This is my super-silly entry for fuckyeahjohnlockfanfic's Red Pants contest. Strip Bananagrams. Who would have thought?

I'd like to extend my most sincere thanks to Akiame9, who is my wonderfully awesome beta and great friend. Not only did she beta this fic for me, she and I also played several rounds of Bananagrams specifically for this fic. Also, she and I have lovingly nicknamed this story Banana!lock. Do with that what you will.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock or Bananagrams. I'm just using them for my own stupid entertainment.

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Red pants were not something Sherlock expected John to own.

And really, Sherlock had been though John's belongings countless times. Yet he had never seen this particular clothing item in John's possession before.

So when John emerged from the bathroom after having a shower that morning, clad in nothing but his dark blue dressing gown and a pair of solid, bright red briefs, it took Sherlock completely by surprise. Diverted his attention immediately away from whatever was under his microscope to John's…lower region. John looked damn hot in those red pants. They fit him so perfectly, accenting his wonderfully plump arse as well as that other area that Sherlock forbade himself to ever think about.

Things were just not fair.

It was only for an instant that Sherlock was granted this amazing view before John headed upstairs to dress for work, but the image pasted itself in his brain and remained there for the duration of the day. He'd tried to delete it several times with absolutely no luck. After his many fruitless attempts at deletion and distraction, he came to one simple conclusion.

He just had to see those red pants again.

Which was why, ten hours later, Sherlock was standing in front of the door holding a banana-shaped bag full of ivory tiles. John would be arriving home from work any minute now—Sherlock had timed it perfectly, after all—and then this game would commence. Sherlock's plan was fool-proof; if all went smoothly, John would be none the wiser as to Sherlock's true intentions. He'd probably chalk it up to Sherlock just being, well…Sherlock. No ulterior motives here. Just boredom.

He heard the tell-tale creak of the door downstairs, and the familiar shuffling of shoes on the steps. Sherlock could barely contain his anticipation.

"Jesus—Sherlock!" John exclaimed, opening the door and very nearly ramming head-on into his flatmate. Sherlock didn't even budge, his expression as unperturbed as it ever was. The picture of calm. "Don't just stand in front of the door! I almost hit you!"

"John, hurry and put your things down. We are going to engage in a few rounds of strip Bananagrams," the consulting detective announced matter-of-factly, jiggling the cloth bag in his hand. The tiles inside clacked against each other.

John faltered, dropping his satchel on the floor. "What? No, Sherlock, I just got home, it's been a long day. I'm in no mood—"

"It's this or Cluedo again."

At that suggestion, poor John's face went completely ashen. Sherlock smirked, feeling all too triumphant. Clearly the man was still traumatized from their last attempt at playing the murder mystery board game. Come to think of it, the board itself was still held at knifepoint against the wall above the fireplace…

"Since when have we even owned Bananagrams?" John inquired.

"I decided to purchase the game after solving that serial killer case in which the murderer left messages spelled in Bananagrams tiles."

Silence ensued, neither man breaking eye contact with each other, stormy grey on cobalt blue. A minute of intense, unwavering staring later, John finally conceded with a sigh. "Fine. Let me put on some tea first."

John missed Sherlock's little victory jump after he stalked into the kitchen.

Sherlock had all the tiles laid out face-down on the table by the time John entered the sitting room, two steaming cups of tea in hand. Muttering his thanks, Sherlock took his cup from John but immediately set it aside. It was game time now.

"So…rules?" John asked as he settled in his chair across from his flatmate, his enthusiasm for this new endeavor a dying ember compared to Sherlock's fiery spark of excitement.

"You are aware of the basic rules, yes?"

John nodded.

"I have taken the liberty of tailoring the rules to fit the purposes of our game," Sherlock said, taking in a deep breath to prepare for his long-winded explanation of his adjustments to the original rules of the game. "Of course, as you know, we say, 'split,' to begin the round, and say, 'dump,' when we want to get rid of a tile and pick up another. However, each time one of us says, 'peel,' the other has to take off a piece of clothing as well as pick up a tile, as per usual." The curly-haired man then took a purposeful pause, to ensure John was keeping up with him before continuing. "In a normal game, whoever has used all of their tiles and has exhausted the pile says, 'bananas,' but I doubt that we'll get that far without both of us running out of clothing to remove. So, whoever ends up in the nude first loses the round. Understood?"

The expression on John's face was a comical mix of horror, curiosity, and determination. Horror possibly because of the realization that yes, Sherlock was absolutely one hundred percent serious about playing strip Bananagrams. Curiosity perhaps for how their clash of wills and wordplay would turn out. And determination, obviously, to beat Sherlock at this ridiculous game. But Sherlock was having none of that. He would get John to strip down to his red pants, whatever it took.

Both of them started gathering their twenty-one tiles to begin the game, and Sherlock impatiently yelled out, "Split!" before John even had all his tiles.

"Sherlock, wait, I'm not ready!" John rightfully protested, hurriedly gathering eight more tiles.

Sherlock merely waved the comment off, already starting to build his word grid. "Not my fault you didn't select your tiles faster."

"Bloody cheater—"

"Peel."

John, who had only built two words by that point, gaped at his flatmate. "What, already?"

"Yes, now we both grab a tile. Oh, and remove an article of clothing, if you wouldn't mind," Sherlock replied with a lopsided smirk, choosing a letter from the pile.

Grumbling, John toed off one of his shoes. He looked so adorable hunched over his tiles, trying desperately to fit even the most obscure letters into his word grid. Eventually, he had to dump the letter Q and gather three more tiles. Sherlock couldn't help but smile at John's fierce concentration. It almost pained him to say, "Peel," for the second time. But he had a goal to achieve. He needed to see John in his red pants again.

The round went by mostly in silence, save for the times when either man had to dump tiles, or when Sherlock peeled three more times. John was down to his bare feet, jeans, and collared shirt before he finally announced his first peel.

Sherlock slipped off his left shoe and took a closer look at his grid. He was building mostly in a vertical direction with his tiles. So far, he had words like grind, dirty, grip, and lube. Blinking a few times, just to make sure he was seeing correctly, Sherlock read over his words again. Well then. His mind clearly was not in 221b, but currently residing in the filthy gutter outside. Those red pants were doing things to him that he most certainly didn't approve of, and he'd barely seen them for five seconds total. He was going mental.

"Peel!" John cried for the second time, startling Sherlock out of his rather abnormal musings. Oh, right. Words. He was supposed to be making more words.

Now completely shoe-free, Sherlock curled his toes against the floor and pieced more tiles together, coming up with words like ale and date and rent. At least he was straying away from sexual innuendoes—for the time being, anyway.

"Peel," Sherlock said, and both men grabbed a new tile. As per the rules, John removed yet another piece of clothing. He shivered, now completely shirtless, as he dropped his button-up to the floor. Sherlock spared himself at least a few moments to admire John's bare torso—his military-sculpted muscles somewhat hidden by fat gained from domesticity, the little blond hairs decorating his chest, the starburst scar adorning his left shoulder. Stunning.

John peeled for a third time and Sherlock shed his suit jacket, hanging it precariously on the back of his chair. He rolled up the sleeves of his lovely purple shirt and dumped a tile. Time to get down to business. He cleverly placed his remaining tiles into his grid, calling out, "Peel," for the seventh time.

Then John stood up and removed his jeans, and Sherlock was greeted with the most glorious sight ever to breach his corneas.

Those delightful red pants hugged John in all the right places, which Sherlock appreciated perhaps a lot more than he should have. It still struck him as odd that a man like John, who tended to stick to muted and earthy colours, would dare sport such a bright pair of undergarments. Not that he was complaining, however. John and his red pants were a flawless match for one another, much like sodium and chloride or some other chemical compound Sherlock couldn't bring to mind at the moment because dear God those pants.

"Peel," Sherlock said after clearing his throat, earning a pointed stare from John.

"I'm not taking my pants off," John stated with utmost finality. Sherlock didn't even want to come close to admitting he was disappointed that he wouldn't get to see John in his birthday suit, but getting him down to just his pants was more than victory enough. It was the entire point of this charade, after all, and Sherlock was more than delighted at the sight before him.

"That's game, then." As nonchalantly as possible, Sherlock leaned back in his chair and crossed one long leg over the other. "Fancy another round?"

"Best two of three?" John asked, pulling on his jeans and shirt. Sherlock pouted a little at the absence of John's red pants, but no matter. He would have John back down to his underwear in no time.

Not five minutes later, John sat in his chair clad once more in just those addicting red pants of his. He hadn't dressed fully this time around, which was a huge mistake on his part. Sherlock had successfully peeled four times in quick succession, rendering John's attempts at redressing nearly pointless. Granted, Sherlock constructed ridiculously easy words like it and for, but they still counted! John did manage to peel once, however, and Sherlock's right sock flew somewhere across the sitting room, probably never to be seen again.

Sherlock peeled a fifth time, securing his victory for the second round in a row. John still refused to get naked.

"Again," John said, not even giving Sherlock the chance to gloat. Goose pimples littered every inch of his bare skin, but he stayed in his pants and only his pants as he reset all of his tiles to prepare for the next round, haphazardly throwing his clothes back on before officially beginning the round. Once he was fully clothed once again, to Sherlock's chagrin, he called out, "Split!"

This time, arrogance and neglecting to put his missing clothing back on were Sherlock's fatal errors. While he was trying to be clever and build extremely complicated words, John kept having lucky pulls one after another from the pile. Sherlock was left with next to nothing he could use. What the hell was he going to do with two Z's and a J, anyway?

"Peel!" John shouted for the third time that round, and now Sherlock was down to just his trousers—he'd taken off his watch as an article of clothing just before that, and no, that was not cheating, thank you very much. He needed to rework his grid, and fast, if he stood a chance at seeing John's red pants this round. Yet every time he tried to rearrange his letters, he ended up spelling out red more times than he'd care to count. He had to get it together!

"Ha, peel!" Sherlock rebutted, placing down his X tile to complete the word sex. Apparently he was getting desperate, in more ways than one.

John just sat there in his jeans, adopting that smug smirk which usually made its home on Sherlock's face. He peeled again, drawing out every phoneme much longer than necessary. His dark blue eyes watched Sherlock expectantly, and the taller man finally gave in. Long, pale fingers fiddled with the button and zip and he slithered out of his slacks, tossing them to the floor with a huff.

John snorted a laugh. "Bees, Sherlock? Seriously?"

"Shut up, John. Keep playing," Sherlock scowled, pulling a tile, then dumping it and snatching another three.

Before Sherlock had a chance to rid himself of his tiles, John announced his final peel, earning him his first win of the night.

"Aha! Got you, Sherlock!" was John's victory cry. "Let's go again; I'm on a roll now."

"Very well," Sherlock consented easily. He had to redeem himself. The last round was just a fluke. A minor misjudgment. Sherlock just got ahead of himself, got distracted. Though to be fair, it was hard to find John's luscious red pants not distracting. Just the prospect of being able to lay eyes on them while saving himself the humiliation of asking John outright—he hadn't even confessed his feelings yet, for God's sake—sent a chill of excitement down the consulting detective's spine. But this time…this time, he would surely win. It was time to break out the big guns. Sherlock would not falter, would not lose this game.

"Ready?" he asked John, fully dressed save his shoes and his lost-forever sock, poised and prepared to reveal his tiles.

"Ready when you are," John said, equally dressed and raring to go.

Together, they called, "Split!" and the round began.

Thankfully, Sherlock didn't have an awful hand to start with this time around. That made it ten times easier to carry out his ingenious idea. Well, his ideas were always ingenious, but this one definitely more so. There was still the overwhelming possibility that this whole thing would blow up in his face like a catastrophic chemical reaction and ruin every thread of closeness he and John had sewn together, but he was willing to take that risk.

Wonderful. He already had three words spelled out. Things were starting to look promising.

"Peel," John said, catching Sherlock by complete surprise. No, this was not good. With a grunt, Sherlock chucked his jacket away and returned his focus on his grid. He only had three tiles to place now. Where could they go?

After completing the word dick, Sherlock declared his first peel of the round.

Both men remained evenly matched as the game wore on, neither one significantly ahead of the other. They were each down to just their trousers now. It was a close game. John's grid was getting to be rather gargantuan in size, stretching out across the table and almost meeting with Sherlock's. To preserve his own building space, Sherlock decided to move his grid away from John's, only to jumble up half his words in the process.

"Shit," he cursed under his breath, trying frantically, desperately, to arrange his tiles and fix what he'd so foolishly messed up. Most of the words he didn't particularly care about, but there were certain words—like blow and pants and dick, for instance—that absolutely had to remain intact. They were integral to his grand scheme. Now, he just needed one more letter…

"Peel," John proclaimed.

Resisting the urge to scream and throw a tantrum, Sherlock scraped his trousers off and kicked them somewhere toward the kitchen. If John peeled one more time, he was done for. And he still didn't have the one letter he needed. Where the hell was that bloody J tile now that it was actually necessary?

"Peel," Sherlock said, managing to piece together the word red in the meantime. A constant reminder of his end goal. It also didn't help that, now, John was in just his red pants for the third time that evening.

And he drew a W from the pile. Absolutely rotten luck. In a last-ditch effort, Sherlock dumped the useless consonant and picked up three more letters.

Yes. YES. There was his J! Now that his intended words were complete, he just had to figure out where else to put his extra tiles and he'd be home free.

"Peel," John said, sharp and to the point.

Sherlock's hands froze in midair. His breath hitched, his muscles locked up. He could have sworn his heart had even stopped beating for a split second.

"That's game, Sherlock."

No.

He lost.

Sherlock sagged in his chair like a deflated balloon, blank grey eyes regarding his word grid. He just sat there in his bee pants, ignoring the cold air of the flat biting at his exposed skin. So absorbed in mentally berating himself for his failure, he didn't even notice the concerned look John was giving him from across the table.

"Sherlock, you okay?" the doctor asked quietly.

"Fine. I'm fine," Sherlock snapped.

John pursed his lips, obviously not taking Sherlock's words as truth. "That's a load of bollocks," he said, pushing his chair out and rising to his bare feet. He padded over to Sherlock's side of the table, pinning the dark-haired man under a serious stare. "What's the matter?"

"I lost," was Sherlock's simple reply.

"So? It's just a game, Sherlock."

"No it's not."

At that, John tilted his head. "How do you mean?"

Sherlock sucked in a deep breath. He was not ready for this. Not at all. Waving a dismissive hand, he muttered, "Just look at my words, John." He couldn't look at his flatmate, too embarrassed to even try. Instead, he glared holes into the floor.

There was a moment of complete silence and stillness before John angled his head to get a better look at Sherlock's grid. Some words were meaningless, carrying no detailed hint as to the message Sherlock was trying to convey. But there were others that stuck out clear as day, causing John to furrow his brow and inspect them closer.

There, spelled out in ivory tiles, were the words John, red, pants, dick, blow, me, and fate.

"Sherlock…"

The utterance of his name was just enough to send Sherlock into a complete tirade, speaking a mile a minute like when he spouted deductions on the fly. "I saw you in your red pants this morning after your shower and they've affected me in a way that I never thought possible so while you were at the surgery, I spent the day constructing a plan to see you in your red pants again because they just look so amazing on you and I thought this game would be a perfect way to disguise my admittedly unhealthy obsession with your undergarments and, by extension, my feelings for you."

Sherlock finally chanced a glance up at John, who seemed to be stunned into silence by his…rather dramatic confession. And he was scared. Afraid those pretty blue eyes were scrutinizing him, sizing him up, making fun of him and his pathetic attempt at stealth and secrecy.

Then, John smiled. "You always have to make mountains out of mole hills, don't you?" he asked, though it wasn't the least bit condescending.

Sherlock just blinked. What on earth was John saying?

"You did all of this—went through this ridiculously elaborate scheme—just to see my red pants?" John asked for clarification, receiving a single nod from Sherlock. "I think this is both the craziest and the sweetest thing you've ever done for me, Sherlock."

Surely aliens had landed in the middle of London and messed with John's brain. Sherlock was convinced that John would not take lightly to this entire situation, hence his need to keep the doctor in the dark about his true motivations behind something as stupid as strip Bananagrams. But he was okay with it. Not bothered by it at all, it seemed. "For the sake of clarity," he started cautiously, trying extremely hard not to break eye contact with John, "you are…not repulsed by my confession or my true intentions for this game?"

John let out a small laugh. "Well, I was a little weirded out at first," he admitted. "But you're always weird, Sherlock. And I love you for it."

In his chest, Sherlock's heart swelled to ten times its normal size. Even though he lost the last two rounds of their game, he still won. He won John's heart, and he couldn't be happier. Which also hopefully meant that he could see John in his red pants more often, if they both decided to take the next step into relationship territory.

"John…we've both won two rounds of Bananagrams," Sherlock said slowly, his usual smirk steadily making its way back onto his face.

Luckily, John caught on quickly. "Best three of five? Loser has to stay in his pants for the rest of the night.

Sherlock couldn't say, "Split," fast enough.

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As an afterthought, you can see a photo of Sherlock's final word grid here on my tumblr:

chibistarlyte . tumblr post / 31971771861 / this-is-sherlocks-final-strip-bananagrams-word

Thanks for reading, guys.

Until next time,
Chibi