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The first time Sherlock spots the red pants it’s purely by accident. John is rushing about the flat, late for something insignificant Sherlock genuinely doesn’t care about, and his fly is undone. Sherlock pays no mind to it at first – dull – but then a flash of red catches his eye and he looks up from his laptop screen, interest piqued.
It can’t be. It would go against everything he has worked out about John so far, about who John is, but before he can make sure it wasn’t merely a trick of the light or some such he is unfortunately thwarted by Mrs. Hudson’s insistence on constantly meddling in their business.
“Oh dear, John, your zipper is down. Best pull that up before your birdie flies away,” she says, and John blushes and zips up quickly.
Damn.
***
Of course he has to know for sure now, so after John has left for the surgery the next morning Sherlock goes through their hamper and yes, sure enough, there they are.
Y-fronts, 100% cotton, with a white trim. They are for all intents and purpose quite plain in make, pragmatic rather than fanciful, but the colour. Red, bright red, the colour of fire trucks and stop signs. Sherlock has no particular feelings about the shade, as having a favourite colour is quite useless, he’s always found, one colour genuinely no better than the other and their value fully depending on the context the colour is to be found in, but to find this shade of red here is equal parts amazing and mystifying. John has no bright, warm colours in his wardrobe, sticks to his favoured blues, greys, soft muted tones, and Sherlock can’t for the life of him think of a reason why John would wear these other than utter whimsy and he’s not sure if that should bother him. John is always so practical, after all.
His imagination gets the better of him and he pictures John in just those pants, the way the red cotton would envelop his genitals. He can’t deny his attraction to John, emotional and intellectual at all times, worryingly sexual on occasion, usually in the early mornings when he burns with a desire to touch he can’t quite place and certainly doesn’t know how to voice. While he had, in fact, experimented a bit when he was much younger and was kept busy less often by puzzling murder-suicides, John inspires in him a wholly new kind of mindless, nearly blind longing to lay his hands, his mouth, basically everything he has that he might feasibly lay upon a person, onto him.
It’s somewhat bewildering to Sherlock, how deeply he wants to be with John, and finding out he wears these impossibly silly kinds of underwear isn’t very helpful at all. His mind’s eye obligingly offers him images of John growing hard within the soft, red fabric and he becomes so overwhelmingly aroused by just the idea alone that he is forced to masturbate right there, sitting on his knees on their bathroom rug, clutching John’s pants tightly in his hand.
***
He has to see John in them. There’s no other way, really, he simply has to. In order to accomplish this he first has to figure out when John might be wearing them, and that one is about as straightforward as it comes. John, delightful, dependable, determinate John, goes through cycles with his clothes. Sherlock figured that one out months ago, not so long after John moved in and he was still a wonderful new source of habits to deduce and catalogue. His trousers, his jumpers, even his socks, all the parts of his clothing Sherlock gets to see he wears on something of a schedule, circulating them, never wearing anything more than two days in a row and never more than once a week. The weather is a factor, of course, but that one too is not so difficult to predict and as such on a day to day basis Sherlock can usually make a fairly educated deduction as to what John will come downstairs wearing that morning. He can only assume John has the same habit about choosing his underwear, but that is honestly a simple matter of checking the hamper every morning after John leaves to see what he had worn the day before.
Of course Sherlock is right. After exactly one month of observation he’s figured out John wears the red pants generally on Mondays, never two days in a row, and for some reason only with jeans over them. Despite this stunning conclusion it’s not the most productive couple of weeks of his life. After two weeks he’s already got his hypothesis more or less ready, but needs just a few more Mondays to back it up. Still, he’s bombarded with desires, feelings, a sudden fondness for anything crimson, and particularly on those Mondays (which he has come to almost affectionately dub Red Pants Mondays) finds himself inexplicably drawn to, well, John’s crotch, to put it bluntly. Denim-clad, coarse blue fabric keeping from Sherlock what he knows to be John’s surely delectable privates covered neatly in John’s delectable underwear.
In short, he spends a lot of time holed up in his bedroom that month. John only jokes about it once, but Sherlock gives him such a look of startled put-upon horror when he does John almost immediately connects the hideously awkward dots and doesn’t talk to him for the remainder of the day.
So, yes. His study has proven successful, but getting John out of his trousers so Sherlock might behold the red pants in all their intended glory, is a trickier puzzle to solve. Sherlock spends a brief moment listing ways to trick him out of them, but he’s never been a very patient man so decides to skip over more delicate methods and just goes straight to heavy handed.
“Sherlock? Where the hell are my trousers?”
John walks into the kitchen, wearing his stupidly short bathrobe over a simple white t-shirt and, according to Sherlock’s calculations at least, the red pants. He’s got socks on too, dark blue ones, so he had indeed been looking for a pair of jeans to wear. Pity all his trousers are currently stashed under Sherlock’s bed though, isn’t it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He pushes back from his microscope, sets aside his Moleskine. His notes on the deterioration of liver tissue after being exposed to amino acids can most certainly wait.
“Sherlock. All of my trousers are gone. My shelf is empty. What did you do with them?”
“I did nothing with them. Why would I steal your trousers?”
“Bloody good question, that. So what is your suggestion, then? A thief snuck into my bedroom and nicked every last single pair of trousers I own? Even my bloody pyjama bottoms are gone!”
“Perhaps we should call Lestrade, tell him there’s a trouser thief active in Central London.” He turns to John with a smirk.
“It’s not funny, Sherlock. What do you want me to do? Walk about in my briefs? Just give them back, for God’s sake. I can’t even begin to imagine what you’d want my trousers for.”
“I don’t give a whit about your trousers,” Sherlock says as he steps closer to John. He can see John’s thought process splutter to an astonished halt as he stares up at him with widening eyes. Sherlock reaches and tucks a finger into the knot on the ties of John’s robe. “And I would be okay with just the briefs,” he adds softly, and John colours so suddenly and so sharply Sherlock wishes he’d had his camera phone ready.
“What are you doing?” John says, voice a few octaves higher than usual, and backs himself up against the wall. Oh, convenient.
“I want to know what you’ve got on under that,” Sherlock says, and he tugs slowly, pulling the knot towards himself, pulling it loose agonising inch by agonising inch. John has all the time in the world to grab it, to protest, but he stands oh so promisingly still, staring at Sherlock like he can’t quite believe what he’s doing, and the robe falls open with a delicate, almost theatrical swish.
And yes, there they are, finally, fiercely red and clinging to the shape of John’s genitals underneath most delightfully. Sherlock stares, completely unembarrassed by his obvious interest, and raises an eyebrow at John.
“Very nice colour, John. Why do you have those?”
“I, what? They’re, they’re comfortable,” John stammers.
“The fit and material, I’m sure. The colour, though? So unlike you, John. So... outspoken.” He practically purrs the last word and watches as John’s pupils dilate, his skin retaining its delightful flush. He’s close enough now to feel the warmth radiating off John’s skin but not quite close enough to touch, not yet.
“I... they’re... funny, is all,” John manages to say. He swallows dryly, looking up at Sherlock and taking a stammering, stuttery little breath. It nearly undoes Sherlock completely to see him like this. “Sherlock, what are you... what the hell are you doing?”
“Oh come now John, surely you know that that sort of underwear does things to people, right?” he says softly, and finally dares to touch, just a bit, hooking the tip of his finger under the white elastic waistband. “Does things to me?”
John gives him this weirdly blank sort of look for a moment or two, eyes round and astonished, as he seems to finally grasp where the situation is going. “Yes,” he then says so softly Sherlock can barely hear him. Sherlock grins, leans closer, finger still trapped between the elastic and the soft, unbearably warm skin of John’s belly, and leans his face right next to John’s.
“Did you wish for me to see them, maybe? To draw me to them like a moth to a flame? They’re very enticing, John,” he whispers into John’s ear, voice low. John isn’t even ably to reply, just makes a soft, choking sort of noise in the back his throat, leaning his head back against the wall.
Sherlock grins, draws his fingertip out the waistband and places his palm flat across John’s cock. He’s hard now, of course he is, and feeling him like this, through the soft cotton, makes Sherlock feel ridiculously giddy if very determined.
“I want to suck you off,” he says softly, nuzzling the outer shell of John’s ear. “May I please?”
“Oh God. Yes,” John gasps, nodding as he speaks for good measure. Sherlock smiles against his ear, presses a kiss to his temple, then falls to his knees easily.
John whimpers at that already, staring down at him. His mouth is hanging open, his eyes oddly glossy, and Sherlock smiles. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” he feels oddly compelled to confess, and John just sort of nods and licks his lips. This is all going so much easier than he had anticipated, but then he might have judged John wrongly on one or two accounts. He certainly doesn’t object to receiving sexual favours from his very male flatmate so much, and Sherlock can only wonder whether John may just have been as preoccupied with the unexpected need to touch, to taste, to just be plain near as he himself has been.
Sherlock smoothes his hands across John’s hips, traces the white trim on the pants with his fingertips. He feels John’s heartbeat in his groin, counts it in his head. Definitely elevated. He leans close, presses a kiss to that fast-beating pulse point, holding firmly onto John’s hips. He slides his hands around, firmly grabbing his buttocks and giving them a proper squeeze. The cotton is so soft, worn often, and he thinks it must, indeed, be a criminally comfortable piece of underwear.
John bends his knees slightly, letting the wall support him, and just stares as Sherlock nuzzles his hard cock through the fabric. He rubs his cheek across and presses a light kiss to the round spot of wetness seeping through. So deeply aroused already, his John, yet all Sherlock wants to do is draw this out, make it last, even though he does understand he won’t be able to. He mouths John through the fabric, attempting to size him up by touch only. John makes a soft sound, needy, wanting, and Sherlock smiles up at him.
“So impatient,” he says softly. “Such a nice turn to our morning, this, yes?”
He wriggles a finger into the opening in the front of the pants and encounters hot skin, soft hair, and teases along the side of John’s cock. “Cleverly designed, these briefs,” Sherlock says softly, rubbing his face against the fabric once more.
His own impatience gets the better of him, and he hooks his fingers under the waistband of John’s pants and slowly drags them down just enough to free his cock. He doesn’t want to take it off all the way, doesn’t want to lose that delightful flash of red, and good lord does John’s cock look gorgeous framed by it like this. It’s an astonishing example of manhood as it is, standing at what Sherlock estimates to be a perfect seven inches, nicely thick, uncut, and curving ever so slightly to the right. His dark blond pubic hair is trimmed, not shaved, and Sherlock has to conclude that John Watson’s erect prick is surely a sight to behold.
Not that he’s seen so many real live erect pricks to compare it to, actually, certainly not this up close, but you know. He’s seen pictures.
He runs the fingers of both hands down it, from the soft, smooth head all the way down to the base, tracing veins and feeling delighted by how warm and nice it feels under his fingertips. He leans close and goes back up again with the tip of his tongue, slowly, until he’s back at the tip again and gets to lick off a bittersalt drop of precum. John smells great this close, clean and familiar in this odd sort of way, and he nuzzles his pubic hair and breathes in deeply.
Looking up at John, locking eyes with him, he slips him slowly into his mouth and sucks. John holds his breath and looks like he can’t believe his own eyes, so Sherlock slides him in as deeply as he can and then slides him back out, leaving the length of him covered in saliva. He slips him out of his mouth, drags his flat tongue slowly across the head, all without breaking eye contact and John has been holding his breath for such a ridiculously long time now Sherlock thinks he might pass out.
“Breathe, John,” he says, lips dragging across the head of John’s cock as he speaks. John immediately inhales sharply, as if Sherlock’s words only just reminded him that oxygen is important, and his fingers claw at the wall behind him.
Sherlock grins, John’s cock pressed against his lower lip, and slides John back into his mouth. The taste of him is intoxicating, every bit as much as Sherlock had imagined him to be in even his most feverished wank fantasies, and Sherlock sucks with great enthusiasm. He bobs his head, enjoys the feeling of John sliding in and out past his lips, and slides him out completely in one long, slow movement. He kisses his way down to the base, nuzzles his pubic hair again, presses little kisses across John’s testicles. John’s cock rubs across his cheek and he moves his face along an extra time for good measure, smearing his own saliva across his jaw.
His own heart pounds between his ears, his own cock achingly hard in the confines of his trousers, but he ignores his arousal in favour of John’s. John, his beautiful John, who appears to be struggling to stay upright as Sherlock sucks him, who makes a small, clucky sort of sound in the back of his throat every time Sherlock drags the tip of his tongue across his slit, who looks a bit shocked to suddenly find himself in some weird gay porno in his kitchen but seems to have very little trouble going along with it.
He’s close to orgasm, anyway. Sherlock can see it coming, John’s testicles drawn tight, his pulse fluttering rapidly, his breathing shallow. It’s quite thrilling to have gotten him so far, so quickly, but then Sherlock supposes any healthy man caught unaware with a surprise blowjob from his flatmate might not be able to hold out that long. He puts both hands on John’s buttocks and squeezes, sliding his cock into his mouth. He presses against John’s buttocks lightly and there he goes, neatly catching the hint, thrusting shallowly into Sherlock’s mouth, and Sherlock finds this entirely too arousing and tries not to think about what this says about him.
“Oh Jesus, Sherlock, Jesus Christ,” John gibbers, staring down at him, hands still pressed flat against the wall, then throws his head back and with an unexpectedly guttural cry climaxes, thrusting into Sherlock’s mouth one last time and then going still. Sherlock’s mouth floods with semen. He swallows most, more on instinct than anything else, but some dribbles down his chin and he quite happily lets it. He sits back, slipping John’s softening prick out his mouth, and looks up at John as he slowly wipes his chin clean with one hand.
John looks like he’s only half there, suspended somewhere between reality and erotic daydream. He blinks his eyes open and stares down at Sherlock hazily and Sherlock stares back, the heartbeat between his ears threatening to take control. He presses a hand against his erection, rubbing against the fabric of his trousers – so much coarser than John’s delightful pants – and inches closer to John again.
“I need to... please,” he chokes out. John nods, still trying to catch his breath, and Sherlock frantically undoes his buttons and tugs his prick out his trousers and wraps his fingers around it. He leans forward, until his face is pressed up against John’s hip, his soft prick resting pleasantly against his cheek. He nuzzles it lovingly, delighting in the soft caress of John’s cotton pants, and fists his own cock as if his life depends on it.
One of John’s hands threads carefully in his hair and Sherlock think he might have had a cry at the intimacy of it, had he been so inclined. He squeezes his eyes shut and then he just feels, just feels John, just feels his own pleasure, and he gasps and ejaculates all over the kitchen linoleum.
He takes a few deep breaths, waits for the flat to stop spinning around him, then looks up at John. John still has a hand in his hair, is caressing it very lightly, and looks down at him with something in between affection and disbelief. Sherlock quirks an eyebrow, half-shrugs at him, and John bursts into nervous giggles. Back against the wall still he slides down carefully until he’s on the floor as well, using the hand in Sherlock’s hair to gently tug him into an awkward if very sincere hug.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” he says.
“I can’t believe you just let me.”
“Jesus bloody fucking Christ, Sherlock Holmes.”
And then he does the last thing Sherlock expected him to do – he takes Sherlock’s face in both hands, and kisses him. It’s a real, proper kiss, incredibly genuine, and Sherlock gets very lost in it for a good few minutes. John nips at his lips and sucks on his tongue and Sherlock is fairly certain he ought to be deducing a million things about him from this, from the true meaning of the red pants all the way to how he really feels about Sherlock, but his brain won’t stop focusing on how amazing he feels and how odd this is, sitting half dressed on their kitchen floor on a Monday morning.
John breaks the kiss but Sherlock isn’t ready to yet, chasing his lips and kissing him again with bruising force. John’s hands are still on the sides of his face, fingers in his hair, and he quite likes that. He pulls back now and they stare at each other for a moment, lips kiss-swollen, looking for something in each other’s eyes they can’t quite name. Sherlock takes a deep breath and twines his arms around John’s shoulders in a loose hug, resting his head on John’s shoulder as he tries to calm his senses. John’s arms rest warmly around him in return, and John, too, sighs deeply.
“Christ,” he says again.
Sherlock hmms softly in response. “Is this okay, though?” he asks, though in retrospect perhaps he ought to have clarified that before.
“Yes. Better than okay. Christ.”
Well, that’s all right, then.
“Did you really nick all my trousers so you could get a closer look at my underwear?” John asks, sliding his fingers back into Sherlock’s curly hair.
“Yes.”
“Astonishing.”
“I know.”
John laughs and Sherlock can feel the shakes of it in his shoulders and smiles at that. “You’re a certified nutter, you know that,” John says.
“Yes. You love it, though.”
“God help me, yes I do.”
Sherlock smiles and presses a kiss into John’s neck.
“You do understand I will wear nothing but red underwear from now on, right?”
At this Sherlock laughs, hooking his thumb into the elastic waistband and letting it snap against John’s skin. He can live with that, he thinks.