Bek's Note: Originally something for Christmas, everything else got in the way so I made a few tweaks for it to apply to New Years. I'm just gonna dedicate this to my darling fan club: Ruth. She yelled at me (via text) to finish it. She's also the one to showed me Sherlock and now I'm obsessed.

I don't own Sherlock & its characters, for pleasure not profit, yada, yada.

Hope you enjoy this story!

Cult of Domesticity

Sherlock glared at the mixing bowl sitting in front of him, its contents clumpy and bright yellow. John was seemingly oblivious to his flatmate's current discontent. He hummed along to whatever atrocious music was coming from the radio as he flitted around the kitchen, far more adept in the environment than Sherlock. The consulting detective narrowed his eyes even further. Maybe he could will the mix into correction…

What could only be described as a 'bake-a-thon' started when a certain sandy haired army doctor decided it'd be an absolutely peachy idea to spend New Year's Eve with Harry and Clara.

"You forced me to your mum's on Christmas-"

"Mycroft told her and she was insistent upon meeting you."

"So it's not too much to ask for us to-"

"I had other plans for New Year's Eve. Plans that involved the absence of clothing."

"Spend time with my decidedly less… eccentric family."

"Don't be nice, John. My family's nothing short of insane and dysfunctional."

"It's settled then. We're bringing dessert."

A simple dessert to take to the celebration at Harry and Clara's, easy enough. Then John remembered about the Christmas party at the Yard to which he and Sherlock had been invited to by Lestrade that had been rescheduled due to yet another serial killer terrorizing London. It then seemed a good idea to tell the Detective Inspector 'thank you for putting up with my lunatic of a boyfriend' with baked goods. And in that vein it was only proper to make something for Mrs. Hudson for tolerating Sherlock's flat destroying habits. Then maybe they should bake Mycroft a cake in return for removing CCTV surveillance from the flat.

Before Sherlock knew it, he was roped into baking five different desserts that John insisted all be done in one day.

"John, are you honestly going to trust me to make normal food?"

"Yes. Because if you mess anything up you're either going to end up pissing off myself, Greg, your brother, or Mrs. Hudson."

"I don't particularly care about Lestrade or Mycroft."

"One will ruin the flat with a drugs bust, which will in turn make me incredibly angry. The other will reinstall cameras and make passing comments about our relationship in the most awkward situations possible, which will also make me incredibly angry." John gave him the look. The one that meant there was no room for further argument.

"You're a despot John Watson. The evil little tyrant of 221B."

Theoretically, following a recipe should be no harder than following procedure for an experiment. Take it step by step, use precise measurements, and you should have something at least resembling the desired result. Instead, Sherlock was left with… well he wasn't sure what he had managed to create. He just knew it was wrong. Terrible, horrible, inedible, and wrong.

John was aware of how much trouble Sherlock was having. Secretly he just liked the way Sherlock looked toiling over his latest puzzle. Dark curls pulled out of his hard face with an obscene number of pins, sleeves pushed past his elbows, bright eyes fixated upon the task in front of them. And John couldn't help but chuckle at the apron Sherlock had taken a liking to. The domesticity of it all seemed so juxtaposed to their normal, or not so normal, way of life. The great Sherlock Holmes, the only consulting detective in the world, stood before him baking. For New Years. In an apron.

John shook his head, trying his best to repress his grin from widening any further. Deciding it was time to end Sherlock's suffering, he leaned over to examine the detective's latest attempt at the culinary arts. He sighed when he saw the outcome.

"You've ruined the pie filling again, haven't you?"

Sherlock turned from the mixing bowl, still scowling. "We're going to run out of ingredients. Clearly I'm not fit for such activity. I think you should finish on your own."

John stepped in front of Sherlock as he tried to exit the kitchen. "Oh no, you don't."

"Dull. Boring. Completely uninteresting," he groaned. Sherlock once more tried to step around his shorter companion to no avail. "Please, John. I think we've found the one thing I am not good at. And like I said it's so boring."

Swiping a splash of batter from Sherlock's pale cheek, John grinned coyly. "Care to make it less boring?"

"Always," Sherlock said, all plans for leaving the kitchen obliterated. His mouth shifted from thin line to wide laugh when John cringed after tasting the mixture from Sherlock's face. "I told you I was no good at this."

"Oi, that's disgusting!" John coughed. "Anyone we gave that to would think we're trying to poison them!"

Sherlock's face lit up. "We could give it to Anderson with actual poison. No one would—"

John silenced him with a kiss, the taste of Sherlock's lips much preferred to that of his baking. He pulled back slightly with a quiet 'No murder; not around the holidays' before reclaiming perfect pink lips. Sherlock moaned and leaned into the kiss. The thoughts of his horrible baking and poisoning Anderson slid away from his brain like water from Teflon. The world tunneled in on John. His John. His brave, caring, brilliant John. His John – the one person Sherlock had been searching for. He just wanted someone to tolerate him; never had he dreamed that he'd find someone who loved him, or that he could love back. But along came John.

When Sherlock was lost in his thoughts, John had moved his mouth to suck where Sherlock's expansive neck met shoulder. Biting down playfully, John grinned as the consulting detective was pulled back to reality. Sherlock inhaled sharply, throwing his head back, aching for more contact just like that.

After glancing at the timer on the oven, John said, "Eleven minutes until the cake is done."

A low chuckled rumbled in Sherlock's throat. "I'll have you done in nine."

Everything just had to be a game or competition with Sherlock. Everything had to have an incentive of winning or it just wasn't very interesting for him. He needed to be able to prove himself right. John usually played along and let Sherlock have his fun. An amused Sherlock was undoubtedly better than a bored one.

Also, it didn't hurt that Sherlock's fun had a tendency to involve him.

The air jumped from John's lungs when Sherlock roughly switched their positions and had the doctor pressed against the counter. With hands to either side of him, John was trapped with a predatory Sherlock looming over him. The animalistic look clouding the detective's eyes was nothing if not familiar and delicious. That look paired with the growl that just escaped Sherlock's mouth stopped all blood flow to John's brain and redirected it straight to his groin. He thrust forward, aching for contact. He nearly screamed when he found it. Sherlock crashed his crotch onto John's, grinding furiously while ravaging the good doctor's mouth with his tongue.

Sherlock broke the hold he had on John's mouth only to remove the festive jumper ("I only get to wear them one time during the year, Sherlock. I'm going to celebrate the Christmas season until the first") separating him from John's skin and the increasingly bothersome apron. Before the red and green monstrosity and the apron could even land on the kitchen floor, Sherlock's long fingers were exploring warm skin. John moaned loudly when Sherlock bit down on his right nipple, worrying the left with his hand.

John didn't know how Sherlock managed to unfasten his trousers so quickly. He just knew that when Sherlock wanted John's pants off, they were around his ankles faster than he could blink. A moment ago his nipples were being assaulted by Sherlock and now he was nearly naked with only boxers decorated with Santa and his reindeer remaining.

While John was trying to reconstruct the timeline leading to his unclothing, Sherlock's free hand found its way down to palm John's now straining erection. He teased John through fabric, eliciting a low groan and hard thrust forward. His eyes flicked to the bowl the cake batter used to inhabit. Taking his attention away from John for a second too long, he grabbed the bowl and ran his finger around the edges to collect stray batter. John stared, mesmerized, as Sherlock slowly ran his tongue around his chocolate coated finger. He watched it exit the detective's mouth in what seemed to be slow motion and he swore his jaw hit the kitchen floor. No sooner had the digit been released with a slight 'pop' did John throw his lips onto Sherlock's. His tongue caressed the other man's lips before slipping further in to steal a taste of chocolate batter. Licking it from Sherlock's mouth suddenly made it taste a thousand times better.

"Taste good?"

"Certainly better than yours," John quipped. Sherlock chuckled in agreement.

Sherlock took three fingers through the gooey remnants and trailed them down John's torso, stopping just above blonde pubic hairs. He then ran his tongue back up. The cold streak of saliva sent a shiver through John and what was left of his circulating blood to his already painfully hard erection.

"Sherlock please."

"Please what?" Sherlock said coyly.

"You know what! Stop being such a tease. Wank me! Blow me! Fuck me! Something."

Hearing John, normally so level-headed and collected, come undone and beg like that was definitely at the top of the list of things that made Sherlock love sex with him (aside from the simple fact that it was sex with Doctor John H. Watson which was perfect and wonderful in and of itself.)

Once again running a smooth hand across the front of tented underwear, long fingers slipped past the elastic band for a closer examination.

"Mm, this hard and I've barely played with you yet."

"I'm not a toy," John said indignantly.

"No, of course not," Sherlock kissed his forehead. "You're John. Beautiful, amazing, perfect, and certainly not boring, John."

"You're – oh yes – exaggerating."

"Never" Sherlock sighed, pulling John free and pressing himself closer.

"Damn it," he swore at the sudden rush of air. "Damn it, Sherlock. Please. Please."

He nibbled the ex-soldier's earlobe. "Since you asked so nicely."

Sherlock's pumped John faster. For every thrust into his hand Sherlock responded with a thrust against John's leg, creating a rhythm of friction and panting. John broke pattern when he reached down to fumble with Sherlock's zip. Finally getting a hold of his lover's cock he lined it up with his own. He ran his hand over them to make sure Sherlock knew what he was getting at.

"God!" Sherlock exclaimed at the sensation. Taking both their lengths from John he began jerking more rapidly than before. His forehead fell onto John's, both gathering a shine of sweat. His eyes were clenched shut in attempt to block out any other stimuli other than the amazing feeling of him against John. "Yes. Yes. John, John, John, John!" Sherlock chanted the name like it was the last thing left in that immense brain of his.

John groaned as he heard his name leave Sherlock's mouth, felt it, hot and breathy, ghost across his face. He clasped his arms around the taller man's neck. "I'm right here 'lock. Right here and – hngh– about to come. Just keep – Fuck!"

John smashed his lips to Sherlock's as his orgasm hit him. Everything around them ceased to exist. It was just the two of them, held together by limbs and lips and sweat and semen. So raw. It was moments like this that John relished. He stopped worrying. Sherlock stopped thinking. Everything stopped, if only for the shortest piece of time. They were left as not the Consulting Detective and the Doctor, nor as the Freak and his friend, but as two people in love – everyone and everything else be damned.

Drawing back from the kiss, Sherlock moved to John's ear, breathing heavily. The conceited smirk on his face was audible. "Eight minutes and fifty seven seconds."

"You're an insufferable bastard, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock laughed and released both himself and John from his grasp. He brought his hand to his mouth and cleaned the mixture of fluids with his tongue, watching John lick his lips and swallow hard out of lidded eyes. Licking away the last sticky strand, he grabbed a towel to finish cleaning up. "Still better than my cooking."

Kissing his boyfriend before gathering his clothes to resume baking, John smiled. "But we are not putting that in the pie. I'll finish everything up and you can start cleaning."

"Just as boring," Sherlock whined. "Marginally less aggravating."

As he shook both layers of cake out of the pans and onto cooling racks, John winked at Sherlock. "If you manage not to break anything or turn it into an experiment I'll make it worth your while."

Sherlock cleaned everything in the kitchen until it sparkled.