Chapter Text
"Your hands are amazing. Magnificent. I adore them," Sherlock sighed happily.
"That's great," John said, huffing and puffing as he half-dragged his drugged up flatmate up the seventeen steps to 221B. "Really, I appreciate it. Now if you could just try and support your own weight a little bit more, that'd be fantastic."
"Fan-tas-tic..." Sherlock said dreamily. "You know what else is fantastic? Your arse. Really fan-tas-whatsit. It's so round and firm and, and. Just... really bloody great, your arse."
John's face was beet red. He fumbled with the key in the lock, one arm wrapped firmly around Sherlock's waist as the detective slumped over his shoulder. Eventually he managed to get them both inside, and awkwardly maneuvered Sherlock over to the couch.
"Don' wan couch," Sherlock slurred. "Bed."
"Oh for... alright then," John grumbled. Next time, he'd get Mycroft to pick Sherlock up from the dentist's. Or any other minor surgery. Really, anything that required Sherlock to be sedated. The aftereffects were... well, they were something, alright.
"You're my best friend," Sherlock declared as John hauled him across the living room. "The very best. You're like the Stradivarius of best friends."
Then again, John considered, it wasn't all bad.
"There you go," John said, lowering Sherlock down onto the bed. "Try and sleep it off, okay? I'll make you a nice cup of tea when you wake up."
"Shoes," Sherlock said, looking dazedly down at the offending items adorning his feet.
John heaved the sigh of the long-suffering and got down on one knee to untie Sherlock's shoelaces. Once he'd gotten Sherlock's shoes off, he positioned his friend's long, slender legs in a comfortable position and patted him awkwardly on the ankle.
"Sleep well, Sherlock."
"John..."
"Yes?"
"Have I ever told you that your eyes are my favourite colour in the whole world?"
John pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stave off an imminent headache. "What colour is that, then, Sherlock?"
Sherlock was quiet for a bit. When John opened his eyes, he discovered his flatmate was frowning in a way John desperately tried to convince himself he didn’t find adorable.
"I... guess I don't know how to describe it," Sherlock said, sounding put out. "But I know it's my favourite colour, because they’re your eyes. And you're my John. You're brave and loyal, and you fight with chip-and-pin machines."
"That was one time," John protested, before the rest of the statement settled in. It made him a bit weak in the knees.
"I... Sherlock. You're drugged. Go to sleep, okay? We'll talk about this later. Or not," he muttered as he quickly exited the room.
Right. Tea first.
He found himself mechanically going through the motions of making tea, his mind preoccupied with Sherlock's uncharacteristically spontaneous and complimentary utterances. Was it just the drugs talking? Or did Sherlock really think... those things? Christ, he'd complimented John's arse. If that meant what John thought it meant, then... then what? Then Sherlock Holmes was attracted to him? Maybe even wanted to have sex with him?
All of which begged the question: how did John feel about this? He tried to examine his feelings as dispassionately as possible, but his libido kept getting in the way, letting him know that it was absolutely, completely, one hundred percent on board with all this. In fact, his jeans were starting to feel rather snug.
As he drank his tea, he tried to look at the problem from all angles. First and foremost in his mind was the fact that he didn’t want to lose his best friend. Sex would change things, and there was a significant potential for disaster. Could be dangerous, a voice in the back of his mind whispered, and really, he was fooling no-one, was he? The man he had been lusting after for months-- the man who, in his honest moments, he could admit he was already more than half in love with-- had more or less confessed his affection for John (that whole thing about his eyes? That had to be about more than just physical attraction, surely). There was no way John was going to say no.
That was, if Sherlock remembered any of this when he woke up.