Chapter Text
At night John lay in his bed, awake, waiting for sleep that wouldn't come.
In a way it was rather surprising that this hadn't happened the night before, but maybe his subconscious needed 24 hours to work through something before pushing it into his conscious mind.
Now he couldn't stop thinking about the wicked playfulness Sherlock had so innocently displayed the night before, when he had researched all these BDSM sites with voracious interest. It wasn't the playfulness really that gave John cause for concern, but the underlying naïve cruelness that John knew Sherlock was capable of coupled with that innocent playfulness. Sometimes he was like a child ripping of flies' wings without realising what that actually did to the animal.
John shuddered at the thought of anyone being at the receiving end of that guileless cruelty.
He started abruptly, his leg twitching and his hands clenching to fists as he realised that the shudder was not entirely born out of apprehension. He swallowed, throat dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Slight nausea rose quickly the next instant, as his mouth was flooded with saliva that John usually associated with the want to kiss and lick a lover's skin. He retched once, dry, trying to suppress the feeling. His stomach cramped a little, roiled, but before he could decide to head to the toilet just in case, he felt himself calm just as suddenly. It was like a reverse rush, falling into him with accurate aim. It was the cold calm of an adrenaline surge that made his hands steady and his leg cease to hurt. It also left him very confused right now, because he could not figure out why his own emotions had triggered such a vicious fight response. He didn't feel scared, but he must have scared himself a lot just now for this reaction to take place so suddenly. It was like his mind and his body weren't on the same page. It was an odd feeling and for a moment John anticipated another wave of panic at this dissonance, but he remained calm.
Huh.
He turned onto his side and went to sleep without remembering why he had lain awake in the first place.
~*~
John came down into their living room the next morning feeling well rested, but a little cramped in the hands. It was Sunday and he had for once slept in rather long. He stopped abruptly when he saw Sherlock sitting on the floor on the other side of the couch table, six bras lying around him. Blue dressing gown wrapped tightly around him, he was currently examining a dark purple one very closely. His fingers danced over the seams, feeling for hidden supports, John assumed.
“Who's are these?” John asked indicating the bras.
“Mrs. Hudson's.”
John flinched reflexively in surprise. “You nicked underwear off our landlady?” he asked incredulously.
“Of course,” Sherlock said unapologetically. “She was hardly going to give them to me,” he muttered absent-mindedly, his attention clearly still on the garment in front of him. Then Sherlock looked up as if finally truly realising John was in the room and grinned mischievously. His grin turning quickly impish, he put the purple bra on his head, letting the clasps dangle. His curly hair, still sleep-ruffled, stuck out at the sides under the shoulder straps.
John snickered loudly, surprised by finding the scene before him so helplessly funny. Sherlock looked like a five year old, who'd just discovered his mum's bras and was playing with them. On his head the undergarment now resembled a pair of big, lace-trimmed ear muffs. John chortled and Sherlock's grin turned rather proud.
“You're going to give them back undamaged, right?” John asked, still grinning.
“Yes, before she even knows I had them.” Attention quickly diverted by another one before him – impromptu 'ear muffs' still on his head, surprisingly held in place by his hair alone - Sherlock muttered curiously, “This one's really pretty.” He felt the bordeaux coloured fabric between his fingers, letting them run back and forth over the dark yellow stitching, a highly concentrated frown on his face, “It's new.” He looked up at John looking mischievous, but also pleased with something.
At John's blank look and uncomprehendingly lifted eyebrow, Sherlock's happy expression slid into an exasperated eye-roll. But there was little heat behind it. “Really, John! It means things with Mr Chatterjee are proceeding nicely. Slowly,” he shook his head, the bra on his head dancing oddly, chattering to the other bra in his hands as if it was intently listening – and a small child, “Sooooo slooooowly.” He shook his head again, still not dislodging the bra on his head, but then looked up at John, one of his rare really-pleased-for-someone-else smiles on his face. “It's getting there.” He positively beamed.
It filled John with a warm glow. But, he gathered, seeing a full grown man in his dressing gown, sitting cross legged on the floor in the middle of your living room holding a bra, with for others strewn around him, the sixth still on his head can do that to anyone.
Looking at the surprisingly colourful collection of undergarments, John finally saw the pink grapefruit and yellowish green pomelo also on the table and frowned. “Sherlock, please tell me, you're not using fruits as stand-ins for breasts.”
Sherlock opened his mouth and parroted obediently, “I'm not using fruits as stand-ins for-”
“But is that actually true?”
“Of course.” Sherlock levelled such a withering look at John, he actually felt its sting and did for a moment consider whether he had really lost some IQ points. John then remembered a couple of other experiments though and lifted an eyebrow, feeling suddenly very much unapologetic for having questioned his friend.
“Although colloquially often compared, fruits are hardly an analogue for real life fatty tissue,” Sherlock explained. The way he said 'fatty tissue' was so unsexy it took John a split second to relate that to the wonderful things that were women's breasts. John had always had the impression that if Sherlock was interested in anyone, it was definitely not women. The way he talked about their bodies just now cemented that opinion even more in John's mind.
Sherlock finally took the bra off his head, eyeing the cups interestedly, poking the lace trimming. He did steal a look towards the grapefruit, so John quickly walked over and grabbed the fruit to prevent him from getting any funny ideas. Well, more funny than what as currently happening.
“Why did you buy these then?” John asked, eyeing the fruits longingly, “For what experiment?” 'This time' was left unsaid.
Sherlock looked up from the bra at John, frowning. “I bought them for us, well, you specifically. You said you like them?” He sounded suddenly very unsure, as if buying fruit for ones flat mate was maybe 'not good'.
John took pity on him and grinned widely. “Thank you.” But the next moment suspicion arose, “Hang on... You brought new body parts to the flat, didn't you?”
Sherlock didn't look up from the bra in his lap. In fact he became very still over it, unnaturally so. John sighed. “Of course,” he muttered lowly. Of course this was Sherlock's way of sugaring John's mood. He slowly released a long suffering breath and went to the kitchen to get a knife and bowls for the juicy pulp. He really did like pomelo.
“I put the spleens in ziplocks,” Sherlock muttered softly under his breath but loud enough John could still hear it in the kitchen, so he knew it was directed at him. Sherlock actually sounded a little shamefaced. John wasn't sure it was entirely an act. He checked the fridge. The spleens (or what was still there of them), really sat neatly in ziplock bags on the lowest shelf, way away from any edible food in there. At least he made an effort, John thought, mollified. He labelled the two bags – something Sherlock had again neglected – as John was really trying to avoid becoming a cannibal by accident. He went back to the living room with bowls and knife in hand.
Sitting down at the living room desk, he divided the fruits evenly and started to peel. He even peeled some pieces free of any white stuff and the skin and dropped the pulp into Sherlock's bowl. God, sometimes it was like training an animal: positive reinforcement, positive reinforcement, positive reinforcement.
Sherlock actually ate all the pulp in his bowl and possibly stole some from John's as well. There was suspiciously less left each time John left it unattended for a moment. But at least Sherlock was eating something. He also spent most of the morning between studying the bras and some other experiment brewing in the kitchen. John read, wrote a little for his blog, went for a Sunday walk and then watched some telly when he came back. Life of Birds, a re-run on BBC four.
At half past four Sherlock took all the bras off the floor and vanished downstairs. After he was back it only took about 15 minutes for Mrs Hudson to return to her flat from her afternoon playing games with her friends. She really seemed to be non the wiser as to where her bras had spent most of the day.
John changed the channel to another documentary, this time a more sensational one on channel five. Sherlock had taken to the sofa now, again sitting cross-legged, but with his laptop balanced on his knees. He had his headphones in, which was so remarkably courteous in itself – usually Sherlock had no problem making a racket – that John did a quick double take.
From his rapt attention and the slight rosy glow to his cheeks, as well as him being so courteous, John deduced that Sherlock was browsing the BDSM sites again.
It made his skin crawl.
~*~
On Monday John was at the clinic and had just worked through a couple of reports, when his mobile rang.
“Mate, he's gone off the deep end,” Lestrade's voice carried over the phone, “And how am I'm supposed to get that information and not look like a pervert?”
“What?” John asked, confused. He clamped the phone between his ear and shoulder and tried to sign off on the reports while following the conversation. Apparently he was not doing a very good job, because he had no idea what Lestrade was talking about.
“Sherlock,” Lestrade said as if answering John's non-spoken question. “He wants me to get the bra sizes of the wife and mistress, the wanker. I promise you, if this is some kind of joke-”
“No, I'm afraid it's not,” John interrupted his rant, finally catching up with the conversation. “He really does need that information to figure out which of the women could possibly have smothered Mr Rotherfield.”
“With their tits?!” Lestrade exclaimed disbelievingly. The immediate embarrassed silence following his shout told John that the DI was not alone on his end while phoning him. John sucked in his lips not to burst out laughing. He gleefully hoped Donovan was there giving Lestrade the stink eye this very moment. That woman was fierce.
John's suspicion was confirmed, as he heard Donovan in the background, “Is this for real?”
There was an odd tinny rustle as Lestrade apparently handed over the phone and Donovan's brisk voice sounded over the phone, “How is this serious police work?”
“Sherlock thinks Mr Rotherfield might have been smothered by breasts.” At the unimpressed silence on the other end, John elaborated, “I've actually read something on that a few years back in a forensic journal.”
“Yeah, I've heard about something like this, too,” Donovan said thoughtfully. John was surprised at her quick compliance.
“John,” and it was so odd hearing her use his first name, “Are you sure this is for real?”
“Yes,” John said with emphasis.
“It makes some sense, actually,” Donovan said with a sigh, “that's why Phillip couldn't find anything else on the body.”
John held back on his trained Sherlock-esque response to that fact. He didn't very much like Anderson either. “Except epithelials, oils and the like of both mistress and wife?” He asked innocently instead. Sherlock had gotten Molly's findings to that already.
“How do you know?” Donovan's voice was suspicious once more.
“Hazarded a guess,” John said quickly. He heard her sceptical 'uh-huh' on the other end. She was not buying it, but let it slide.
“So,” she said, all business once more, “the Freak needs the cup sizes?”
“Yes.”
“Band size as well?”
“Uhm,” John mulled it over. He didn't know, but better have more data than less. “Yes?” he said, but it sounded a little closer to a question than he'd planned.
“I'll ask them,” she said and John swore he could hear her directing a withering look at Lestrade for his cowardice. His muffled, “Good, Detective. Thank you,” sounded awkward as John was apparently handed over again.
“Really?” Lestrade asked again, confirming to make absolutely sure.
“Yes, really,” said John with a sympathetic sigh.
~*~
John at first didn't recognise what he was smelling when he took the stairs up to their flat after a day of boringly mundane work at the clinic, until he actually opened the door.
221B smelled like a tack room. The smell of leather was nice, but completely out of place and made John halt in his tracks. He could hear Sherlock bustling in the kitchen, interspersed with tapping of a computer keyboard, so he was home. John took a cautious step into the living room and looked around.
There was a big cardboard box eviscerated on the floor and everything that had once been presumably in said box was strewn all over the room. Oddly the packing peanuts lay in one orderly heap on the couch table, everything else was chaos. And why would Sherlock order the packing material, but throw the actual items around like that?
With a long-suffering sigh John hung up his jacket and had another look around. He could identify which items had come from the box, as they were new to him, but he could not identify what they were. Except one: It was a leather rose. Everything else was long strips of leather in varying colours, thickness and length to him, some braided in a way John had never seen leather been braided.
Something lay slung over the skull that looked like a belt, but wasn't. The image was like a punch to the stomach; Memory congealing uncomfortably. It had holes like a belt, but no clasp. Who made something like that?
Preparing to ignore the mess and just read the paper, he went over to his chair and stopped short. He sighed once to calm himself down, his hand clenching to a fist unconsciously, then relaxing. “Why's there … stuff all over the living room, Sherlock?” He wasn't really sure he wanted to know the answer, but of course he asked anyway.
“To which are you referring?” Came a good-natured question in response from the kitchen.
“Specifically, what's in my chair.” John picked the item up. It was a white strip of leather with a purple rubber ball in the middle.
“That's a silicon ball gag.”
John let the thing drop quickly as if it had burned him. It bounced once on the seat of his chair before falling to the floor, merrily bouncing around for a moment. Springy little fucker, John thought darkly. He looked back at the leather items around the room again, and now they actually made sense. They were obviously some leather implements for some BDSM practices, probably for whipping – or something. John wouldn't really call them whips, as they looked nothing like whips at all.
“Why is there S&M stuff in our living room?” he asked, trying hard to hold on to his patience.
“Because I ordered it from Germany,” Sherlock answered patiently, the unspoken 'Really, John, so obvious', making John's teeth clench.
“Why?!” John tried again, his annoyance giving way to anger. He was tired, he wanted a quiet night and all these things were making him profoundly uncomfortable. He wanted them gone as quickly as possible. There was a pull. Something. Something, and it was not right. And that made him even more uncomfortable. Almost afraid. The skull seemed to look at him from under that strange belt-not-belt thing. He swallowed, turning away, calmed himself down a little, and repeated his question, “Yeees, but why, Sherlock?”
Apparently they were having two completely different conversations here, because Sherlock answered good-naturedly, “It's really good quality, but affordable.” He looked up from what he was doing at the kitchen table and actually beamed at John, visibly proud.
John just stared at him. “I'm going out,” he said in a clipped tone, putting his jacket back on.
“Why?” Sherlock asked, having the audacity to look perplexed and a little hurt.
“Because you ordered stuff from Germany,” John shot back and closed the door to their flat firmly behind him.
~*~
The Volunteer was not John's usual pub, but it was literally just down the street and served good stout. Pricey, but good, and everything close to their postcode was pricey anyway. He looked at his pint of Imperial as if it held the answers to the universe. Or at least his own life.
That smell and those items had done something to him. He couldn't put his finger on it yet, but he had the feeling, that once he could, he was in for an emotional melt-down. It was not pleasant.
One thing he could identify and that he couldn't get out of his head anymore was that black leather strap, that looked like a belt, but wasn't. It terrified and intrigued him in equal measures. He had no idea where the intrigue came from, but he knew quite clearly why it terrified him: It made something creep up from the depth with slow congealing steps, memories that were just that usually: Just flashes of things in the past, but now they grew a multitude of arms and legs and more frighteningly emotions he thought he'd gotten over.
He used to be so afraid, for himself and his sister and mother and even father. And so helpless. The helplessness was the worst.
Theirs was a loving home until alcohol took hold. But even then, their parents loved them - until they didn't for a while. Then they did again. Until the next time, the next bottle, the next fight. It was confusing, so, so confusing and never safe.
That belt had had a clasp, John remembered. It had scourged deep just like their parent's embraces. It became the same very quickly. One exchangeable for the other on a whim. Never knowing which embrace was next; one of living, loving skin - or dead, shiny leather.
He'd thought he'd gotten over that, unlearned this fear and helplessness on the battle fields of operating rooms, gravelly sands and sun-bleached stones. But apparently not. Now it slowly filled him up, rising like a tide, slowly but with absolute surety that it would engulf him whole, that once the level rose over his nose, he would drown.
He reached to his half drunk pint to take another calming sip. He stopped with the glass halfway to his mouth. What the fuck am I doing? He thought and put the beer down quickly, shoving it further away when he felt his stomach coil in sudden nausea. He almost laughed, but knew it would come out all hysterical, so he kept it in not to frighten the other patrons.
He sat there for a moment, staring at the half full glass and made the conscious decision to not finish his beer and head home instead. He would not drown that particular sorrow in even more alcohol.
When he arrived back home, Sherlock was stretched out on the couch, his hands held together under his nose in his thinking pose. His eyes fluttered as John stepped into the room to hang up his jacket and then opened for a moment staring unseeingly ahead. Then he turned his head towards John and blinked once slowly.
“You are shaken by something,” Sherlock observed quietly, detachedly. “What is it?”
John snorted derisively. “Can't you deduce it?”
Sherlock shook his head and it was painfully obvious how much that grated on him. John felt a little vindictive. “Then it's better left that way, don't you think?” he whispered between clenched teeth and was astonished, when Sherlock didn't push for once.
After a moment of tense silence settling between them like a brick, Sherlock said a touch hesitantly but with absolute certainty, “Earlier, I did something to upset you.”
John didn't answer.
“I cleaned the flat and put everything away.” His voice was calm and soft, almost plaintive and John realised it was meant as an apology. He looked around. The living room was, if not completely tidy, at least orderly in its chaos and those damn leather straps and sticks and whatnot were nowhere to be seen, although their smell still lingered.
“Yeah, you did,” John said and only at Sherlock's flinch did he notice, that it was easy to misunderstand which question his answer belonged to. He softened his voice and smiled slightly in thanks, making his meaning absolutely clear, “I can see, you did.”
Sherlock's smile was positively beaming. John felt something around his stomach unclench slowly. With a little viciousness left he thought, that only three to four beers would have had the same effect. That he substituted alcohol with Sherlock was something John didn't want to think about.