One word prompt, blanket, please?
He’s not as asleep as John thinks he is, but it’s nice like this, Sherlock thinks. To just listen for a while: to just exist in the quiet. The pages of John’s book turn more slowly; the sound of his mug setting onto the table becomes quieter. Sherlock knows that John is aware of him, even if he’s paying attention to something else, and it’s a hot, thick comfort to know what being taken care of feels like.
After a while Sherlock hears him get up, put the book down, take his cup of tea into the kitchen and set it in the sink. He hears the doors to the flat close, and then lock; he hears the lights click off as the orange-glow behind his eyelids switches to darkness.
“Sherlock,” John whispers.
Sherlock doesn’t answer. Once, before, John would’ve just left him there. Maybe put a blanket over him, but ultimately left him there. He wonders what John will do now.
Now that everything’s different.
“Sherlock,” John whispers again. “Sherlock?”
There’s a pause, a long pause, and then soft noise: heavy fabric moving against itself. The blanket being tugged off the back of John’s chair. Sherlock’s heart begins to sink. He doesn’t want the blanket treatment. He wants to be tugged to bed. He wants it to be intimate. He wants to be wanted.
He shouldn’t expect things he can’t ask for, though. That’s not fair. It’s not fair to him, and it’s not fair to John, and he knows better.
“Sherlock,” John says again, surprising him, and then his hand is on Sherlock’s shoulder, shaking lightly. “Wake up, love.”
It is different. But the blanket–?
He blinks himself awake, and peers up at John, who smiles down at him in the dark. “Let’s go to bed,” John says. “Here, sit up.”
Sherlock does as he’s told, and the blanket wraps around Sherlock’s shoulders, trapping warmth close to his body. He hadn’t realised he was cold before. “There, that’s better, isn’t it?” John says. “Take it with you. Let’s get you to bed so we can warm up.”
“I’m sorry,” Sherlock says, before he loses his nerve, his voice thick as though he really had been sleeping. He catches John’s hand. “John, I’m sorry.”
Sherlock blinks, and swallows, and tucks his neck deeper into the blanket. “I wanted you to do this, and I didn’t know how to ask.”
John huffs a laugh, but his hand on Sherlock’s face is tender when he reaches out. “I know, Sherlock,” he says. “Don’t hold it against me if I get it wrong sometimes?”
Sherlock’s head is shaking before John’s even finished. “I would never. I could never.”
“Then it’s all right. You can ask when you figure it out, all right? And we’ll change it.” His thumb strokes over Sherlock’s cheek. “I’ll do what I can for now, and I’ll change the rest as we go, yeah?”
Sherlock’s chest is so full of love it hurts, but it’s a good hurt: it’s a warm hurt, a solid hurt. Like a good bruise from something that mattered, hot and definite. “Yeah.” he manages finally. “Yeah, all right.”
“Come on then. Bring the blanket–yeah, just shuffle on, there you go. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
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