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John stood by the window, arms crossed, a displeased look across his weary face.
Rain. They'd had two weeks of burning hot sun; weather that brought their neighbours outside to congregate on the pavement in fold-up chairs, that prompted skinny, undesirable teenagers to peel off their sweaty t-shirts, that - shockingly - convinced Sherlock Holmes to leave the house without his coat on.
But now it was raining. Pelting it down, as John would say. It was the skinny type of rain that came down not as if it were just falling but as if it were being thrown. Heavy rain, the type that you irrationally feared would rip your umbrella. John sensed impending thunder.
After a few minutes of watching he spun around and flopped down into the armchair across from Sherlock. His boyfriend seemed to be thinking, his hands pressed together, chin resting on the tips of his bony fingers.
"Can't believe this weather, can you?" John commented.
"Huh?" Sherlock responded, pulled suddenly out of his little mind palace, seemingly aware that John had spoken but not aware of what he had said.
"Can't believe this weather, I said. So sunny before and now it's chucking it down."
"Oh, yes. Yes, of course," Sherlock mused. "Trust you to interrupt my deep thought for something as trivial as small talk regarding the weather."
John could tell from the way Sherlock's eyes closed and his whole body tensed that he had no intention to further continue any communication, and was returning straight to that dark place in his mind that no other could ever reach. So he stood, ignoring the torrential rain pouring down, and sat instead at the desk, in front of his laptop.
A short while later he discovered he was right about the thunder. It clapped down suddenly, making John jump slightly, but he was instantly calm again. He was not at all frightened of thunder. Who could be frightened of such a thing after spending time at war? Sherlock, however, seemed to react differently, and John was surprised by a slight whimper he heard from behind him.
He spun around in his chair. Sherlock was still in the same position, concentrating on whatever the hell he was thinking about. John wondered if perhaps he had made it up, until moments later when thunder clapped again. The corners of the detective's eyes creased as if he were squeezing them even more tightly shut, and he emitted a gasp, unnoticeable if John hadn't been watching.
"Sherlock?"
Sherlock didn't answer, but John kept watching him. When they next heard the thunder Sherlock reacted in the same way and, looking him up and down, John realised his whole body was tense. He stood up from his chair, tentatively stepped across the room, and knelt in front of Sherlock. He rested a hand on Sherlock's thigh. Sherlock opened his eyes.
"Sherlock, are you scared of thunder?" John asked.
"What? No! What a ridiculous suggestion, John!" But then thunder boomed once more and he jumped out of his skin, breathing heavily when John lifted himself onto the arm of the sofa and rubbed strong and soothing strokes between his boyfriend's shoulder blades.
He couldn't help but be reminded of his childhood.
"John?"
John was awoken by a harsh whisper by his ear. Eyes cracking open, he saw his older sister Harriet - as she was then still known - perched on the edge of his bed, features tense and worried. He was tired and his voice was slow and heavy when he asked what was wrong.
"Thunderstorm, John."
Ah, yes, John could hear it now. Intense rain beating down on their window, thunderous booms with only short pauses between them. Thunder wasn't exactly rare in England and the scene of Harriet seeking comfort from John during a storm was a familiar one. Older than John though she was, the thunder frightened her much more than it did himself.
He lifted his covers to let her into bed with him, but she protested. "No, no. We'll make a blanket fort, how does that sound? You must be scared and I know you like them."
Typical Harriet, making out as if she were just looking out for her presumably scared little brother when she was the scared one herself. John hadn't the heart to argue though, so he nodded. She could make him a fort.
And so she did. The sheets stripped from both their beds made a tent while duvets and pillows were laid out on the floor to return to sleep in. They slept in each other's arms that night, and John was overwhelmed with affection for his older sister. He loved thunderstorms.
BOOM.
Sherlock winced again, and John knew exactly what he had to do. Well, more like what he wanted to do. "Come on Sherlock, I know how to help."
"I don't need any type of help, John. I'm not frightened, just easily-" BOOM! Gasp. "Startled."
"Nope, come on." John grasped Sherlock's hand and pulled him up out of his chair. Something inside of Sherlock must have accepted the fact that he was frightened because he followed without protest and sat down on his bed when John led him into his bedroom.
"Strip your bed and I'll be back in a minute," John instructed.
Sherlock was about to question him but John was already out of the room, heading to his own to strip his own bed. He gathered the sheets and the duvet in his arms, took it to Sherlock's room, deposited it on the floor, then returned back downstairs. He took the chairs from around the kitchen table, somehow managing to carry all four back to Sherlock's bedroom.
"What on earth is all this for?" Sherlock inquired. He had stripped his bed just as asked.
John ignored the question and asked his own. "Where do you keep that harpoon?"
"What the-"
"The harpoon, Sherlock."
"Cupboard under the stairs."
"Right." John rushed to fetch the harpoon, despite the risk of facing his own fear of spiders, and quickly took it back to Sherlock's room.
"I am very much failing to see the reasoning behind this strange collection of sheets and weapons."
Again, John ignored him, instead setting out the chairs in a square around the room. He draped a sheet over all four of the chairs, creating the base of his blanket fort. When all four corners were secured over the chairs he crawled underneath with the harpoon, which he balanced in the middle to create a tee-pee liek shape. He secured it where it was by surrounding it tightly with pillows before he dragged the duvets into his creation, folding them in half to fit on either side of the harpoon to create two different beds, which he decorated with pillows.
During this time, it had stopped thundering. John didn't care.
"Simply ridiculous, Doctor Watson, though a man who creates tents out of bedding doesn't deserve such a title."
"Oh hush and get inside," John laughed while he admired his handiwork.
He turned off the lights, but Sherlock protested with words that utterly shocked John. "No. If there's lightening I don't want to be able to see it because we're in a darkened room."
"No...No, of course not." John raised an eyebrow, turned off the lights, and again took Sherlock's hand, though this time he pulled him to the ground to crawl into the blanket fort. Although there were two beds, John settled on one and forced Sherlock to do the same.
"I am in my thirties, you are in your forties, and we just constructed a blanket fort like two adventurous little boys. In fact, no, not like little boys. Mycroft and I never did that." Despite the negative connotations to what he was saying regarding the set-up, he settled down beside John and shuffled closer towards him, letting his shorter lover envelope him with his strong arms.
"You mean I constructed a blanket fort," John smirked. "And of course you and Mycroft never made them; you were too busy making scientific discoveries instead."
Sherlock laughed. He was visibly calmed now, head rolling to the side to rest against John's shoulder, as if the thunder and lightening had shocked the hostile element of his personality out of him.
The thunder returned out of nowehere and Sherlock whimpered once more, pressing his face so it was cowered in the crook of John's neck. John's fingers, scarred from the war, raked through his boyfriend's hair with the intention of comfort.
"Of all the things you could be scared of and it's thunder."
"I think we've established that thunder is not the only thing I'm scared of."
"Oh we have, have we? I can't say I remember."
"Why do you think I threw myself off a building, John?"
Oh, yes. That.
Sherlock pulled his face out of its hiding place and smiled down at John. John returned the smile, but it wasn't as genuine. Couldn't they pass a sweet, simple moment without a harsh reminder of...that time?
"Thank you for this John. I suppose it isn't that bad."
"You like the fort?"
"Perhaps it's not the fort itself that I like," Sherlock smirked.
"No? Then what could it possibly be?"
"I don't know. I think it's just the setting in general. It seems like the perfect opportunity to do this."
And suddenly Sherlock's lips were pressed against John's, and they weren't pulling away, not until the heat between them became uncomfortably physical and Sherlock needed a little more concentration to undo the buttons on John's jeans, but they weren't parted for long because he resumed the kiss as soon as his hand was safely down John's pants.
So they drowned out the thunderstorm with their own sort of noise, and John wished he'd held up the tend with something more secure than a harpoon after it collapsed on top of them, and wondered if, like a dog given a chocolate every time his owner whistled, Sherlock might grown to like thunderstorms.