lightconductor | Deck the Halls

"Like you wouldn't have attempted to handcuff me to my chair if I were the one that had recently been shot and yet wanted to go shopping," he drawls, hardly paying much attention to Watson's flare of annoyance. Holmes isn't surprised he's drummed it up, as Watson isn't really the kind of man that takes well to being coddled, but Holmes isn't the kind of man that's used to having people that matter to him. Coddling is a side effect.

"For the record, I have little doubt as to your ability to defend yourself," he adds, drawing out a sprig of holly. He pauses thoughtfully and then goes to the mantel; he pries his knife free from the pile of messages and affixes the holly with it instead.

That Holmes was perfectly correct did not mean Watson was any less annoyed. "My apologies," he returned, sardonically. "The next time I prick my finger I'll be sure to stay home and rest up, and I will let you do my errands. How does that strike you?"

He hung up his hat, removed his jacket, and turned back to Holmes crossly. "I'm glad to hear you don't think I'm entirely helpless, at least," he said pointedly, and bent to retrieve some more branches of holly from his packages.

"My dear, do you plan on being annoyed with me the entire time that we decorate? It is rather rude to ruin the party that you started," he points out mildly, rather unruffled by Watson's perturbed state. If Holmes reacted every time he annoyed Watson, he would never have a moment of peace in his life.

He takes a couple branches of holly and crosses to the window to decorate around it.

Watson warred with himself momentarily, trying to hold onto his anger and failing. Finally, after rather pointedly affixing some holly above the door, he crossed the room to stand behind Holmes. He laid his hand on the small of Holmes's back.

"Just so long," he said, his voice low and firm, "as it is perfectly clear that I am not about to expire. I have come very close to dying several times in my life. That was not one of them. Don't treat me as an invalid."

"Yes, but my dear, those other times you weren't yet the most precious thing in the world to me." He finishes adjusting the holly branch and turns around, his eyebrows lifted. "Darling, it is Christmas. Do allow me to be sentimental, at least a little."

Leaning in, he kisses Watson briefly and slips by him to recover more holly.

It was admittedly hard to maintain much anger in the face of such a confession as all that. He was still not used to Holmes being sentimental, not for any reason, and it was a little overwhelming in any context to be declared the most precious thing in the world to someone.

"Very well, be sentimental." He pulled out a couple pine branches from a bundle, and went to arrange them around the mantlepiece. "But I am not a child, you wonderful fool. Surely you can let me do an errand or two with a minor injury without chiding me for it?"

"I'm not sure I can," he returns briskly, struggling and failing not to let the haunting sight of Watson crumpling before him return to his mind's eye. "Surely that isn't a surprise to you."

He picks up another sprig of holly but stops, his heart very much not in the game of decorating, not with every detail of Watson's injury returning to him in accursed, startling clarity. He drops the sprig and approaches Watson, and he slides his hand down Watson's good arm; he leans in closer, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck.

"I do love you, after all," he murmurs into his skin.

Watson turned automatically, pressing an answering kiss against Holmes. "I'm gratified to hear it," he murmured. "I love you too. No matter," he laughed a little, "how maddening you are."

He slid his hands around Holmes's waist, drawing him close against his side. This, he felt strongly, was how things ought to be.

"Sherlock," he murmured, his voice tender, "I am not so very delicate, you know that. You shan't lose me so easliy."

He lingers in Watson's embrace and dips his head to take another kiss; he tries very hard to block out those painful images, to focus instead on Watson warm and alive in his arms, and kissing him, loving him. It works, to a degree, as much of a degree as it's going to, and he rests their foreheads together. The intimacy of hearing his Christian name is still somewhat new to him, and he revels in it, smoothing his hand against Watson's side.

"Good. Because that really would put a damper on my Christmas this year," he says finally, trying for lightness, and he draws back slightly. "By the way, John, is your continued existence my only present this year?"

"Of course not," Watson chided. Holmes had successfully drawn him out of his crossness, for all that Holmes was himself the cause of the crossness in the first place. He followed, trying to kiss him again. "But you will have to wait for it. I cannot, after all, give you your present before it is fully Christmas."

He pulled himself close, sighing a little. "Your continued existence is already more a gift than I deserve."

"I'm pleased you think so, especially considering how easily I anger you." He kisses Watson tenderly, drawing the kiss out. However annoying it is to him that Watson went out alone, he is glad now for the chance to decorate for Christmas, especially with both of them alive and so wonderfully in love.

Admittedly, guilt has been twitching at him since Watson got shot. He knows that Watson's being targeted for his association with Holmes, that whoever doing this wants to see Holmes suffer and doesn't particularly care if it's Holmes who suffers or Watson. Maybe he knows that Watson being hurt is an injury ten times over to Holmes himself.

At any rate, it's Christmas, and they're together, and he isn't going to think about those things right now.

"You shouldn't sell yourself so short, my darling," he murmurs as he draws away again, pulling out of his embrace. "I'm not more than you deserve. I'm precisely what you deserve."

"Perhaps you do easily anger me, but my quick temper is no fault of yours. Forgive me for it."

Watson let Holmes go this time, finally, and he returned to the packages to retrieve some more pine branches. His own temper was not a matter of pride for him, certainly a shameful thing, and that Holmes was so apparently unbothered by it was a matter for which Watson was quite thankful.

"I do hope you're right on that count, my dear. If you are precisely and no more than what I deserve, then the odds that I will be so unlucky as to lose you seem much smaller." He cast a shy sort of smile over his shoulder at Holmes as he finished arranging the pine, and he retrieved a sprig of mistletoe.

"This," he said, looking at it curiously. "Do you have a good place in mind that we can hang this without it being too suspicious? I do have half a mind to hang it from my belt and see what you make of that."

Holmes lets out a bark of laughter, entirely unbidden, and turns around.

"What do you think I will make of that? I will make with tradition, of course." He smiles, dark and promising. "That would make for quite the interesting holiday game. As we're already perverts, I can't see anything wrong with engaging in further perversion of otherwise innocent things."

"Now that's an unexpected bonus to sodomy," Watson laughed, flushing just a little. He hung the mistletoe from the doorway; if they did indeed decide they needed it for later games, it would be easily retrieved.

Their room was already looking far more seasonal, smelling of pine and holly, the crackle of the fire in the hearth, the cold outside their snug little sitting room. And Holmes was here, amazingly all Watson wanted in the world. For someone who still had reservations about embracing this sort of inversion, he was really utterly in love with the man before him, quite completely devoted and adoring, perfectly matched. He felt, sometimes, that the best evidence that this could not be wrong was how incredibly right it was that the two of them were so perfectly matched for each other.

"On the other hand," Watson continued thoughtfully, feigning as much casualness as he could, "perhaps I'd rather hang it from your waistband."

"I wouldn't find fault with that either," he purrs in return, and he approaches Watson with a glint in his eyes. "We could take turns with it. That would be the properly charitable route to take, given the season."

He hooks his fingers into Watson's waistband and pulls him closer, kissing him hotly.

Pleased with the response he'd earned, Watson smiled slyly against Holmes's mouth. "I cannot contest that," he said, resting his hand against the small of Holmes's back. "You have a very clever plan as far as celebrating the season goes. I don't think I could argue with that."

"I've been a homosexual for a long time. I've had time to plan." He slides a hand into Watson's hair and pulls him in for another kiss, deep and searching; he's a little breathless as the kiss breaks, and he bumps his nose against Watson's.

"This is our first Christmas as lovers. We ought to celebrate in some sentimental, romantic way or another."

"I thought we were already doing a very good job of it," Watson offered. He lifted a hand to run his fingers through Holmes's hair, tilted his head to kiss his temple lingeringly. "As a general rule, you seem to be outrageously sentimental -- to my shock, you have no notion. Christmas can be just one more flavour of it."

In love, adoring, Watson let his mouth wander down to the side of Holmes's throat, pulling away his collar just enough to manage it. "But as I'm rather more recently converted, I shall have to bow to your superior experience."

"What does it say about me that I find it more difficult to have my fault of sentimentality pointed out to me than my inversion?" he muses, tilting his head to allow Watson better access. "Perhaps we ought not indulge in sentimentality, for a change. Spend Christmas on opposite sides of the room, in surly silence."

He tugs Watson up from his neck by his hair so that Holmes might have a turn at kissing his throat; he nips gently, just beneath his ear.

"I disagree," Watson said, rather helplessly. "Besides that we're not doing a terribly good job at it so far... it sounds extremely unpleasant to me."

He savoured the situation for some moments, his breathing deep and steady, before leaning back against the wall, pulling Holmes with him. After comfortably pinning himself against the wall like this, he sighed a little.

"You will make me forget about the decorations, at this rate."

"Surely not the mistletoe," he murmurs with a devilish smile, and he lines his body up against Watson's, pressing close against him. "I believe you were onto something when you said I'm enough of a present for you. I would be content with merely unwrapping you on Christmas morning."

His voice is low and full of dark promises as he reaches between them and undoes Watson's collar, loosens his tie.

"Do you realise," Watson murmured, "I think that sounds very promising indeed."

It was true that he was feeling a bit trapped, and vulnerable because of it, for all that he had put himself in this situation purposely and willingly. There was not much to do except breathe in and savour it, treasure it, for whatever else it was, it was exciting, too. He kissed Holmes, hungry and heated, holding him close.

"You needn't wait until Christmas morning."

"No, I suppose not," he says lowly, his lips brushing Watson's neck as he talks. "But the upside is that I can enjoy this present over and over." He unbuttons Watson's shirt, and he trails his kisses lower, following the exposed line of his chest.

"You can't say that for many other kinds of presents," he breathes, and punctuates his sentence with a nip against Watson's chest as he unbuckles Watson's belt. "I can unwrap you now, and then again on Christmas, and again, if I wanted, and it would still be just as good as the first time." He slides Watson's belt off and tosses it aside.

Watson's breath caught, just a little, partly because of the lips on his bare skin, partly because of Holmes's words. "You can unwrap me," he said, hoarse and faintly laughing because of something that struck him as ridiculous about it all, "as many times as you wish, if you enjoy me so."

He slipped his fingers down the back of Holmes's collar, toying with it and tickling while he attempted to sidle his hand around to work away his tie and the collar and what seemed just then like frankly far too much cloth. "Provided I can do a little unwrapping of my own."

"Certainly." He stands and grips Watson by the hips; in a fluid motion he turns them around so Holmes is against the wall, and he pulls Watson in close, stealing a hungry kiss. He would've had to get Watson off the wall anyway if he really wants to get him shirtless, and this seems like a pleasant enough way to introduce the change of position.

"Unwrap at will," he says against Watson's lips, with a devilish smile.

Deck the Halls

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