Work Text:
As it turns out, all previously discussed types of models (model with dummy variables, one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA, etc.) are all, in a way, exactly the same. They can all be represented by making a system of matrices including values for y, β, ε, and X, in the following way:
y = Xβ + ε
where y is an matrix of size n x 1, β is a matrix of size (k+1) x 1 and consists of the numbers multiplied to the X’s, ε is a matrix of the errors of size n x 1, and X is of size n x (k+1) (where n is the total number of observations and k is the number of variables).
Of particular interest to us is the X matrix, also called “the model matrix” or “the design matrix” because it determines what kind of model the equation describes. Every type of linear model can fit into this structure, making this a very flexible approach for programs requiring any variety of linear modeling. However, it is important to watch for various problems that may arise over the course of using this method. For instance, in a one-way ANOVA, it turns out that simply plugging the model into the matrix format results in a very big problem! If one derives b, an estimator for β, it happens that one of the requirements for the matrix operations along the way (not described here to save time) is that X has to be invertible—that is, it must have full rank. This means all of the rows/columns must be linearly independent of each other—you can’t use a combination of rows/columns to describe any other row/column. In this case, X actually isn’t invertible, because it isn’t of full rank. It has too many parameters. One way to fix this is to delete one column, since it can be described in terms of other columns, and accommodate for this in the design matrix.
Therefore, in general as long as one is careful to watch out for problems like these, using matrices to create a general form for the linear model results in a highly flexible method of modeling.
***
Irene Adler is alive.
John is surprised. John, obviously, was surprised when it wasn’t Mycroft standing in the abandoned power station. He was more surprised when Irene started making assertions and assumptions about John’s relationship with Sherlock. Well: not surprised, because that was the sort of thing that everybody who saw them did, so naturally Irene would, too. What had surprised John at the time was the correctness of Irene’s assertions and assumptions.
It has been, by John’s reckoning, about half a year since the contents of these and other such assumptions had become a Problem. That is chiefly because it has been about half a year since he’d had a bomb strapped onto him and subsequently stripped off of him. Mostly it was the stripping that was the Problem. It was that that had caused the dreams (and the nightmares) and subsequently the Thoughts, which made avoiding staring a problem and oh, right, the jealousy, which John had never thought would be a problem, at least not with Sherlock, who is married to his Work, but then there was Irene, and oh, there it was.
Because the fact of the matter is this: John feels something for Sherlock. He can’t say yet whether he’d squirm and wince and shuffle off in the imaginary (at this point: highly imaginary) universe where they’d have sex, but if his dreams and Thoughts are any indication, the answer to that is a pretty resounding no.
Sherlock, of course, is oblivious. Naturally: like any loyal spouse, he thinks only about his Work, never straying, and that is perhaps why it never occurred to him that there is some deeper reason John keeps accidentally staring at him, or why John’s fingers twitch toward Sherlock when his pacing leads him past John’s chair. John continuing to date is probably another factor confusing Sherlock from considering John thought of him as anything other than “irritating but brilliant flatmate.” John doesn’t date specifically to throw Sherlock off—although Sherlock not knowing was probably loads easier than Sherlock knowing about John’s thoughts and feelings of late and being able to use that knowledge—no, nothing quite so sinister. It was as simple as the fact that Sherlock was so devoted to his Work. (For god’s sakes, he built a palace for her.) He is and he has been for a very long time, and that is a marriage that John is not willing to break up.
The Woman, however, is not quite so considerate.
What’s more, Sherlock keeps looking, keeps stumbling, keeps stuttering, keeps…well. If he is going to start being unfaithful to his Work, John Watson will not stand for Sherlock doing so not knowing that he was the first in line for this particular opportunity.
The Problem, naturally, extends to making this fact clear.
Irene obviously acknowledges it: she is perceptive. She sees. When John says, “We’re not a couple,” what others hear is, “I don’t like having my sexuality questioned.” What Irene hears is, “We’re not a couple, dammit, because I think I’d know if we were.” Her subsequent assertion to that effect, though: that surprised John. Because there it was: Sherlock was straying, teetering, and to anyone else’s eyes it would be for Irene, but Irene saw and Irene knew and Irene would, John hoped, John prayed, back down, if it came to it (although she didn’t seem the backing-down sort, did she?) and Irene would acknowledge that John had wanted Sherlock long before she did.
It is this that sticks on John’s mind after tea and biscuits with an only slightly rattled Mrs. Hudson and a very protective Sherlock. Sherlock knows Irene is alive: Sherlock was there. God: had he heard the same conversation that John had? No, knowing Sherlock, he had gathered a thousand other details and none of them the important ones, because the important ones were about Feelings. If Sherlock hadn’t sniffed them out so far, he wouldn’t be finding them now. If he knows, if he did hear the important details woven into their words and faces, then he also would have picked up on the thousand other clues preceding them: on the way home after Moriarty left the pool, John clung to Sherlock. Sherlock assumed that John clung to him because his legs were not quite operational. Sherlock assumed correctly in that regard, but incorrectly with respect to why. Quivering, weak legs: shock, wasn’t it? Breathlessness. He’d just been seconds away from being a human bomb, and then a minute later spent a few more seconds being almost blown up by the coat that Sherlock had stripped from him and thrown to the ground. But that wasn’t it—that wasn’t all of it. John’s legs were not quite operational because of Sherlock, stupid Sherlock, Sherlock with fingers deftly loosening bomb-covered vestments—Sherlock, who had looked to be in piercing pain on John’s account—Sherlock, the closest friend John had ever had. In those moments all of John’s blood and all of John’s energy had surged into his chest, to accommodate the feeling of caring for one person, in that moment, more than he cared for any other person. It stayed there and it pooled there, and it wasn’t until the next morning that it redistributed itself more evenly in his body, and he could walk again. Weak in the knees: that was a way of saying it.
Of course, after that it was impossible not to think about it, and John was assaulted with dreams about things at the pool going differently: Moriarty didn’t return, and Sherlock kept peeling off clothes, checking for more bombs. At the end John always made a joke about cavity searches, and he always woke up after Sherlock wrinkled his nose in offense. Or: Moriarty returned, but after he left again Sherlock pinned John to the wall and they ducked into one of the changing stalls and Sherlock would kiss John fiercely, but John always woke up when the police arrived. Sometimes, the bomb went off, and John shoved himself and Sherlock into the pool. Sometimes, they resurfaced and climbed out into the rubble and clung to one another for warmth; sometimes, as the deep vibrations of the explosion rattled their eardrums beneath the water, they grabbed one another and pressed their lips together. Sometimes, they made it through the kiss. Sometimes, they didn’t, and John woke up shaking. He would stumble down the stairs to ensure Sherlock was still alive, which was to say, to get a sip of water and happen to glimpse Sherlock along the way.
If Sherlock picked up on what John and Irene were saying, he would have seen John staring. He would have seen the way John looked at water. If Sherlock had the slightest inclination to so much as consider the idea of John having Feelings about him, then it probably would have occurred to him to look further into why John closed his eyes when he drank water—not tea, not beer, only when he drank water. Maybe Sherlock would have noticed him tilting his head back.
If Sherlock had noticed the slightest thing about John’s inclinations since being almost killed by Moriarty had brought said inclinations to the conscious part of his brain, he probably would have noticed that John’s eyes when they looked at Sherlock were very different from when they looked at a naked Irene, and not, John imagined, in an expected way. If Sherlock had noticed, he probably would have said something. He probably would have mocked John a little, and they’d have laughed it off, and John could stop carrying it around, this Problem, and move on with being friends with Sherlock.
But Irene is alive, and John thinks he has a solution.
Sherlock, by John’s estimate, deletes things reasonably frequently: knowing Sherlock, he probably learns something new for the simple purpose of deleting it, so that he can remain in top form. Actually, that’s probably why he watches crap telly with John. John has witnessed him, once, attempt to delete a detective show as they watched it. Every ten or so minutes, Sherlock would close his eyes for a while, deleting, and then watch for a few minutes and deduce the culprit from only the small window of the program he could remember.
“Amazing,” John had said—mostly about the deleting, but of course Sherlock didn’t realize that.
“Trivial,” said Sherlock.
For all John can tell, Sherlock does this sort of thing all the time. He has no reservations about deleting what he deems is inconvenient and clutters up his brain.
Irene is alive and John has resolved to do some deleting of his own.
It is a problem: a big problem, but a solvable one. John wants, more than anything, for Sherlock to know—well—to know. But too many things are tripping over one another: John can’t take an incorrect step because it will jeopardize their friendship. John can’t tell what a correct step would be, because Sherlock is a strange creature, and Sherlock overlooks obvious things like John’s staring. John is completely incapable of consulting anyone else on this matter, because either they are competition (they aren’t, they aren’t, he knows, but it’s difficult to avoid the twinge) or they wouldn’t be of any help at all on the matter anyway.
Irene is competition, but Irene also knows.
It is time for John to delete—as it were, but not in Sherlock’s way, of course—a few of his convictions about Irene.
This is why John is picking up his mobile, peeking over his shoulder at Sherlock, who by all accounts appears to be testing whether listening to modern violinists very loudly on his headphones or concocting possibly explosive materials in the kitchen of 221B will cause him to go deaf first, and dialing a number he’d glimpsed on Sherlock’s mobile yesterday when Sherlock had invited him to, by all means, try to change the rather obscene sound that accompanied any text messages he received from Irene. (He couldn’t, of course. Whether this was Irene’s doing or Sherlock’s, John didn’t particularly care to know.) It was her new mobile, of course—not the one she had given Sherlock, which he had hidden away somewhere-or-another.
“Irene Adler?” he mutters into the phone. He ought to have stepped outside, but—that certainly would have gathered more attention from Sherlock, who, for all John knows at this point, actually does follow him around every time he goes out.
“John,” she purrs into the phone knowingly. “This is a surprise. I’d ask whether I owe the occasion to business or to pleasure, but...”
John clears his throat. “Both.” He takes in a breath. “But not in the way you’re thinking.”
“I really doubt I’m thinking what you assume I’m thinking. This is to do with Sherlock, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” John breathes. “Look. Uh.” Now is not the time, of course, to acknowledge the moment of understanding they’d had in the abandoned building several days back. Irene understands. She’ll get it. “I need help figuring out how to get Sherlock’s…attention.” He glances over his shoulder. The tinny sound of music still drifts from Sherlock’s headphones, and he is very intently keeping time with one hand whilst lifting a dropper of something pale green in the other. “You’ve obviously managed to, so…”
“How wise of you to consult a professional,” he can hear her smile. “And may I say, Captain Watson, what a power play.”
“I’m not playing,” John grits out.
“Of course not, and I’m glad to see you admit I was correct. As for your question,” she drifts into thoughtfulness, the same distant tone that Sherlock adopts as he weighs theories. John is certain he hears a chuckle. “I may have a few ideas. Check your email in thirty minutes.” The untold part of this, John thinks, is Make sure Sherlock isn’t using your laptop in half an hour when I send this, although Irene cannot possibly know about Sherlock’s inclination to snatch John’s laptop from him at the most inconvenient of times. (Then again, the two of them are rather similar: perhaps she does the same thing to—who was that lovely woman?—Kate.)
“Right,” John says.
“Just to be clear,” Irene adds, “this is a matter of professional pride. I won’t intentionally suggest anything that would,” she pauses, in a way that reminds John very much of Mycroft, “stress your relationship. However, this is a matter of professional pride, my dear John, so I’m afraid standard rates apply. One hour.”
Oh, god. There is absolutely no bloody way John can afford this, and definitely not without somebody (probably not Sherlock, who John guesses doesn’t so much as glance at his credit card statements, but almost definitely Mycroft) noticing when he inevitably has to use Sherlock’s account because John’s own personal funds have been a little short with his continual insistence that he pay half the rent coupled with his dwindling availability at work (work, not Work).
“Of course, we could arrange alternative means of payment.”
John is afraid to ask what that means—particularly since the answer will be coming from Irene Adler.
“Nothing terribly untoward, of course. But I would very much like to know whether my advice ends in success on your part.”
“I’m not writing about it in my blog, if that’s what you’re asking.” John doubts that’s what she’s asking, but there’s no harm in being a bit optimistic.
“No,” she chuckles. “John, as we’ve discussed, Sherlock is an exception to my preferences—much as he is to yours.”
John gulps down nervousness building in his throat. Maybe he should just deal with Mycroft and—no, because Mycroft will hold it over Sherlock, somehow, and while John can accept making his own life difficult, he most definitely cannot accept any suffering on Sherlock’s part due to however Mycroft would twist the situation in describing it to his brother.
“I’d like proof: proof that you used my advice, and proof that it worked.”
“Proof, of course, being…”
“It will be just as safe as everything else on that phone.”
“The one you’ve got now or the one Sherlock’s put god knows where?”
“Send it to that one—I’ll be by to retrieve it once a few things are…cleared up.”
“Right, you know he’ll figure out…”
“He won’t, but even if he could, the pictures will hardly be news to him, will they?”
“You said nothing terribly untoward.”
“I take it you haven’t seen the other photos on my phone.”
“And if your advice doesn’t work?”
“Then I suppose there will be nothing to photograph.” At least she isn’t demanding payment all the same.
“Fine.” If it comes to it—if it works—he’ll have to tell Sherlock what he’s doing when he takes out his mobile and snaps a photo of them. He could make something up, but John is inclined to believe that Sherlock is eventually going to get into that phone. When he does, he’ll see the photos, if they’re there—then he can delete them. Great: extra motivation for Sherlock to find some way to figure out Irene’s password.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Irene says.
John hangs up, takes a few deep breaths to calm himself down, and strides over to his laptop. Sherlock, thank god, is still working.
“Where are you off to?” he asks, clearly speaking over his music based on the volume of his voice and the fact that the faint sounds of a violin emanate from the earpieces. He must be quite confident he’ll be able to read John’s lips.
“My room,” John says, and nods towards Sherlock’s chemistry equipment. “I figure I’ll be safer there when the kitchen explodes.”
“Technically, the internal structure of the flat…” Sherlock starts, but John has already left.
Sherlock squeezes two drops of liquid onto the blood sample he’s borrowing (“borrowing”) from St. Bart’s. Based on John’s defensive stance and the determined downward quirk of his eyebrow, Sherlock supposes he is preparing to log onto one of his internet dating sites to look for another dull individual to replace the boring teacher. He had just attempted to avoid Sherlock looking over his shoulder and pointing out the errors in his profile and the problems with each candidate by using humor to circumnavigate the question and retreating to his room. Very well: Sherlock has better things to do than save John the time and effort of dating countless unsuitable partners. John will only insist on doing so anyway.
“Okay,” John nods to himself as, exactly thirty minutes after the end of his conversation with Irene, an email arrives. The moment of truth, he thinks, almost wincing at the thought of what Irene’s advice might be. He should have insisted that it be the sort of thing that he would be comfortable doing. She drugs her friends and hits them with riding crops. John is definitely not comfortable with—well. The drugging bit, anyway, to be sure, and he’s quite confident that “gently and randomly slap with riding crop” is not on the “How to Seduce Sherlock” list. With one more deep breath, you had to do this, you had to do this, you had to ask for advice, there was no other way to solve this, John opens the email.
1. Touch. But careful: make it unusual. Do you have many opportunities with his toes? He will find that interesting.
2. Confidence. Not just in the usual stupid way that men try to do things they’re clearly incapable of. Exert yourself. Possibly actually push him. Shyness and social niceties are decidedly “dull.”
3. Unusually colored or patterned pants. Let him glimpse them [see 2]. I recommend red: blood and sex.
Well done in stepping up, Dr. Watson. I will keep playing—as I must—but you, as we both know, will win.
Be flexible in finding opportunities to employ these. Oh: and don’t forget your payment.
Plugs and lashes xoxo
Irene Adler
John can’t hold a slight smile back as he deletes the email (because Sherlock could break into his account, and would probably be due for it sometime in the next couple days anyway), empties it from the trash, and deletes that particular call from his mobile.
This, he can manage. And if Irene really does want those photos as much as she seems to, it is advice that will work.
John had never thought he would think it, but: thank god for the consulting dominatrix.
Sherlock jerks his feet back as John reaches out to grab them. “What are you doing?”
“Foot massage,” John says from the chair he’s pulled up beside the sofa where Sherlock is reclining. “Don’t worry, I won’t pinch any nerves.”
“Why?”
John shrugs, tries not to blush. “Don’t tell me your feet don’t hurt, running around all day in those posh shoes. I think we walked, ran, and tiptoed about eight miles today.”
“Hm,” Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Is this an apology?”
“What?”
“For throwing away my sediment samples.”
“You mean the dirt that was piled on the table?”
Sherlock sighs and rolls his eyes. “Yes, John.” He stretches his feet back out tentatively. “Fine, so clearly not an apology. Then why?”
Oh, just trying to seduce you using Irene Adler’s advice, is all, John thinks. He says, “Oh, right, what was I thinking? I’ve never expressed concern about your health before.”
Sherlock levels an analytical stare at John. “But why this, why now?” he asks, probably half to himself.
“Was just reading up about some of the finer medical aspects of massage,” John lies. “It’s been on my mind and I’d like to brush up.” He glances back toward Sherlock’s feet. “May I?”
“Whatever trips your trigger,” Sherlock says, apparently trying the phrase experimentally as he navigates his mouth around words that taste strange. John flushes. Sherlock gives him a quizzical look before resuming whatever it is he was doing before—probably composing, since his fingers are twitching and his head bobs slightly. John opts to err on the safe side and assume the quiet noise that comes from Sherlock’s throat as John wraps his hands around Sherlock’s left foot is a part of his composition.
“John, you had no right to shoot at him before I was done talking to him.”
“You weren’t talking to him,” John says—or shouts, maybe. “You were dancing around the alleyway while he waved a gun and screamed like a madman.”
“All the same,” Sherlock says, the passive phrase so aggressive on his tongue that it seems to push him even closer into John’s personal space than he already is. “Which of us is the detective? Preventing me from gathering evidence is decidedly unhelpful,” he hisses. “Perhaps I ought to go without you on occasions like these.”
Sherlock is obviously expecting John to huff off and spend the rest of the evening getting over his stupidity and waiting for everything to return to normal, John thinks—which is, maybe, a stupid assumption on Sherlock’s part. “Now you listen here, you stubborn arse,” John hisses back through grated teeth, and pushes himself farther into Sherlock’s space, his wide stance and abundantly obviously advantageous center of gravity making up for his shorter stature as he presses forward. “It is not, in fact, my job to do whatever you bloody tell me to like some kind of sodding servant.” Sherlock, for once, appears to be wordless, so John continues, “Yeah, I help you get evidence and stake out alleys and whatever else you ask me to, but do you know why I go with you every time I know you’re doing something potentially dangerous, Sherlock?”
“Because you like danger,” Sherlock says, but he seems, for once, unsure. “Almost as much as I like serial killers.”
John’s head lists to the right slightly, as if the particularly explosive words he is holding in his mouth weigh it down on one side. He balls his fists. “Wrong,” he rumbles. “You’re wrong. There’s one thing I like more than danger, Sherlock.”
Sherlock seems baffled. “That really doesn’t preclude…”
“It’s you being fucking alive, Sherlock,” John is so close to Sherlock and so loud that Sherlock takes a step back, and another, until John has cornered him against the wall. “So whether it inconveniences you or not,” John jabs at him with one finger, “I am bloody mowing down every arsehole who tries to take you away from…” he trails off, glances to one side, and finishes weakly with, “the world.”
“I see,” Sherlock mouths. John huffs off to his room.
This is the tricky one.
Mostly because John doesn’t typically put much thought into his pants, and also generally manages to avoid them being seen, making arranging accidental glimpses difficult.
He opts for red, under Irene’s recommendation—and anyway, it isn’t as if any of the other options are more appealing. Sherlock would snicker and snort at polka dots or argyle or purple or yellow (and, most especially, at an atrocious combination of all four that John stumbled across in his quest for suitable pants). At least Sherlock might pause before laughing at red.
This suggestion confuses John significantly more than the others. Touch: definitely. Confidence: makes sense. But then, he didn’t ask Irene for obvious advice that he could have come up with by himself. Clearly, this was some sort of secret that she had, in her own way, deduced about Sherlock. He had remembered the particular lime-green underwear Moriarty wore when he showed up as “Jim from IT.” Perhaps Sherlock is simply a fan of strangely colored pants. Of course, Irene can’t have known about Moriarty’s pants: so maybe not.
Maybe it’s like the touching: something just odd enough to catch Sherlock’s interest. Sherlock frequently obsesses over things that catch his interest. Therefore, perhaps John is simply making himself a readily available item of interest and, therefore, obsession.
He wriggles into the pants and stands in front of the bathroom mirror. They really aren’t bad—his skin is far enough from pink that the red compliments its color, rather than competing with it. Maybe that was why Irene had advised red.
“Are you quite finished?” Sherlock raps impatiently at the door.
“You just showered,” John says. He’d had to sit around and wait to take his own shower for fifteen minutes while Sherlock did whatever Sherlock does in the shower that always takes so bloody long. He probably actually cleans behind his ears and under his fingernails and thoroughly scrubs the skin over every segment of his spine. “What could you possibly need?” John reaches for his trousers, but—well. Maybe this is his opportunity. Irene did say be flexible.
“Towel,” Sherlock says. “Large one.”
John takes a calming breath. Confidence, he reminds himself. He swings the door open, as he does so, asks, “What the hell did you spill this time?”
Sherlock’s throat makes an odd gurgling noise.
Maybe a bit too much, Watson, John thinks to himself, but he holds his ground. He’s got the most important bits covered—Sherlock can deal with seeing him in his pants.
“You bought those recently,” Sherlock finally notes, his voice wavering with the hot, humid air of a recently-showered-in bathroom.
“Yeah,” John says.
“All your other pants are white or grey, and are in perfectly suitable condition. You don’t replace your clothing unless absolutely necessary—”
“—for instance, when you burn it for experiments—” John feels the need to cut in.
“—therefore this is for someone else’s benefit. But you’ve never bought interesting pants to wear for your past girlfriends, and I daresay that in the time since you marched off to check your dating sites last week, you haven’t found a new one, as we’ve been quite busy.”
“I haven’t checked that dating site since—” John starts, and he snaps his mouth shut at just about the same time as Sherlock says,
“Oh.”
John opens his mouth, and then closes it.
“This isn’t your own idea. You got advice,” Sherlock finally says, apparently content, as usual, to completely skip over the Feelings. John’s heart gets stuck in his throat and his stomach is far removed from any sort of usual, non-knotted configuration, and he generally feels not very well at all. “But who…” Sherlock chews his lip for a moment—something John has only seen Sherlock do while working out something very difficult, always in private. He narrows his eyes at John.
“Okay, yes,” John sighs, “I got advice on how to…to get your attention. All right? But I can see you’re not interested so I won’t bother you about it.” In addition to his heart being in his throat and his stomach being in knots, John’s knees are weak for entirely different reasons from the last memorable time it had happened, and his ears are full of his pounding pulse and this is very much the not fun type of stress. The best he can hope for is Sherlock quickly moving on and things getting back to how they were.
“What about my body language conveys not interested, John?”
“Interested in the way I mean, not in the oh, how unusual way. You know, er…”
“Sexually,” Sherlock supplies. “Or romantically, perhaps. You’re a traditional man, so: likely both. I repeat my question.”
John chances a look down at the pyjama pants Sherlock his wearing with his dressing gown. “What do you—I mean—you’re not—”
“Of course I’m not erect, John,” Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Not everyone goes from nothing to ninety degrees in less than twenty seconds with minimal provocation.” He glances down at John, who glances down at himself. Apparently—John’s ears go red—that comment was directed at him. “I meant my other body language. Obviously.”
John can’t decide whether he wants to giggle maniacally at his luck or perhaps crouch in the corner and wait for it to end and things to make sense again. “How about you take me through it?”
“One: I haven’t left. Two: I have moved two inches closer to you since you opened the door. Three: Despite my rather intense need for a towel to—well—we will probably need a new table by this point—I have instead been standing here and gawking at you for far longer than strictly necessary. Note the general lack of blinking and slightly open resting state of my mouth, not to mention placement of my weight on the balls of my feet. Four: I haven’t left.”
“You said that last one twice.”
“It’s very important.” Sherlock glances over John again, silent for a moment: perhaps remembering something, perhaps striving to incorporate this, horny-John-in-red-pants, in with the rest of the John folder, John-who-gripes-about-experiments, John-who-makes-Sherlock-eat, John-who’s-started-giving-foot-massages, John-who-goes-cold-and-kills, John-who-protects-Sherlock. “Of course, what you’re wondering is why that particular suggestion—the brightly colored pants—was enough to catch my attention.”
“Actually, yeah.”
“Perhaps I can tell you, if you can tell me who suggested it.”
“I imagine I’ll have to either way,” John exhales and tentatively takes half a step toward Sherlock. “Here’s a hint: I don’t have enough money so I,” he winces, “agreed to pay in pictures.”
“Interesting,” says Sherlock, stepping closer, now most decidedly in John’s personal space, and then some. “You phoned up the one person you’re certain is interested in some sort of relations with me to ask for advice on how to seduce me?”
“That’s exactly what I did,” John admits.
Sherlock leans his head down to speak into John’s ear. “I believe that some people would refer to such a move as,” his hand slides down John’s side, sweeps over the pants, and cups the front, “ballsy.” John’s breath hitches, and Sherlock pulls back slightly, his eyes bright. “I’ve an idea.”
John can only raise his eyebrows.
Sherlock’s idea, as it turns out, consists of sending Irene a series of photos in which John blocked almost the entirety of any part of Sherlock Irene would be interested in seeing. (“I guess that makes me a cockblocker in two ways,” John had noted with a smirk, much to Sherlock’s chagrin.) The plan, of course, is to get into Irene’s mobile and delete the photos before she gets them anyway—and Sherlock has gotten to devising a number of approaches—but it was an entertaining safety measure.
And, of course, after that they forget about Irene. They don’t do half of what the photos suggest—not just now, anyway—and that’s fine. John is pleased to confirm that touching and rubbing and kissing and devouring Sherlock are every bit as agreeable as he had hoped they would be. John tells Sherlock about his pool dreams. Sherlock suggests that kissing under the shower is a reasonable substitute; John agrees. In time and over the next few weeks, John dreams of the pool and that the only way to save Sherlock from drowning after they jump in to avoid the worst of the explosion is not to give him mouth-to-mouth, but to give him mouth-to-cock. Sherlock, upon hearing about this, agrees that the shower is a suitable substitute for this as well. He insists on practicing on John, just in case John ever dreams that he is the one drowning, so that he can be confident Sherlock could save him in such a scenario.
They talk, betwixt all this, about Feelings, because John will be damned if Sherlock gets away with fucking him without knowing the exact extent to which John means everything he ever said about keeping Sherlock safe, and everything he didn’t say about keeping Sherlock his, his, his.
“Such jealousy,” Sherlock says, tracing figure eights on John’s back as John explains it.
“You made it your goal to personally destroy each and every one of my relationships since I moved in,” John retorts.
Sherlock keeps tracing. It is what he does when they talked about such things, John has found: they lie in bed, and John lies on his side except when he cranes his neck to see Sherlock’s expression, and Sherlock traces figure eights on John’s back or his belly. John imagines Sherlock has to make a concerted effort to keep his brain on track, to focus on and force himself through the fact that they are discussing matters of the heart aloud. It makes John squirm, too, sometimes, mostly for fear he’ll misstep: but it has to be done. And so he makes his intentions clear, and Sherlock traces, and traces, and traces. “They weren’t worthy of you, John,” he finally answers.
“What, and you are?” John elbows Sherlock in the ribs. Sherlock’s eyes crinkle as he smiles, and he traces, and traces, and traces: figure eights on John’s back.
Except John lies on his side when they talk about things like the pool and jealousy, so Sherlock never traces figure eights.
Instead, Sherlock traces: Infinity, infinity, infinity.
“Please don’t feel obliged to tell me that was remarkable or amazing,” Sherlock says to Irene, words still falling from his mouth almost too quickly to understand as he winds down from a deduction made at lightning speed. “John’s expressed that thought in every variant available to the English language.”
Irene’s eyes flicker through several stages: processing, amusement, realization, smugness, flirtatiousness, confidence. “I would have you right here, on this desk, until you begged for mercy twice,” she challenges.
Sherlock stares into her, looming, for several long seconds. John shifts slightly in his seat, glancing between them. “As I said,” Sherlock finally answers. “Every variant available to the English language.”