tartanfics | Sherlock: A Matter of Camping (1/2)

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Title: A Matter of Camping
Fandom/Ships: BBC Sherlock, Sherlock/John
Word Count: 11,000 words total, 4,200 this part
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Only borrowing, more’s the pity. I have no affiliation with the BBC or the producers of Sherlock.
Warnings: Spoilers through The Great Game, sex in part two.
Summary: One day, Sherlock decides they are going camping.
Notes: I realize the summary sounds like total crack. I think it was originally intended to be total crack. And then it became 11,000 words and totally serious.

miss_sabre is my AWESOME BETA OF AWESOMENESS. Also #bakerstreet is full of helpful and insanity.

John's still not sure how they wound up going camping.

Sherlock had made it sound vitally important, and John always seems to go along with what Sherlock says, whether it's important or not. He has trouble picturing Sherlock camping. It's not the woods that are the problem, really--he's seen Sherlock in woods before, standing around a dead body cordoned off with blue and white tape. But Sherlock, in his scarf and long coat and leather gloves, surrounded by police and all the trappings of a crime scene, can make the woods conform to his standards. Camping, Sherlock will have to conform to the woods. John's not even sure what Sherlock's going to wear. Surely not a suit. He's never seen Sherlock wear anything that's not at one extreme or the other--suit or pyjamas.

"Which foods can one cook with a camp fire?" Sherlock asks one morning, as John is sleepily shuffling around the kitchen making tea, getting ready for work.

John stops short, kettle in hand. "Why?"

Sherlock just looks at him over a beaker.

"Um, hot dogs, marshmallows, anything you can wrap in tin foil and shove in the coals. Will you look at me like I'm stupid if I ask why again?"

"Yes. I'm putting you in charge of the shopping. We need food for three days."

"Three days--what--Sherlock, are you suggesting we go camping?"

"I'm not suggesting it, John."

John throws up his hands in defeat, and sloshes water all over his hand from the half-full kettle. They are going camping.

-

John doesn't like to ask where the camping equipment came from. They've got everything--tent, lamp, matches, sleeping bags. He comes home from the shops, and he’s only been gone twenty minutes, but suddenly there’s all this stuff piled against the wall. He eyes Sherlock, who is lying on the sofa texting, but he thinks it better not to ask. He doesn’t want to know whether or not Sherlock has been committing crimes in the name of camping.

Actually, he is resolutely not thinking about the camping at all. He is not thinking about why they’re camping, or about what camping with Sherlock will be like, or about sleeping in a tent with Sherlock for three days. He is not thinking about the quiet tension slowly eating away at them, or about what will happen when they’re in a tent in the woods and can’t get away from each other.

When he dreams that night about bombs, it’s not in an indoor swimming pool but at a lake, and when Sherlock pulls the trigger and throws himself at John, they fall together into a tent, their campfire spreading.

-

They take a taxi to their camp site. Who the hell takes a taxi camping? John wonders. It must have cost a fortune, but John doesn't see Sherlock pay the driver, after Sherlock pushes him away to haul their tent and their bags out of the boot. John doesn't know quite where they are. They've gone north, out of London, he knows that much, but he stopped recognizing landmarks a while ago.

There's a lot John doesn't know.

When the taxi pulls away, they are left standing by the side of the road, at the beginning of a thin dirt track into the trees. Their equipment is piled around their feet. It's cold and grey out, and John eyes their surroundings suspiciously.

"Is this a proper campsite?"

Sherlock doesn't answer.

"Sherlock, are we allowed to camp here?"

"Will it make a difference if I say no?"

It should do. "Probably not."

Sherlock's mouth quirks because he knows John never says no, and John has to clear his throat and look away, start gathering up their things.

Inevitably, John winds up loaded down with tent and bags and coolbox. Sherlock's carrying nothing but a bag which looks suspiciously like it contains John's laptop.

"You could help carry some of this," John says, following Sherlock down the dirt path.

"You'll be fine."

"Yes, but--Sherlock, that isn't the point."

"Your estimations of fairness are really very childish, you know. I'm busy."

John sighs and hefts the bags up again. They walk for ten minutes, and Sherlock is clearly looking for something, but John can't tell what. Their camp site, he supposes, but none of this looks like good ground for camping.

Finally, at a spot that looks to John no different from anything they've passed, Sherlock turns abruptly and crashes off through the brush. His coat snags on branches as he goes, but he doesn't notice and his determination seems to make the branches skate off again.

Sherlock is wearing wool trousers, the sort he normally wears with suits. They’re not his nicest pair, but all his clothes are ridiculously nice for someone who can’t afford a flat without splitting the rent, so that isn’t saying much. They’re not trousers anyone else would wear to go camping.
Atop the trousers is a chocolate brown shirt. No suit jacket, but the same coat as always. Sherlock looks irritatingly normal.

Admittedly, John is also wearing almost the same thing he always wears, but a jumper and jeans are much more suitable to camping than suit trousers. And John, at least, has changed his shoes.

"Where are you going?"

"Come on, hurry up."

That's an answer of sorts, John supposes. He follows Sherlock into the undergrowth.

The spot they stop in is less overgrown than what they've passed through, but it's not exactly a clearing, and it's not exactly flat.

"Here we are," Sherlock announces cheerfully.

John looks around. "We're going to start a forest fire," he says.

-

Twenty minutes later--after Sherlock has attempted to unfold the tent and John has taken over and banned him from touching anything--their tent is assembled, their sleeping bags are unrolled, and John is attempting to clear a space to safely start a fire. Sherlock is sulking behind the tent.

"It's not your fault you've never put up a tent, Sherlock," John calls, as he flings twigs and bits of leaves off into the brush. "I've had a lot of practice--I was in the army, after all."

His only answer is the sound of fierce texting. Then, “Damn.”

“John!” Sherlock whines, stalking around the tent and tossing his phone down at John’s foot. “There’s no signal.”

“Well, we are in a forest.”

“So?”

“So, most people go camping to get away from modern technology.” Sherlock stares, clearly uncomprehending. John sighs and pulls his phone out of his pocket, tossing it at Sherlock. “Try mine.” Sherlock catches it deftly and immediately slides out the keyboard and starts typing. John immediately begins to regret this. “Please don’t text any murderers on my phone.”

Sherlock ignores this, and disappears back around the other side of the tent. John, resigned, goes back to the fire.

Twenty minutes later, with kindling burning and the proper logs just beginning to blacken, John has an uncomfortable realization. “Sherlock?”

“Hm?”

“Have you thought about water?”

“Have I, in my entire life, thought about water? Yes, once or twice.”

“I mean,” says John, gritting his teeth, “do you know where we can get water now?”

“Yes.”

“Will you go get water now?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer.

“If you don’t go get water now, you’ll never get any tea.”

Sherlock immediately slides John’s phone into his pocket and steps off into the trees opposite the path.

-

When Sherlock comes back a quarter of an hour later, he is carrying two large plastic jugs of water. He is also impossibly muddy.

John can do nothing but grin. There is mud halfway up Sherlock’s left thigh and spattered across his right knee. The hem of his coat looks like it’s been dipped evenly in mud, and leaves are stuck here and there on his arms. There’s a smear of mud on his forehead, just underneath his hairline.

“What happened to you?” He can hear the amusement in his own voice, so there’s no way Sherlock is going to miss it.

“I went to get water,” Sherlock says coolly.

“Did you wade into the pond to get the special water from the middle?”

Sherlock dumps the jugs of water (where did he get those, anyway?) down next to John, and then sits down on a log on the other side of the fire, looking gloomy and cold.

“Aren’t you going to change?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer.

“You did bring a change of clothes, didn’t you?”

Silence.

“Sherlock, do you want to borrow some trousers?” Sherlock looks pointedly at John’s legs. “Well, yeah, but short is better than muddy and wet.”

“No, thank you, John.”

John begins placing bets with himself over how long Sherlock’s going to last.

-

Watching the fire, John falls into his own thoughts. The world is a blur of grey and green, and their little space around the fire feels like a bubble. Time seems irrelevant. His face feels warm and his limbs numb, as though he’s possessed with a cosy inertia.

They’re not really stuck here, of course, but the trees make it feel like they can’t leave, like John is going to be sitting here staring across the fire at Sherlock’s muddy knees forever.

This sense of eternity and waiting makes John want to talk, to blurt out everything he’s ever thought. He and Sherlock will be stuck here forever, together skirting around each other. In London, in 221B Baker Street, though they live together, it’s still easy to avoid each other. Sherlock always has something going on, whether it is a chemical experiment, a book, his website, or staring off into space in a way that renders him completely unapproachable. John goes to work and goes shopping, comes home and stares at his computer screen or watches telly. When they’re out on cases together, they don’t really talk. Sherlock’s mind moves a mile a minute, but he doesn’t multitask, not really. He deals with the case, or he deals with other things, it’s never both at once.

Being somewhere different rearranges the game. This isn’t their normal routine--and for all the bizarrity of their lives, they do have a routine. Over the last months their routine has allowed them to carefully ignore Moriarty. He’s playing a waiting game with them, probably trying to lull them into a false sense of safety. John doesn’t feel safe. He feels like he’s in limbo, unable to move forward, unable to be normal, but still going about all his normal chores and work and life.

He has stopped trying to meet women. It just doesn’t sound like fun anymore, somehow.

For weeks after the incident at the swimming pool, Sherlock followed every possible lead. He searched for the crack in Moriarty’s network, the one tiny detail that would make it possible to catch him. But it wasn’t there. Sherlock has given up, which still worries John. John knows Sherlock is still thinking, still turning it all over in his head and pulling tentatively at pieces like a ball of knots. John, accustomed to watching Sherlock, has noticed the tension at the base of his neck, built up over the months from all that thinking. He’s thinking, but he’s not actively searching any more. He’s not active, which in Sherlock’s world is always bad. He’s still helping Lestrade out with smaller cases, of course, and they occupy him for a while before he fades back into his thoughts. Sometimes, even during those cases, even in the middle of a crime scene, he fades out. John has seen the way his eyes seem to shift in depth, like he’s moving back a couple of layers into his brain.

John is starting to think camping is a very bad idea. There’s nothing here for Sherlock except his thoughts.

“John?”

John startles and glances across the fire. Sherlock is hunched over, looking bedraggled and miserable. “Yes?”

“Do something about this, please.”

“Hah! Knew you’d give in. Take your trousers off.”

Sherlock levels a calm, dark look at him. “I know my social code is a bit skewed, but doesn’t yours say you’re supposed to buy me dinner first?”

“That’s a terrible cliché, Sherlock, I’m disappointed.”

Sherlock is still looking at him. John shivers, and makes a shooing motion at him. Sherlock toes off his shoes and peels off his socks, and then he stands and shrugs out of his coat. His feet are bare and thin and pale against the dirty ground. He pops out the button on his trousers and unzips them very slowly. God, he’s skinny, John thinks, and then realizes belatedly that he’s staring. Sherlock knows he’s staring. Almost like he’s undressing so slowly that John can’t help but stare.

John looks away. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sherlock slide his trousers down his hips and off, dumping them carelessly on the ground next to his coat. He looks so out of place here--but also, just a little, like a wild animal.

Clearing his throat, John turns around and rummages in the bag that’s sitting on the edge of the tarp in front of the tent. He pulls out a pair of jeans, and stands to hand them to Sherlock. Their hands meet over the fire, and it’s very warm. John has to look away from Sherlock’s face, but he finds himself looking down instead, which is worse. The funny contrast between shirttails and pants (faintly striped, bizarrely) makes John wants to giggle. He’s not sure what it says about his world now that it would be worse to giggle here than to giggle at a crime scene.

“They’ll be a bit short, sorry,” John says. “I can’t believe you didn’t think to pack a change of clothes.” He looks up, and Sherlock quirks an eyebrow at him. “Wait, what am I saying. ‘Course I can, you prat.”

Sherlock pointedly ignores this.

He puts John’s trousers on and they are, in fact, too short. His ankles, sticking out, look breakable. He retrieves John’s laptop and sits back on the log, bare feet in the dirt. John pulls today’s newspaper out of his bag and sits down again, resettling himself, immersing himself in the news. He is just getting his attention to properly stick to an article when Sherlock makes a muffled, indignant noise. John glances up.

“What?”

“I have no internet.”

“What did you expect? Wireless routers growing out of the trees?”

“This is the twenty-first century, John, routers shouldn’t even be necessary. I must update my website.”

“Check it on my phone.”

“It doesn’t show up properly on your phone. How can you function like this? Surely you’ve needed to access my website from your phone before.”

“Er, no, actually. There’s not really much on your website, you know.”

Sherlock stares at him.

“I can’t do anything about the phone, Sherlock. You’ll just have to deal. That’s the point of camping.”

Sherlock snorts. “Ridiculous.”

“Fine. What is the point of camping, in our case?”

“We are keeping watch.”

John looks around him. He doesn’t see much worth keeping a watch on. The trees are hardly going to commit any crimes. The worst the squirrels can do is steal their food. “Care to elaborate?”

“There is a group of counterfeiters near here. They’ve been transporting counterfeit bills through this forest to hand them off to a distributor. We are here to wait and watch the exchange.”

“You might have told me that earlier.”

“You never asked.”

John’s not even sure why he never asked. Misplaced stubbornness. “What are we doing in the meantime?”

Sherlock gives him a blank look, and John realizes. Sherlock was planning to think. Sherlock was planning to spend three days thinking about Moriarty. “Fuck, Sherlock, you--” No, he can’t do this. John isn’t going to deal with this. “Fine. It’ll be nice to have a couple of days out of the city. It’s peaceful here.”

“Apart from the counterfeiting ring, of course.”

-

Eventually, John gets hungry and starts rummaging in their cooler for something to eat. He’s been looking forward to camp food, remembers it fondly from his childhood. Camping with Sherlock is nothing like camping with his parents and sister, or his mates from university. He remembers camping as light-hearted, full of silly stories and games, drunken revels, and good if somewhat weird food. With Sherlock it’s like they’ve been transplanted here from 221B Baker Street, with no adaptation at all. At least the food is the same as it used to be.

“Are you hungry?” John asks, filling the kettle and settling it in the coals.

Sherlock is still using the computer, though given there’s no internet John finds this a bit worrying. He thinks with a faint and resigned panic of the less reputable folders buried inside the folders of medical books he’s downloaded. “No,” Sherlock answers, without looking up. John eyes him for a moment, wondering what Sherlock is looking at. He resists the urge to go and find out.

Briefly, John considers making Sherlock something to eat anyway, but he doesn’t want to waste food that’s just going to sit and get cold, so he doesn’t bother. Instead, he pulls out a potato, a carrot, and an onion, and starts chopping.

John is just putting his tin foil packet of vegetables in the fire when Sherlock says, “Tea?”

“What about tea, Sherlock?”

“You did threaten to withhold it if I didn’t fetch water. That was quite some time ago, so you really ought to reward my cooperation.”

John can’t really argue with this, so he digs out a teabag and pours the last of the hot water into a mug.

Next he goes on a hunt for the ideal roasting stick. It’s an art, finding the right roasting stick, and John has spent enough time camping in his life to be picky about it.

He is hunting around the bases of the trees at the edges of their little clearing when Sherlock says, “What are you doing?”

John looks up at Sherlock, who is twisted around on his log to look at John over his shoulder. Sherlock’s brow is wrinkled. He looks the way John feels like he looks when Sherlock is on the hunt for a clue and John has no idea what it is or why it’s important. Being on the other end of the game is fairly hilarious. John grins. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” He’s going to have his fun, even if it is juvenile.

He spots a stick just poking out from under some leaves, and goes to tug at it. It comes out perfect, already stripped of bark at one end and just the right length not to result in singed fingers. John holds it out triumphantly.

“A stick?” Sherlock asks, bemused.

“You’ve really never been near a campfire before, have you?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer, but John can see the twist of his mouth that always marks a gap in his knowledge, even when it’s knowledge he considers unnecessary. He watches as John manoeuvres around him and rummages through the cooler, finding the package of hot dogs. Sherlock seems to find the entire process fascinating, as John peels a hot dog out of the plastic and shoves it on the stick. “Is that sanitary?” Sherlock asks.

“You keep human body parts in the fridge; you can’t talk. A little dirt never hurt anyone.”

“That’s not strictly true.”

John gives him a glare. He won’t let Sherlock put him off his food; it’s happened too many times and John is finally building up a sort of immunity. Which is a little worrying, actually.

He sits down again and sticks the hot dog in the fire (he likes it burnt). “Sure you’re not hungry?”

Sherlock eyes the hot dog distastefully. “Would you like me to tell you what goes into the making of those?”

“No, thanks, please don’t.” John pokes at the tin foil packet, slowly blackening in the coals. “There’s nothing wrong with the veg, you could eat that.”

“Is it considered part of the point of camping?”

“For me, yes.”

Sherlock pauses. “All right, yes.”

“I thought you didn’t care about the point of camping.”

“I’m not interested in getting away from technology. That is, in my case, a pointless point.”

“But you’ll eat camp food.”

“Just cook the vegetables, John.”

“Fine. Hold this.” He hands the hot dog stick across to Sherlock, who takes it automatically and then looks at his hand like it’s betrayed him. “Try not to drop it.”

-

It is nearly midsummer, and it’s a long time before it gets dark. The fire, in contrast with the twilit woods, makes it seem darker than it is. It gets cold sooner than it gets dark. It may be June, but it hasn’t been a very warm June. John looks up from his contemplation of the fire and sees Sherlock shiver. He’s still just wearing a shirt, and he’s hunched in on himself, clearly cold. “You want to borrow a jumper?” John asks, voice rusty.

Sherlock glances up. The firelight makes him look eerie, even more angular than usual, with unnatural eyebrows. His eyes are very dark. “Yes,” Sherlock says simply.

John fetches the jumper, a plain brown one that is too big for him. Sherlock takes it from him, large hand scrunching up the wool. He pulls it over his head, mussing his already-wild hair. “Would I pass for John?” he asks, looking up at John, who stands over him feeling strangely tall.

“No, never.” He looks, though, watches the way Sherlock’s shoulders shift under John’s clothes. He--God, John’s always had a thing about people borrowing his clothes. He hadn’t expected it to work with Sherlock; the man looks ridiculous in too short trousers and too loose jumper. Still, John’s stomach twists. This is... ridiculously good, damn it. He knows he’s staring again, and this time he almost doesn’t care.

There’s still a smear of mud on Sherlock’s forehead. John reaches out and smudges it away with his thumb. His fingertips rest just at the edge of Sherlock’s hair, and linger even when the mud is gone. His thumb slides down to smooth Sherlock’s eyebrow.

“John.”

“Yeah,” John breathes out shakily. He steps away. His left hand is shaking, and he clenches it against his hip. “Okay, I’m going to cover the fire for the night.”

He does so mechanically, avoiding Sherlock’s gaze. “I’m going to bed,” he says. He feels stupid narrating this, hopes Sherlock won’t read anything more into that than he means. His eyes skid across Sherlock’s unreadable face, and then slide off again. Silent, John crawls into the tent, wraps himself up in his sleeping bag, and miraculously goes straight to sleep.

-

Later--God knows when, it’s dark and John is fast asleep--he wakes to something prodding him in the shoulder. Groggy, John rolls over and looks up. All he can see is the vague outline of one shadow darker than the rest. “Sherlock?”

“I can’t sleep in the sleeping bag, John.”

“Huh?” He feels the brush of impatient fingers at his side, and then Sherlock is tugging down the zipper on his sleeping bag. He yelps. “Sherlock, it’s bloody freezing.”

“Exactly,” Sherlock answers, and then John’s feet hit the air.

“What the bloody hell are you doing?”

“Making a proper bed. I can’t sleep in the sleeping bag, there’s no room.” He unfolds John’s sleeping bag so it’s flat on the floor of the tent, and then John hears another zipper, and Sherlock is covering him with half the second sleeping bag. Trust Sherlock to use a sleeping bag as a plain old blanket. John can feel all his precious warmth seeping out the cracks. He rolls over, grumbling about the cold, and then Sherlock tucks his head in against John’s shoulder.

Oh. Warm.

Sherlock gives off heat better than their campfire. Even his feet are warm, which is ridiculous given he’s been barefoot for hours. “Sherlock?”

“Hm?” John feels this more than hears it, a hum inside his skin.

“Nothing. Go to sleep.”

-

The next time John wakes up, he is almost uncomfortably warm. He pauses, eyes still closed, and catalogues the state of his body. Sherlock has slid down in his sleep. His head is pillowed on John’s chest, and his knees are drawn up against John’s thigh, his feet tangled with John’s. His arm is slung low across John’s stomach. Very low.

Oh. Fuck.

John tries not to react. He really does. He tries not to squirm, he tries not to tense, he tries not to make a noise. For all his trying, Sherlock stirs anyway. He buries his nose in John’s shirt and breathes out slowly.

“John,” Sherlock mumbles, teeth against a shirt button. His hand curls loosely around John’s hip.

“I’m just going to--” John slides out from under Sherlock, untangling his feet and slipping out of the blanket. Sherlock rolls onto his back, awake but still slow and relaxed in a way John’s never seen. John looms over him, bent at the waist to fit in the short tent. “Sorry.” He ducks out into the cool morning air before Sherlock can catch his eye, breathing through his nose.

They can’t keep on like this.

Part 2