Reposting once again because Monday and I do what I want.

So I wrote this thing for the Red Pants fanart/fanfiction contest at fuckyeahjohnlockfanfic …

Summary:

Sherlock catches John’s girlfriend buying sexy red underwear for a man Sherlock assumes is not John. When Sherlock deduces his mistake, he learns what happens when you assume the wrong things about John Watson. He then devises a way to make up.

This story takes place between Seasons 1 and 2: so, post-Game, pre-Scandal.

Red pants. The woman is buying red underpants. For a man. They have the smoothness and muted shine of silk or a decent synthetic blend. They are red. My brain cannot properly assimilate this fact; it sticks in the processors and won’t be decently filed. Not boxer shorts, pants; briefs, actually. But red.

I shake myself out of my stupor and leave. I have all the facts I need, and there is only one explanation that fits them.

“She’s breaking up with you,” I tell John that night at the flat.

“What?”

“She bought pants today, John. Red, silk, pants. For a man she knows and in whom she’s interested, but whom she’s never actually seen in his underwear or slept with, yet; though she means to soon and she believes that the red pants are her ticket in, as it were. So there’s someone else, someone obviously not you, and she’s so eager to shag him she was imagining it quite vividly in the middle of Debenham’s. You’re not the kind of man to stand for that sort of thing while the two of you are dating, so: clearly, she must end your relationship. Quite soon, possibly tonight. Go with her, and your conversation this evening will likely include the words ‘we need to talk’.”