenched. Sherlock turned on the light, hoping that the introduction of lighting would wake John up. No such luck.
Sherlock very slowly approached the bed.
John clawed angrily at the sheets under his hands.
"Let me go," he hissed. "He's my friend. No, he's my friend."
Sherlock felt the blood drain out of his cheeks. He clamped down on the first thought that entered his head and shoved it back down mercilessly. He had taken a long time to learn what to say to a grieving person, and while his initial response was, "How can you still be feeling grief for me, after all this time, and knowing that I'm actually alive," he knew now that it would have been a terribly cruel thing to say to a person.
And he certainly didn't want to be cruel to John.
"Sherlock..." John whined. "Sherlock..."
He didn't say anything else but increasingly pitiful utterances of Sherlock's name for the next minute. The words grated at the very marrow of Sherlock's bones. How did he make this better?
Sherlock definitely knew that he couldn't just go and wake John up by physically touching him. Even if this nightmare was created from a different memory than those John had from the war, John had still been a soldier. Waking him up with his mind in such turmoil would probably result in Sherlock being put through the wall.
Sherlock approached the bed, but didn't move within arm's reach. He could leap backwards if necessary. John would feel even more terrible if he woke up to find he'd harmed Sherlock accidentally, even in sleep.
He considered what he was going to do.
"John," he called softly. "Joooohn. Wake up. You're dreaming."
There wasn't any change in John's demeanor, and Sherlock silently cursed his own pitiful sentiment in stashing his violin somewhere other than Baker street. How could he still be sensitive about that, when John had left Mary and was back at 221b, and things were back to normal? The song had killed him to write, but not only was the whole affair over and done with, he shouldn't let this incident affect his composing.
But it was far away, and Sherlock didn't feel like telling Mycroft that he needed it back for soothing still-traumatized soldiers back to sleep.
He couldn't play the violin right now, but that didn't mean he couldn't still make music. His voice, while out of practice, could certainly produce something like a song. He didn't know many songs, so he sang something he had heard on the radio while he'd been taking a cab.
"Never mind, I'll find someone like you," he sang, going to sit on the edge of John's bed, the one farthest away from John's sleeping form.
It was the only song he could think of to sing, so he started it again, and again once he'd finished it one time through. Eventually, John started to relax. Something must have penetrated his fog of sleep, because he woke groggily and blinked over at Sherlock sitting next to him.
"Sherlock?" John asked sleepily.
"Go back to sleep, John," Sherlock said.
"I will if you keep singing," John said, rolling back over to sleep.
It had been fine the past two times, so Sherlock slipped under the covers and continued softly singing until John drifted off again. Sherlock reached over carefully and touched John's side. John's steady breathing calmed his racing heart, and keeping his hand where it was, Sherlock purposely allowed himself to fall asleep beside John.
John was already gone by the time he woke up, and neither mentioned what had transpired the night before.
IV.
It could have been an accident. That's what Sherlock told himself as John railed against unreliable transportation, Cornwall in general, and small villages in Cornwall in particular.
"I guess we'll have to find a place to stay," Sherlock said, aiming for nonchalance and missing.
It could have been an accident.
But it wasn't.
Sherlock knew that Sundays were terrible for transportation. He also knew that small, remote villages on the coast of Cornwall had limited access by any sort of transportation that wasn't a car, which is why he'd insisted on taking the train into Truro and then getting a bus from there. Also, it was the off-season, which meant that buses that normally took tourists to places in Cornwall weren't running.
"We could rent a car and leave it in Truro," John said, looking at his phone.
John fiddled with his phone, and Sherlock pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders and pulled his scarf further over his face. It had rained earlier, and was a bit chilly and damp. John seemed anxious to get back to London, but that was very very unlikely unless Mycroft sent them a helicopter.
Sherlock glared around suspiciously, but there was obviously no CCTV network in the remote areas on the country.
"Damn," John cursed. "The only trains out of Truro leave in the morning on Sundays. We've missed them all until tomorrow."
Sherlock smiled from the safety of his scarf, and John shot him an apologetic glance. "I hope we can find a place to stay on such short notice."
Sherlock had already considered that. There was only one place to stay in the town, a little bed and breakfast with very limited rooms. He had planned it in advance, and he was fairly certain there was a room available, but no more than one room. It was perfect.
John found the B&B with little difficulty, and Sherlock sat back and waited for John to ask for two rooms, anticipating the argument when there were none to be had.
"Do you have a double room available?" John asked.
Sherlock's train of thought halted abruptly and derailed as John calmly got them a double room without even asking after two singles, as he'd predicted. John caught sight of his muddled expression and laughed.
"We're used to sharing a bed by now, right Sherlock?" he said jovially. "Saves us a hundred quid for the night, although I'd have been happier to have gotten a train back to London."
"We could have rented a car and driven back," Sherlock said.
"And drive for five hours in this bloody downpour?" John asked, gesturing to the window, where the weather had started up again. "Bollocks to that."
The bed and breakfast sent up a pot of tea for them, and offered to bring a hot water bottle as well, as it was a very damp night. Sherlock sat in confusion on their double bed, waiting for John to finish using the shower. This wasn't going at all like he imagined. John was supposed to protest more, and Sherlock was supposed to try to convince him of the wisdom of staying the night.
John emerged with a towel around his waist, hair still spiky and wet, damp drops sticking to his skin. Sherlock's mouth went dry, and he licked his lips without thinking about it.
"I'm sure I could have driven us for five hours," Sherlock said, without really thinking about it.
John laughed and dropped the towel as he rummaged in his jean pockets for something. Sherlock hastily averted his eyes.
"You've been awake for at least two days, I'm not letting you drive, you madman," John said fondly.
"Well, I... at least we could have stayed in Truro," Sherlock muttered, having no idea why he had suddenly switched to the opposing argument, but finding himself compelled to follow it through to its end.
"This is fine," John said. "Anyways, here we get a hot water bottle." There was a knock at the door, and John continued, "Ah, that's probably it now."
Once John had returned with it, put it under the covers and snuggled in himself, Sherlock said, "You've been oddly complacent about our change of plans."
"Is that what's bothering you?" John asked with a laugh. "Don't worry, Sherlock, I'm not going to snap at you. I just wanted to see the premier of the next series of Doctor Who."
"Oh, that," Sherlock snorted. "I can probaby give a fairly accurate synopsis based on the last episode."
"Don't you dare spoil it for me, you bastard," John said. "Now, are you going to sleep, or what? Not much else to do in this place anyway."
Sherlock undressed slowly and laid his suit out over one of the chairs for the next day. Because he hadn't been able to plan for an overnight stay without giving away his plan, he didn't have a change of clothes. He shimmied into the bed next to John, and sighed as the heat of the hot water bottle warmed him up. He hadn't even realized he'd been chilly.
"You know," John said, "You never explained how you knew that the gardener had stolen the shoes."
Sherlock remedied that immediately, and they spent the rest of the night discussing the case.
Sharing a bed was more companionable than Sherlock had imagined.
V.
This time definitely wasn't an accident.
Sherlock checked all of his notes so far on bed-sharing with John Watson and nodded affirmatively. If he played this right, then this wouldn't be the last time it wasn't an accident either, but he had to be very careful.
The real problem was that John Watson's reactions to situations could not be reliably counted on to be predictable. They should be, but they absolutely weren't. Sherlock had that underlined in his notes, because Sherlock had run countless tests on John's reactions to a variety of stimuli only to find that no matter how well Sherlock had determined that he knew John, he could only accurately predict his reaction to 75% of situations. Not only that, the data was skewed, because Sherlock could accurately predict the vast majority of minor situations, such as when they ran out of milk, or if Sherlock demanded a cup of tea. He almost had 100% accuracy for small, pointless interactions.
It was the major ones that were the problem, and from what Sherlock had observed of society, bed-sharing was a major event.
Bed-sharing, as he'd researched it extensively, meant a change in a relationship. The majority of the time, bed-sharing implied a romantic relationship, or at least a domestic relationship. It only ever arose in this day and age out of trust and strong mutual feelings. It was hard to pin down, because different age ranges had different reactions to bed sharing. But the combination of socialization by gender, age, social status, nationality, and past experience made it very hard to predict the outcome.
So far, John Watson had shared his bed four times with Sherlock Holmes. Those four times had been by necessity and not voluntary, at least on part of John.
Data suggested that John didn't mind sharing a bed with Sherlock. Data also suggested that Sherlock benefited a great deal from sharing a bed with John in terms of physical health, and found it satisfying emotionally and mentally.
John respected science a great deal, and he put up with Sherlock's experiments far more than any of Sherlock's past acquaintances. If he could come up with a compelling enough argument, John might willingly consent to sharing a bed more often with Sherlock.
Sherlock nodded to himself again. It made sense. John couldn't possibly argue with that.
Sherlock approached John while he was making a cup of tea, the optimal time to get John to agree to something, because tea preparation always left John in a better mood than what it had been previously.
"We should sleep together," Sherlock announced. Then, he waited for John's reaction, pen poised to note it down. For science.
"Yes, okay," John said, stirring his tea.
Sherlock stopped and blinked. And blinked again.
Like he'd discovered, his predictions regarding reactions of John Watson were increasingly likely to be wrong when it came to a major event. This was the opposite of what he expected. John never gave into anything that might suggest he had any sort of sexual or romantic attachment to men, and it seemed especially so with Sherlock.
Sherlock took a deep breath, and continued. "It's for science."
"Yes, I thought it might be," John said, nodding towards the clipboard in Sherlock's hands.
"Do you... do you have any objections to the parameters of the experiment?" Sherlock asked.
"You haven't told me what they are yet, but I imagine not," John said, smiling over the rim of his tea mug.
Sherlock hadn't thought of that, actually, but John didn't need to know that. "If I told you, it would ruin the experiment."
John just smiled and nodded, returning to his tea without any apparent worries.
Sherlock got off the sofa at 10:00 pm exactly and said, "It's time to start the experiment."
"Alright," John said, and got up. "Are we using your bed or mine?"
"Mine," Sherlock said regretfully, since he rather enjoyed lying surrounded by John's scent. "I can have control of the environment if it's mine."
"Fair enough," John said. "Are these pyjamas alright?"
Sherlock raised an eyebrow at the worn-out blue striped pyjama bottoms and the ragged t-shirt and said, "For the purpose of sleeping, I suppose."
Sherlock lay down in his bed and watched as John climbed in the other side.
"Well, good night!" John said cheerfully as he turned over.
Sherlock turned out the light and lay there in the dark. John took about fifteen minutes to fall asleep, but Sherlock lay awake, listening to him breathe.
The thing was, it had been almost alarmingly easy for Sherlock to convince John to sleep in his bed, and although this should have pleased him, instead Sherlock was suspicious. He didn't know what was going on, but he intended to find out.
+1
Sherlock stood at the bottom of the stairs to John's room and stared up at John's door. After the "experimental" bed sharing incident, Sherlock told John that he didn't need any further experimental sessions. John had been completely neutral about this announcement, neither disappointed nor relieved.
Once again, John Watson was proving to be quite the conundrum.
Sherlock bit his lip. He was dithering here at the bottom of the stairs because all of this had been leading up to the moment in front of him. He'd been dipping his toes in, testing the water, and still come up with nothing. All there was to it was to finally just take the plunge.
The only thing was, what if he'd been getting it wrong this entire time?
What if bed-sharing was okay when there was an actual reason for it besides "Sherlock enjoys sleeping next to you, and sharing your body heat, and being surrounded by your scent, and feeling safe and happy?"
Sherlock was fairly selfish, he realized, but he would give up the experiments, and the organs in the fridge, and never cleaning up after himself if he could just have this one thing.
He stared longingly up the stairs and his insides ached with how much he wanted to be up there next to John.
This was actually his third night standing at the bottom of the stairs and trying to summon up the courage to climb them. The other night, he'd managed to get his foot on the second stair for ten minutes, and then he'd turned and fled back to his room. God, he hoped Mycroft didn't have any spy cameras around to pick up on this ridiculous act.
His feet were cold – it was moving into increasingly chilly weather, and he had forgotten slippers in this expedition. He sat down on the bottom stair and sighed.
This was getting ridiculous. Sherlock shivered and pulled his robe tighter around himself. He needed to just get up there, and damn the consequences. There was no other way of finding out. If Sherlock Holmes couldn't design an experiment that would tell him what John's response would be, then no power in the world would reveal it besides the obvious.
Sherlock hated being obvious. He also hated revealing his own design before he knew what the risks were, and what likelihood he had of failure versus success. This was maddening.
He stood up again and faced the stairs.
He lifted his leg and got one foot on the next stair. That was good, he'd already made it as far as he had the previous night. He lifted his other foot, wavered for a moment, and plonked it down next to the other one. Good. Progress.
He stayed there for a good ten more minutes before he managed the next step. The next one was easier, and to Sherlock's surprise, the higher he climbed, the easier it was. All he'd had to do was get the ball rolling, as it were.
Finally, he was in front of the door, and everything was quiet.
Here goes nothing, Sherlock thought, and twisted the knob.
It was warmer in John's room than out in the hallway, and Sherlock hastily shut the door behind him, leaving John's room in muted light. London was never truly dark. Carefully, he padded to the far side of John's bed and very slowly shifted the covers back.
Heart thumping ferociously, Sherlock sat on the bed and slowly started to slide in. John shifted and grunted, starting to wake up as he noted another presence in his personal space. Sherlock froze and held his breath as John stirred, yawning as he blearily looked around.
His eyes fell on Sherlock, and Sherlock waited for John to decide, even after all this time expecting to be rejected and sent back downstairs. At least he'd tried, he tried to pre-emptively console himself.
John smiled.
"Took you long enough," he muttered, and turned back over.
And suddenly Sherlock realized that John had been ahead of him all this time in regards to this situation, and had simply been waiting for Sherlock to catch up.
"Shut up," he whispered in return, and slipped into the bed next to John.
John rolled over again, and Sherlock blinked in surprise as his sudden proximity. John smiled and reached out under the covers, finding Sherlock's waist and dragging him closer. John rested his forehead against Sherlock's chest, sighed contentedly, and to all outward appearances, went straight back to sleep.
Tentatively, Sherlock circled one arm over John's body, and John, whether asleep or awake, settled into the embrace. Sherlock rested his cheek on top of John's head, breathed in John's scent, strong as it was near his hairline.
This is what he'd been working towards all along.