"You look a little more yourself when you're shaved," Watson said thoughtfully, "but I cannot complain about the state you're in, either. Not seriously." He would have taken Holmes any way at all, shaved or unshaved, and there was part of him that rather revelled in the relative novelty of kissing that much stubble.

"But a bath it is," he agreed. He slid his hand up under Holmes's shirt, stroking the skin of the small of his back. "When you're ready."