“Oh my God, Sherlock, it’s like Tahiti in here,” John complains as he enters Sherlock’s room, practical a ritual greeting as John always runs warm and Sherlock always cold. She mostly ignores him, finishing the paragraph in her inorganic chemistry text, as he strips dramatically out of his rugby shirt. When she looks up, she deduces that he’s not sweaty or freshly-showered enough to have been playing, so his ruddy cheeks are just from walking across campus. Briskly, likely to avoid being detained by one of the many women who tend to stop John wherever he goes around here, and Sherlock bites back a smile at the evidence of his disinterest. He’d come straight home, then, straight home to Sherlock. She tips her chair back on two legs, bracing a hand on the mattress behind her, and extends one long leg to press her foot against John’s chest, only her cold toes contacting warm skin as proof just above his binder.
“Well I think it’s freezing,” she counters mildly. He jumps, but holds her foot protectively in place with both hands until she’s back on four chair legs again. She notices the golden trail of hair that disappears into the waist of his jeans and feels a mild surge of warmth between her legs.
John huffs lightly and releases her foot, then walks over to the closet and chest of drawers stuffed inside it that hold her wardrobe. He glances at her for two whole rests, and she tries not to make any expression as she sees him seeing her—the comfy bee jumper, the sparkly bumble bee hairclip, the jeans that are feminine but also kind of slouchy. He knows now that seeing her gender on any given day goes beyond pronoun preference, that she has shades that even she doesn’t always fully know how to categorize. There was a time, after the first time he kissed her, that she tried to occupy only the sharpest alluring sides of her selves, dressing in the 3/4-sleeved ruched black cotton dress with darkest lipstick or the plum shirt just a hair too tight and Italian leather shoes that scream power. That lasted nearly two weeks, before she came down with a head cold and succumbed to the forest green hoodie and an androgyny that was depressing until John climbed right into bed alongside Sherlock for a snuggle and copped a feel. John, it seems, has a libido that requires no particular edges of certainty to his partner’s gender presentation, and Sherlock appreciates that.
Now, John opens the top drawer and fetches the knee-high yellow and black striped socks with a bee on each toe, and Sherlock would pout “obvious,” except that he kneels down and tugs each sock onto her foot, and they really are the appropriate choice. Except…
“Too thin for much use in warming, John,” she points out, wiggling her toes. He just smiles and starts digging at the back of her closet, and her chest constricts when he emerges with a pair of brown boots she hasn’t worn since April, the pair with the fuzzy little balls that are perfect for stimming. He guides her feet into them, and she wants to say something about how shoes are illogical for the indoors, but he stands and kisses the back of her neck, sliding his hands down to press over her chest, and she determines that it’s not important.