Fic: Elsewhere Come Morning - 4/7 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: Elsewhere Come Morning
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 5.3k this part, 35k overall
Betas: vyctori and fogbutton
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: On second thought, flirting with an alternate reality version of his flatmate may have been a bad idea. (John-centric AU, follows directly on from The World on His Wrist)
part one - part two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven
That night, after operating, after driving himself and Marta back to their respective homes, John returns to his computer. He can’t focus any longer, has managed all day, but the one picture of Sherlock he has here is from the news articles, the obituary. He looks at it anyway, opens it in a new tab so he doesn’t have to see the text surrounding it.
The image reveals more than it ever has before. He’s still proud, still aloof. That hasn’t changed. But John sees the reason now, sees the buttoned shirt and the tie, an actual tie. His hair is shorter, cheekbones more impossibly prominent. He looks wrong, restrained. He’s been positioned, forced into this. Mycroft at fault, could only be. Responsible for the tie as well as the photograph. It’s a bit of a leap, but it feels right, if anything about this could be said to feel right.
John looks at it, and looks at it, and hopes tomorrow will be a Tuesday.
It is, impossibly, a Tuesday. It’s even the Tuesday he wants.
When John wakes, he doesn’t move, not at first. There’s a gaze on his face tracing his lips, fingers on his chest toying with his ID circles. He can feel them both, distantly realizes he’s moved during the night. He lies on his back now, the thick line of Sherlock’s heat down his side rather than along his spine.
He opens his eyes, blinks slowly as he focuses on the face so close to his. This is a good distance for them. Far enough not to kiss, only just.
Shifting onto his side brings them closer still. Sherlock’s hand slides across his skin, slips around a bicep. Holds him, strong and steady. John presses their foreheads together, remaining lethargy tugging down his smile as well as his eyelids. He feels too gentle to fight it. Their morning breath mingles, mutually foul and nothing to be upset over.
“Don’t let me fall asleep,” John murmurs.
Sherlock’s nose brushes against his. “I don’t plan to.” His low amusement could melt on the tongue.
“I mean it.” He makes his arm move, deliberate in the lazy stretch over Sherlock’s side. His hand settles in a slide, palm pressed to a sharp scapula. He wants to savour this, just for a moment, for the tiny moment this will last. They aren’t meant for stasis, no matter how they may linger.
Sherlock kisses his eyelids. One, and the other. He hums with something that might be agreement or lethargy or next to anything.
John tries not to shake, externally. His insides, he can’t seem to do anything about, warm and smooth and terrified. Sherlock operates from a list of prearranged romantic actions; trusting behaviour to reflect emotion is an untenable risk.
Face tucked against Sherlock’s neck, John tries not to think. His languid morning has prickled away into vague tension.
Sherlock grunts, annoyed.
“You don’t want your puzzle, then?” John asks, voice breaking with sleep.
Sherlock goes stiff. Pulls back a slight amount. John knows he’s being looked at. Sherlock says, “Whatever you reveal today, you must have already known yesterday. You can’t have accessed anything new.”
“I didn’t and I can,” John answers. He opens his eyes, lifts them to Sherlock’s face. “That’s why it’s called a puzzle.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I’m not that good of a liar, remember?”
Confusion laces Sherlock’s face, cracks through his eyes. He lifts his hand as if to touch or gesture, only to do neither. “Show me,” he says.
John does. He extracts himself from the bed, pads across the rug and fetches the paper and pen. He returns and jots down today’s list, using a hardcover as a writing surface. First, the name of one of the newspapers he’d used for the second piece of his puzzle. Next, four headlines. Last, four dates, starting with Sherlock’s tomorrow.
“There you are,” John says, handing it over. Sherlock had read as he’d written, but his flatmate scans the list all the same.
“Headlines for the next four days,” Sherlock says.
“Yep,” John says. “You did ask for range.”
“The headlines you gave me yesterday, I haven’t checked those yet.”
“I know. Feel free, they’re right.”
“John, you can’t-” Sherlock cuts himself off, but his eyes say the rest.
“It’s simple when you know the trick to it,” John says. “It’s ridiculous, really. It’s not like what you do, there’s no skill involved.”
“This shouldn’t be possible,” Sherlock says.
“And you shouldn’t put heads in our fridge, but that’s never stopped you.”
“Only the one,” Sherlock counters. “You’re avoiding the subject.”
“Do you want me to tell you, then?”
“No.” Immediate, forceful. “I need more time, but I’ll sort it out. I’m not an idiot.”
“You’ll have to rethink what’s possible first,” John replies. He can’t hold back the hint.
“John,” Sherlock snaps.
John shuts his mouth.
It occurs to the one, then to the other, that they are still partially naked and both upon Sherlock’s bed. The air is cold. For long moments, an endless progression of them, they are silent. They look at each other, avoid looking. They begin to speak only to remain silent after the first sound.
“Tell me one thing,” Sherlock says at last, almost calm and close to furious. “I don’t want the answer, I’ll find that myself, I only want to know one thing.”
“Yes, all right,” John says.
“How did I miss this?”
“There was nothing there to see,” John answers.
“Because you’re careful.”
“Because I’m very careful.”
Sherlock’s eyes stare over John’s shoulder, piercing the opposite wall. If by sheer force of will, Sherlock could open a window to the answers, that gaze would have done it in an instant.
“I swear I’m not trying to drive you around the bend.”
“I know.”
“Or humiliate you.”
“I know.”
“And I wasn’t holding back because I didn’t trust you.”
Sherlock very nearly looks at his ear.
John reaches for him and Sherlock holds still for it, tense and taut. He closes his eyes, practically vibrating beneath the touch, quaking. Mouths closed, lips dry, the pressure is gentle but Sherlock won’t be soothed. His hand seizes the back of John’s head and he forces their brows together. John can feel the focus in him, the hum of energy, as if Sherlock is trying to get at the answers through skin and bone, from brain to brain.
“If I don’t let you out of my sight today,” Sherlock asks, “will it accomplish anything?”
“No,” John answers, resigned, hand curled against the racing pulse high in his neck. Kisses the determined line of his mouth. “But you can do it anyway.”
“Yoohoo! Boys!” A double-knock against a doorframe.
They’ve relocated to the sitting room by then, but the image they make is still shy of innocent. They’re caught long after the act, a dark, dotted line down Sherlock’s neck.
John sticks his thumb between the pages of his book and prepares to meet whatever his fate will be.
As it turns out, his fate is lunch. A very nice lunch, lovingly prepared by their concerned landlady. “You’ve been holed up in here ever since that awful night,” she says, setting out a tray for Sherlock in the kitchen. “And that young man of yours, he never does remember to eat, does he?”
She’s nothing if not fond, but John’s stomach drops all the same. The old impulse to deny rises up and is quickly followed by an unsettling paradigm shift. John now has a... a whatever the hell Sherlock is. They haven’t talked about terms yet. They haven’t talked about anything yet. “It’s safer for the time being,” John says all the same, “staying inside. It’s bad enough with the security detail downstairs - and I am sorry about that, I really am.”
“Oh, they’re all dears,” Mrs. Hudson answers. It would mean more if she didn’t refer to Sherlock just the same way. John wonders, vaguely, who she wouldn’t say that about.
“And you’re a saint,” he replies, the only reply possible. It hits him, not for the first time, but for the first time that scares him, that she almost died. She could have been in that car with Moriarty, handcuffed to the seat before being wrapped in explosives.
Somewhere else, that’s happened. He knows theoretically - better than most, but theoretically all the same - that everything happens somewhere. Somewhere, outside of John’s life, Mrs. Hudson did die. Or maybe she didn’t, Sherlock already dead and Moriarty without need of a hostage. He doesn’t know, not really, but it’s all possible. It’s all so very possible.
He hugs her and she hugs him back, surprisingly strong for a woman of her age and build.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” she tells him, voice firm above his shoulder.
John swallows thickly.
She pulls back and smiles at him. John hasn’t seen a smile like that since his mother died. She pats his arm. “I would have been up sooner, but I thought you’d need the time to reassure yourselves. Everyone needs that, sometimes.”
“Oh, no, we could have-” And he realizes what she’s saying. “We could have come down before, except for, well, the leg problems and... such.”
“Oh, I understand,” she says, touching her hip. “This one’s been acting up, too. Those crutches of his will be an issue. I can hear him thumping about when he gets low.”
“Mm.” He wants and dreads to ask. Is that the entirety of the thumping about she’s heard? Has she also heard them reassuring themselves? God, and Mycroft’s security team. The thought of it mortifies him down to his core. Needing a distraction, he leans in and quietly confides, “I don’t think he’d ask, but he’d like it if you signed his cast.”
He eats lunch off his flatmate’s tray, watching Mrs. Hudson doodle across Sherlock’s shin, grinning as Sherlock glares.
John knows the internet can’t actually be torn apart, but he’s half waiting for Sherlock to manage it anyway. Sherlock is going to break the internet and he’s going to use John’s laptop to do it. He’s at the phase where he starts muttering and snaps if John asks him to repeat anything, but that’s hardly the worst of it. Sherlock won’t let John have his laptop back and has managed, crutches or no, to unplug the telly and hide the remote. It’s probably next to wherever Sherlock’s hidden his mobile. When John protests the continuing media blackout, Sherlock relents enough to read John’s emails to him. Without asking for John’s password. This is before Sherlock resumes whinging about how his injury is paining him. His real leg injury. Over that afternoon, Sherlock extracts more than his share of revenge for the happy squiggles currently adorning his cast.
Eventually, Sherlock decides that it’s time for a distraction. After this announcement, he adds, “Do you think you could manage it?”
John blinks a bit, mentally rewinds their lack of conversation and, no, Sherlock hasn’t actually specified anything. “Manage a distraction?”
“Frottage against the wall.” The response is delivered so bluntly that John can’t quite tell if that was an actual answer or deadpan sarcasm.
“Well, since you’re so eager.”
“You’re strong and I don’t weigh that much. We’d have to be careful about the start, but once you get me up against the wall, it should be possible.” Sherlock indicates the patch of wall.
“Let’s find out,” John decides.
It’s definitely not the worst idea Sherlock’s ever had, but that’s not saying much.
They laugh anyway.
“I’ve been trying to find the reason,” Sherlock muses afterward. The pyjama bottoms have once again vacated the premises, one of the many reasons their doors are locked. John has a renewed awareness of Mrs. Hudson and the security detail downstairs; the pre-emptive mortification has begun to set in despite the idle motions of fingers through his hair. Sherlock is warm atop him, a hard, knobby blanket of dressing gown and body.
“What are we talking about now?” John asks. It’s either him or Moriarty and if it’s Moriarty this soon after orgasm, someone is getting shoved off this sofa.
Sherlock taps him on the forehead.
Good.
“The reason for what?” John asks. “There’s a range, here.”
“You said there was a trick to it,” Sherlock says. “No skill involved, just a trick. Except a trick is often a skill.”
“Not in this case.”
“Your ability isn’t something you feel you’ve earned,” Sherlock continues, clearly not listening. “‘Trick’ has uglier connotations than other synonyms you could have used. ‘Knack’, for instance.”
“It’s not a knack.”
“There,” Sherlock says, pushing himself up unexpectedly. Hands beside John’s head, elbows locked, there’s an excitement in his eyes that’s close to vicious. No, fervid. No less intense, but slightly less harmful. “Right there. You complained.”
John blinks up at him. “What? No I didn’t.”
“You did,” Sherlock insists. “I heard you and I felt you tense. You’ve stumbled onto this by accident, haven’t you? You have. No skill, a trick, something you barely take advantage of, yes: this is an accident. It is, isn’t it? That’s why there’s no reason for you to be doing it.”
John stops breathing.
Sherlock’s eyes narrow.
Under that scrutiny, John’s throat stoppers itself. He fights through it, forces his lungs to expand while his world contracts. He’s pinned by legs, framed by arms, and Sherlock might actually manage this. If his Sherlock can manage, what of the other one? What about Mycroft?
Sherlock’s gaze sharpens as his voice dims. “You’re frightened.”
“No,” John denies.
“You are.”
“Not for the reason you think.”
Sherlock shifts, pulling back and pushing away. John grasps him by the dressing gown in clear refusal. Sherlock glares at him.
“It’s fine,” John says.
“It obviously isn’t.”
“Strange, when the rest of it isn’t obvious at all.”
That’s enough to stop Sherlock from resisting but not at all enough to draw him back.
“I’m worried about tomorrow,” John tells him.
“Tomorrow being...?” Sherlock prompts.
“Wednesday.”
Only when Sherlock glares at him once more does John realize how glib his response must sound. John’s worried about today and tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday in the next London over. A different day, a different tomorrow. A different Sherlock.
“Sorry,” John says. It’s not enough either. “That came out wrong.”
Sherlock sits up, left leg hanging off the couch, knee over John’s shin. He’s turned half toward John, or half away. “What’s tomorrow?”
If John answers incorrectly, Sherlock doesn’t need to say, it will be the end of the conversation. Possibly more.
“I don’t know yet,” he admits. He props himself up on his elbows. He feels exposed, all soft stomach and beating heart. “That’s why I’m worried.”
“Do you usually know?”
“Sometimes,” John says, ignoring how accusatory that sounded. “Not when it’s personally relevant, though. Not much of a help.” He pauses. “Well, there’s Harry. I typically know when it comes to Harry.”
“Only Harry?”
John nods. Everything and everyone else, he’s compartmentalized into one life or another. He feels bad about it with Bill, will make it up to him after returning from Afghanistan. He tells himself he will, knowing he likely won’t. The only reason Harry slips by is that she keeps calling, keeps in touch regardless of how he feels. She even mails him things in Afghanistan and it makes him feel like such a shit brother.
“Could you with someone else?” Sherlock asks. He moves back a little and John knows an invitation when he sees one.
John sits up, sets his hand on Sherlock’s leg over his, the bare knee resting across his trouser-clad thigh. “I could have with Bill. The nurse who took the bullet out of my shoulder? Him. Not as much as with Harry, but I could have.”
“You made a conscious decision to look away.”
“Feel bad about it, but there we are.” Briskly said, it’s almost easy to get out.
Sherlock leans back, too controlled to be sprawling. He drapes himself over pillow and cushion and air, is held up by them all without appearing to need the support. He’s too relaxed not to be tense. John can feel it in his legs. “What about me? You haven’t tried predicting me yet. Is that what tomorrow is?”
“You’re a blind spot,” John answers. “You’re all surprises, always will be. Moriarty’s a blind spot too, in case you were wondering.”
“It’s a permanent condition?”
“Yes,” John says, and because he doesn’t like to think about that, he adds, “I used to be able to do cars.”
A bit of a frown there. “Do what?”
“I could go anywhere in London, anytime, and know what cars would pass by,” he answers. “I don’t mean colours, I mean which exact cars.”
“That’s not possible,” Sherlock says.
“Not anymore,” John agrees. “I mean, I haven’t tried in ages, but even if I still can, it’s a pointless thing to know.”
Sherlock stares at him.
“I could try if you want, but it’ll be five days from now and it might not work.”
“Why five?”
“It’s a range issue.” He could try to move digital London ahead of analogue, but with the issues he has going on there, he doesn’t want to rush any of it. He’ll have to take the train in from Chelmsford again instead. If he does that next he wakes there, it will still be five days from now. The problem with that plan is the differences Moriarty’s explosions have made. That must’ve done something to the traffic.
Sherlock goes right on staring at him.
“I’m not making this up,” John says.
Sherlock says nothing.
“This is why I don’t talk about it,” John adds.
“Clearly.” A reply as distant as Sherlock’s eyes.
John looks down, finds his palm has slipped from knee to cast. So much less immediate than bare skin, contact through a hard barrier. “It’s not going to make sense. It’s internally consistent, but you have to take a running leap for it first.”
“A hobbling fall is more my area at the moment,” Sherlock answers. “I believe our attempt with the wall made that clear.”
He shakes his head, meets that grey gaze. “If anyone could manage it....”
“John, this is insane,” Sherlock tells him flatly.
“It doesn’t take that long to get used to.” All relative, of course. For all John knows, he might have years watching Sherlock adjust to the concept. Or one year, Sherlock walking away after three calendar months. John’s sure he’ll last at least that long. Then again, he was once certain this would last much longer and that was only last week (month). “Or, well, maybe it does, but it doesn’t have to interfere in daily life. It never has before.”
When Sherlock doesn’t respond, John asks, “Would you rather not have known?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock scoffs. Although their legs remain entangled, Sherlock keeps their upper bodies apart. If he sat up, he’d be kissing close. Leaning back, leaning away, he’s distant enough that John would have to reach to touch his shoulder. John remains upright, not leaning one way or the other.
“Nope,” John says. “Can’t help it. Ridiculous is my default state. I hide it well, but you’ve found me out.”
Sherlock turns his face, eyes on the wall. Just as he had this morning, he makes a go at staring through wallpaper and plaster. It makes John think of the gun he has safely back in his drawer upstairs, courtesy of Mycroft. The smiley face still smiles through its wounds. Faintly at first, then louder, John can hear the ticking of his own watch. The sound of passing cars outside.
“What’s tomorrow?” Sherlock asks. “What you don’t know, it’s something specific. I said you gained your ability by accident and it frightened you. Why? Because of the nature of that accident or because I was right?”
“You made me realize something, that’s all,” John explains. Attempts to explain. “But it doesn’t affect you.”
“But it does involve me.”
“Not you, no.”
If I’m a blind spot, how do you know it doesn’t involve me?”
“The same way I know that a rockslide in New Zealand won’t hit you on the head. Let’s just say I would be extremely surprised.”
To all appearances, Sherlock is impassive, unimpressed. John’s well aware it’s a bad sign, an even worse one when Sherlock asks, “And when was the last time you were... ‘extremely surprised’?”
“The first explosion,” John answers, not needing to think. “Hell of a thing not to see coming.”
Sherlock’s eyebrows pull together, his eyes sharp beneath.
“What?” John asks.
“You didn’t know?”
“What? No, of course I didn’t know.”
Arms crossed over his narrow chest, Sherlock manages to lean back even farther. He lifts his chin, mouth proud, his marked neck on unintentional display. “You left the flat in quite a hurry.”
“Instead of getting you away from the windows and Mrs. Hudson off the stairs,” John responds, knowing better than to bring up how Sherlock had practically chased him out. “I didn’t know. That’s how I realized Moriarty was a blind spot.”
Sherlock’s eyes flick away.
“Would I let someone hurt you?” John asks bluntly. His fingers curl around the cast, thumb stroking blue fibreglass. “If I had any choice in the matter, any whatsoever?”
Sherlock’s answer is grudging, but it comes all the same. “No.” As if he’s about to go and have a sulk over it.
“You know I want to tell you.”
“I like to think I know you well enough to know that,” Sherlock retorts and that’s when John gets it. Voice angry, arms defensive, eyes uncertain - John can only be seeing the smallest piece of it.
“You know what counts,” John says. It’s not a lie.
He risks a touch. Leaning forward, his hand lifts from cast to elbow. Through the dressing gown, the sharp jut of bone isn’t at all softened.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” John decides. “All of it.”
“I can solve this on my own.” His glare is hard, but he doesn’t shake John off. “I need more time.”
“I’d give you more if I could,” he says, or he lies. He’s really not sure. He had never thought this would tear Sherlock into so many pieces. Maybe he should have, but it’s too late now. “Thing is, I need your help with something.”
“With what?”
“Something that doesn’t make sense out of context,” John promises.
Sherlock unfolds his arms, dislodging John’s hand in the process. “Is that why you’re telling me now? Not a word, not a peep, but now that you need something-”
“Now that we’re shagging,” John corrects.
“Told Sarah, did you?”
“Nope,” John says. Never shagged her either. Sherlock must know that. His flatmate is jealous, insecure, lashing out. John’s never seen it so clearly. “And I wasn’t planning on it. There wasn’t any point.”
Sherlock’s fingers flex, hands almost lifting from his lap. The restrained motion catches John’s eye. He looks down, his pulse pounds, and he remembers that Sherlock’s pants and pyjama bottoms are still halfway across the room. Dressing gown or no, Sherlock’s fighting naked. Small wonder he’s vulnerable.
“What is the point?” Sherlock asks.
“The point is,” John says, “that this isn’t it.” He can feel his pulse across his body, within his ears and through his skin. “I’ve shown you the symptoms, not the disease. All this-” he waves his hand toward the coffee table, the written puzzle pieces set across it “-is like being able to see through camouflage because of colour-blindness. It’s only selectively helpful and I have to be looking.”
“You’re saying it’s an impairment.”
“I’m saying it’s a medical condition. And no, it’s not contagious.” As far as he knows.
“What are the other symptoms?”
“Some short term memory difficulties, occasional emotional instability, and a profound annoyance at being woken up too early.”
“That isn’t the full list,” Sherlock says. “What are the rest?”
He smiles at that. He doesn’t mean to, but he smiles all the same. “I said I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“Your accident, then. Not an accident in the traditional sense, but the onset of this, this condition. Chronic?”
“Very,” John says. “And undocumented. I’ve checked. I don’t think people like me come forward very often.” Not without being sectioned, at any rate.
Sherlock’s hands shift yet again. John takes indecision for invitation and brushes his knuckles across Sherlock’s side. His fingers slip between arm and ribs, palm light. He curls fingertips into fabric.
A slow movement, Sherlock pushes himself upright. Though sitting, he towers over John, lips at the level of his eyes. He’s a breath away. John’s arms twine around his back. Cheek to shoulder, such a hard pillow, and John sighs his eyes closed. He relaxes his body in an attempt to unwind Sherlock as well. A hopeless attempt, but he has to try something.
“You’ve told me almost everything, haven’t you?” Sherlock asks. “And I still don’t know.”
“I wasn’t asking you to figure it out,” John tells the soft skin of his neck. At the moment, it’s the only thing soft about him. “Not really.”
A puff of breath over John’s ear, disbelief and derision. “Then what?”
John doesn’t let go. He refuses to.
“I needed you to believe me,” he says. “I couldn’t think of any other way to convince you.”
Long fingers curl around John’s nape. A thumb strokes at his hairline. John trembles, all of him, skin and bone and breath.
“All right,” Sherlock says. “I’m convinced.”
“What time tomorrow?”
They’ve switched positions entirely by now, Sherlock on his back, John on top of him. Sharp hipbones dig against his stomach. His shoulder shakes from holding up his torso. The dressing gown has long since opened and John lies clothed atop a naked man, hips between pale thighs.
“Ten o’clock,” John says.
“At night?”
“In the morning.” They’ll need the rest of the day for explanations, much of the night for planning. If there is anything to be planned, that is, some remaining way for John to avoid Sherlock’s detection in his other London. Some way that Mycroft will let him.
“I’m not sleeping tonight,” Sherlock decides. His hands have long since ventured up the back of John’s untucked shirt. Ten fingertips ghost down his spine, up his ribs, such smooth, unending circles. “Not enough time.”
“All right.” He lowers himself to Sherlock’s chest, relaxing his shoulder, trapping his arms between Sherlock and the sofa cushion. His left hand has already fallen asleep.
Sherlock is hard and flat, muscle tensed into bone. His skin is suppler than it is soft, as well as slightly hairy. He’s cotton but no less comforting than a woman’s silk. He’s so pale, a long, unexposed stretch of torso and thigh.
“Let me kiss you?” John asks. “If it’s too much of a distraction, you don’t-”
Interruption comes at an awkward angle. John props himself up, Sherlock opens his mouth, and they lie there tasting each other, lips and tongue and uneven breath. Sherlock kisses with his eyes open, John discovers. At this moment or always, he has yet to learn.
His shirt bunches, rides up his back, his sides, his front. Sherlock’s hips nudge upward, a press of pelvis, such heat between the points of bone. Not quite soft against his stomach, becoming less so, rocking up, against. Kisses deepen. Warm hands steal down his spine, a ghosting touch that sets him shivering. He arches his back, presses his hips. They gasp together, not quite in sync.
Lower, around, under, those hands go, palming him through his zip. Every touch and twitch is a tease. No brief grope, it goes on without release. Pants and trousers between skin and heat. Much too quickly, Sherlock riles him. The prolonged grope turns torturous. Purposeful motions, each demanding acceleration. More, now, faster. Could be dangerous, come now, soon, try.
“God, this.” Whispered praise as he ruts against Sherlock’s too-light touch. “Need more of you.”
Sherlock nips at his lips when he groans, soon denies him his tongue, turns his face away.
“Sherlock,” John pants. His hips thrust and his mouth searches, but none of it is enough. He needs his trousers off but has his hands trapped beneath his madman’s back. “Sherlock.”
Breathy and low, a broken syllable: “Why?”
“What?” Christ, no. No mind games, not now. Can’t think. Needing skin. Needing to spill across it and lick it clean. Or inside. Anything.
That hand slips higher, off John’s prick, presses hard against his stomach. Long thighs squeeze John’s hips too hard for him to thrust, too high for him to touch. It’s a grip of leg that ought to mean orgasm, tight and claiming. “Why?” Sherlock insists.
“You’re not honestly-” God, he is.
“Why?”
“Need you,” he insists. “You know I- fuck, please.”
Knuckles play over his zip. “You need my hand.”
“All of you.” Desperate. “You said I could. All over you.” Coming and coming, he needs to come.
“My hand, my mouth, my arse,” Sherlock lists.
John can match his gaze but can’t catch his mouth. He fights to free his hands, either hand, both trapped below sharp shoulder blades. He frees the one, the left, the half-numb one. Reaches down between them and Sherlock seizes his wrist. Sherlock pulls John’s hand away from his zip, pulls him away from where he wasn’t reaching.
He touches Sherlock, smearing precum down the shaft. Sloppy, no finesse. Barely holds on as Sherlock jolts beneath him. “Idiot,” John gasps out. “You fucking idiot. Let me kiss you.”
Sherlock strains for him and John presses him down. Fingers at his zip now, finally, hand down his pants first, protecting from metal teeth, so very, very good. Trousers down, over the curve of his arse, Sherlock’s foot pushing fabric, legs spread wide. John ruts into him, pants into his mouth, and Sherlock’s hand wraps around his fingers, around both their pricks.
He opens his eyes and Sherlock stares into him. Always watching. Always, always, eyes wide open. How long? How long has he, has he this?
That hand releases, pulls at his. Fingers dig into his arse, tug him down and forward and against, and John’s on his forearms, on his knees. Closer, he needs closer, more, his shirt still bunched between their chests, thin chain and circles of metal caught up in cloth and sweat and skin.
A sudden press, below, his arse, the shock of it. His head snaps back. He shouts. Air vanishes. Grey. Sherlock’s eyes.
Hard shoulder. Chin on top. Cheek against pillow, wet heat under stomach. Quick breath in his ear, slowing, not slow. Motion beneath, aftershocks. Hands on his arse, fingertip over his hole. Circling. Twitch. Groan. Face to neck. Kiss.
In time, he relearns how to move.
“Don’t laugh,” John tells him, sometime later.
Lazy strokes down his back, smooth, unfaltering. “Laugh at what?”
His stomach tightens. His heart pounds the blood out from his head.
I almost text you, even when you don’t know me, and I’m jealous of a flatmate you’ve never met. I can’t be in London when you’re dead. I should avoid you tomorrow, insane brother or not, but you’ve killed my self-preservation.
“I miss you when I sleep,” he says.
The stroking pauses. Resumes.
Sherlock doesn’t laugh.
John slips naked beneath Sherlock’s duvet.
Across the bedroom, Sherlock perches on his cleared-off chair, desk lamp illuminating the papers before him.
John closes his eyes and sleeps.
next
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 5.3k this part, 35k overall
Betas: vyctori and fogbutton
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: On second thought, flirting with an alternate reality version of his flatmate may have been a bad idea. (John-centric AU, follows directly on from The World on His Wrist)
part one - part two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven
That night, after operating, after driving himself and Marta back to their respective homes, John returns to his computer. He can’t focus any longer, has managed all day, but the one picture of Sherlock he has here is from the news articles, the obituary. He looks at it anyway, opens it in a new tab so he doesn’t have to see the text surrounding it.
The image reveals more than it ever has before. He’s still proud, still aloof. That hasn’t changed. But John sees the reason now, sees the buttoned shirt and the tie, an actual tie. His hair is shorter, cheekbones more impossibly prominent. He looks wrong, restrained. He’s been positioned, forced into this. Mycroft at fault, could only be. Responsible for the tie as well as the photograph. It’s a bit of a leap, but it feels right, if anything about this could be said to feel right.
John looks at it, and looks at it, and hopes tomorrow will be a Tuesday.
It is, impossibly, a Tuesday. It’s even the Tuesday he wants.
When John wakes, he doesn’t move, not at first. There’s a gaze on his face tracing his lips, fingers on his chest toying with his ID circles. He can feel them both, distantly realizes he’s moved during the night. He lies on his back now, the thick line of Sherlock’s heat down his side rather than along his spine.
He opens his eyes, blinks slowly as he focuses on the face so close to his. This is a good distance for them. Far enough not to kiss, only just.
Shifting onto his side brings them closer still. Sherlock’s hand slides across his skin, slips around a bicep. Holds him, strong and steady. John presses their foreheads together, remaining lethargy tugging down his smile as well as his eyelids. He feels too gentle to fight it. Their morning breath mingles, mutually foul and nothing to be upset over.
“Don’t let me fall asleep,” John murmurs.
Sherlock’s nose brushes against his. “I don’t plan to.” His low amusement could melt on the tongue.
“I mean it.” He makes his arm move, deliberate in the lazy stretch over Sherlock’s side. His hand settles in a slide, palm pressed to a sharp scapula. He wants to savour this, just for a moment, for the tiny moment this will last. They aren’t meant for stasis, no matter how they may linger.
Sherlock kisses his eyelids. One, and the other. He hums with something that might be agreement or lethargy or next to anything.
John tries not to shake, externally. His insides, he can’t seem to do anything about, warm and smooth and terrified. Sherlock operates from a list of prearranged romantic actions; trusting behaviour to reflect emotion is an untenable risk.
Face tucked against Sherlock’s neck, John tries not to think. His languid morning has prickled away into vague tension.
Sherlock grunts, annoyed.
“You don’t want your puzzle, then?” John asks, voice breaking with sleep.
Sherlock goes stiff. Pulls back a slight amount. John knows he’s being looked at. Sherlock says, “Whatever you reveal today, you must have already known yesterday. You can’t have accessed anything new.”
“I didn’t and I can,” John answers. He opens his eyes, lifts them to Sherlock’s face. “That’s why it’s called a puzzle.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I’m not that good of a liar, remember?”
Confusion laces Sherlock’s face, cracks through his eyes. He lifts his hand as if to touch or gesture, only to do neither. “Show me,” he says.
John does. He extracts himself from the bed, pads across the rug and fetches the paper and pen. He returns and jots down today’s list, using a hardcover as a writing surface. First, the name of one of the newspapers he’d used for the second piece of his puzzle. Next, four headlines. Last, four dates, starting with Sherlock’s tomorrow.
“There you are,” John says, handing it over. Sherlock had read as he’d written, but his flatmate scans the list all the same.
“Headlines for the next four days,” Sherlock says.
“Yep,” John says. “You did ask for range.”
“The headlines you gave me yesterday, I haven’t checked those yet.”
“I know. Feel free, they’re right.”
“John, you can’t-” Sherlock cuts himself off, but his eyes say the rest.
“It’s simple when you know the trick to it,” John says. “It’s ridiculous, really. It’s not like what you do, there’s no skill involved.”
“This shouldn’t be possible,” Sherlock says.
“And you shouldn’t put heads in our fridge, but that’s never stopped you.”
“Only the one,” Sherlock counters. “You’re avoiding the subject.”
“Do you want me to tell you, then?”
“No.” Immediate, forceful. “I need more time, but I’ll sort it out. I’m not an idiot.”
“You’ll have to rethink what’s possible first,” John replies. He can’t hold back the hint.
“John,” Sherlock snaps.
John shuts his mouth.
It occurs to the one, then to the other, that they are still partially naked and both upon Sherlock’s bed. The air is cold. For long moments, an endless progression of them, they are silent. They look at each other, avoid looking. They begin to speak only to remain silent after the first sound.
“Tell me one thing,” Sherlock says at last, almost calm and close to furious. “I don’t want the answer, I’ll find that myself, I only want to know one thing.”
“Yes, all right,” John says.
“How did I miss this?”
“There was nothing there to see,” John answers.
“Because you’re careful.”
“Because I’m very careful.”
Sherlock’s eyes stare over John’s shoulder, piercing the opposite wall. If by sheer force of will, Sherlock could open a window to the answers, that gaze would have done it in an instant.
“I swear I’m not trying to drive you around the bend.”
“I know.”
“Or humiliate you.”
“I know.”
“And I wasn’t holding back because I didn’t trust you.”
Sherlock very nearly looks at his ear.
John reaches for him and Sherlock holds still for it, tense and taut. He closes his eyes, practically vibrating beneath the touch, quaking. Mouths closed, lips dry, the pressure is gentle but Sherlock won’t be soothed. His hand seizes the back of John’s head and he forces their brows together. John can feel the focus in him, the hum of energy, as if Sherlock is trying to get at the answers through skin and bone, from brain to brain.
“If I don’t let you out of my sight today,” Sherlock asks, “will it accomplish anything?”
“No,” John answers, resigned, hand curled against the racing pulse high in his neck. Kisses the determined line of his mouth. “But you can do it anyway.”
“Yoohoo! Boys!” A double-knock against a doorframe.
They’ve relocated to the sitting room by then, but the image they make is still shy of innocent. They’re caught long after the act, a dark, dotted line down Sherlock’s neck.
John sticks his thumb between the pages of his book and prepares to meet whatever his fate will be.
As it turns out, his fate is lunch. A very nice lunch, lovingly prepared by their concerned landlady. “You’ve been holed up in here ever since that awful night,” she says, setting out a tray for Sherlock in the kitchen. “And that young man of yours, he never does remember to eat, does he?”
She’s nothing if not fond, but John’s stomach drops all the same. The old impulse to deny rises up and is quickly followed by an unsettling paradigm shift. John now has a... a whatever the hell Sherlock is. They haven’t talked about terms yet. They haven’t talked about anything yet. “It’s safer for the time being,” John says all the same, “staying inside. It’s bad enough with the security detail downstairs - and I am sorry about that, I really am.”
“Oh, they’re all dears,” Mrs. Hudson answers. It would mean more if she didn’t refer to Sherlock just the same way. John wonders, vaguely, who she wouldn’t say that about.
“And you’re a saint,” he replies, the only reply possible. It hits him, not for the first time, but for the first time that scares him, that she almost died. She could have been in that car with Moriarty, handcuffed to the seat before being wrapped in explosives.
Somewhere else, that’s happened. He knows theoretically - better than most, but theoretically all the same - that everything happens somewhere. Somewhere, outside of John’s life, Mrs. Hudson did die. Or maybe she didn’t, Sherlock already dead and Moriarty without need of a hostage. He doesn’t know, not really, but it’s all possible. It’s all so very possible.
He hugs her and she hugs him back, surprisingly strong for a woman of her age and build.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” she tells him, voice firm above his shoulder.
John swallows thickly.
She pulls back and smiles at him. John hasn’t seen a smile like that since his mother died. She pats his arm. “I would have been up sooner, but I thought you’d need the time to reassure yourselves. Everyone needs that, sometimes.”
“Oh, no, we could have-” And he realizes what she’s saying. “We could have come down before, except for, well, the leg problems and... such.”
“Oh, I understand,” she says, touching her hip. “This one’s been acting up, too. Those crutches of his will be an issue. I can hear him thumping about when he gets low.”
“Mm.” He wants and dreads to ask. Is that the entirety of the thumping about she’s heard? Has she also heard them reassuring themselves? God, and Mycroft’s security team. The thought of it mortifies him down to his core. Needing a distraction, he leans in and quietly confides, “I don’t think he’d ask, but he’d like it if you signed his cast.”
He eats lunch off his flatmate’s tray, watching Mrs. Hudson doodle across Sherlock’s shin, grinning as Sherlock glares.
John knows the internet can’t actually be torn apart, but he’s half waiting for Sherlock to manage it anyway. Sherlock is going to break the internet and he’s going to use John’s laptop to do it. He’s at the phase where he starts muttering and snaps if John asks him to repeat anything, but that’s hardly the worst of it. Sherlock won’t let John have his laptop back and has managed, crutches or no, to unplug the telly and hide the remote. It’s probably next to wherever Sherlock’s hidden his mobile. When John protests the continuing media blackout, Sherlock relents enough to read John’s emails to him. Without asking for John’s password. This is before Sherlock resumes whinging about how his injury is paining him. His real leg injury. Over that afternoon, Sherlock extracts more than his share of revenge for the happy squiggles currently adorning his cast.
Eventually, Sherlock decides that it’s time for a distraction. After this announcement, he adds, “Do you think you could manage it?”
John blinks a bit, mentally rewinds their lack of conversation and, no, Sherlock hasn’t actually specified anything. “Manage a distraction?”
“Frottage against the wall.” The response is delivered so bluntly that John can’t quite tell if that was an actual answer or deadpan sarcasm.
“Well, since you’re so eager.”
“You’re strong and I don’t weigh that much. We’d have to be careful about the start, but once you get me up against the wall, it should be possible.” Sherlock indicates the patch of wall.
“Let’s find out,” John decides.
It’s definitely not the worst idea Sherlock’s ever had, but that’s not saying much.
They laugh anyway.
“I’ve been trying to find the reason,” Sherlock muses afterward. The pyjama bottoms have once again vacated the premises, one of the many reasons their doors are locked. John has a renewed awareness of Mrs. Hudson and the security detail downstairs; the pre-emptive mortification has begun to set in despite the idle motions of fingers through his hair. Sherlock is warm atop him, a hard, knobby blanket of dressing gown and body.
“What are we talking about now?” John asks. It’s either him or Moriarty and if it’s Moriarty this soon after orgasm, someone is getting shoved off this sofa.
Sherlock taps him on the forehead.
Good.
“The reason for what?” John asks. “There’s a range, here.”
“You said there was a trick to it,” Sherlock says. “No skill involved, just a trick. Except a trick is often a skill.”
“Not in this case.”
“Your ability isn’t something you feel you’ve earned,” Sherlock continues, clearly not listening. “‘Trick’ has uglier connotations than other synonyms you could have used. ‘Knack’, for instance.”
“It’s not a knack.”
“There,” Sherlock says, pushing himself up unexpectedly. Hands beside John’s head, elbows locked, there’s an excitement in his eyes that’s close to vicious. No, fervid. No less intense, but slightly less harmful. “Right there. You complained.”
John blinks up at him. “What? No I didn’t.”
“You did,” Sherlock insists. “I heard you and I felt you tense. You’ve stumbled onto this by accident, haven’t you? You have. No skill, a trick, something you barely take advantage of, yes: this is an accident. It is, isn’t it? That’s why there’s no reason for you to be doing it.”
John stops breathing.
Sherlock’s eyes narrow.
Under that scrutiny, John’s throat stoppers itself. He fights through it, forces his lungs to expand while his world contracts. He’s pinned by legs, framed by arms, and Sherlock might actually manage this. If his Sherlock can manage, what of the other one? What about Mycroft?
Sherlock’s gaze sharpens as his voice dims. “You’re frightened.”
“No,” John denies.
“You are.”
“Not for the reason you think.”
Sherlock shifts, pulling back and pushing away. John grasps him by the dressing gown in clear refusal. Sherlock glares at him.
“It’s fine,” John says.
“It obviously isn’t.”
“Strange, when the rest of it isn’t obvious at all.”
That’s enough to stop Sherlock from resisting but not at all enough to draw him back.
“I’m worried about tomorrow,” John tells him.
“Tomorrow being...?” Sherlock prompts.
“Wednesday.”
Only when Sherlock glares at him once more does John realize how glib his response must sound. John’s worried about today and tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday in the next London over. A different day, a different tomorrow. A different Sherlock.
“Sorry,” John says. It’s not enough either. “That came out wrong.”
Sherlock sits up, left leg hanging off the couch, knee over John’s shin. He’s turned half toward John, or half away. “What’s tomorrow?”
If John answers incorrectly, Sherlock doesn’t need to say, it will be the end of the conversation. Possibly more.
“I don’t know yet,” he admits. He props himself up on his elbows. He feels exposed, all soft stomach and beating heart. “That’s why I’m worried.”
“Do you usually know?”
“Sometimes,” John says, ignoring how accusatory that sounded. “Not when it’s personally relevant, though. Not much of a help.” He pauses. “Well, there’s Harry. I typically know when it comes to Harry.”
“Only Harry?”
John nods. Everything and everyone else, he’s compartmentalized into one life or another. He feels bad about it with Bill, will make it up to him after returning from Afghanistan. He tells himself he will, knowing he likely won’t. The only reason Harry slips by is that she keeps calling, keeps in touch regardless of how he feels. She even mails him things in Afghanistan and it makes him feel like such a shit brother.
“Could you with someone else?” Sherlock asks. He moves back a little and John knows an invitation when he sees one.
John sits up, sets his hand on Sherlock’s leg over his, the bare knee resting across his trouser-clad thigh. “I could have with Bill. The nurse who took the bullet out of my shoulder? Him. Not as much as with Harry, but I could have.”
“You made a conscious decision to look away.”
“Feel bad about it, but there we are.” Briskly said, it’s almost easy to get out.
Sherlock leans back, too controlled to be sprawling. He drapes himself over pillow and cushion and air, is held up by them all without appearing to need the support. He’s too relaxed not to be tense. John can feel it in his legs. “What about me? You haven’t tried predicting me yet. Is that what tomorrow is?”
“You’re a blind spot,” John answers. “You’re all surprises, always will be. Moriarty’s a blind spot too, in case you were wondering.”
“It’s a permanent condition?”
“Yes,” John says, and because he doesn’t like to think about that, he adds, “I used to be able to do cars.”
A bit of a frown there. “Do what?”
“I could go anywhere in London, anytime, and know what cars would pass by,” he answers. “I don’t mean colours, I mean which exact cars.”
“That’s not possible,” Sherlock says.
“Not anymore,” John agrees. “I mean, I haven’t tried in ages, but even if I still can, it’s a pointless thing to know.”
Sherlock stares at him.
“I could try if you want, but it’ll be five days from now and it might not work.”
“Why five?”
“It’s a range issue.” He could try to move digital London ahead of analogue, but with the issues he has going on there, he doesn’t want to rush any of it. He’ll have to take the train in from Chelmsford again instead. If he does that next he wakes there, it will still be five days from now. The problem with that plan is the differences Moriarty’s explosions have made. That must’ve done something to the traffic.
Sherlock goes right on staring at him.
“I’m not making this up,” John says.
Sherlock says nothing.
“This is why I don’t talk about it,” John adds.
“Clearly.” A reply as distant as Sherlock’s eyes.
John looks down, finds his palm has slipped from knee to cast. So much less immediate than bare skin, contact through a hard barrier. “It’s not going to make sense. It’s internally consistent, but you have to take a running leap for it first.”
“A hobbling fall is more my area at the moment,” Sherlock answers. “I believe our attempt with the wall made that clear.”
He shakes his head, meets that grey gaze. “If anyone could manage it....”
“John, this is insane,” Sherlock tells him flatly.
“It doesn’t take that long to get used to.” All relative, of course. For all John knows, he might have years watching Sherlock adjust to the concept. Or one year, Sherlock walking away after three calendar months. John’s sure he’ll last at least that long. Then again, he was once certain this would last much longer and that was only last week (month). “Or, well, maybe it does, but it doesn’t have to interfere in daily life. It never has before.”
When Sherlock doesn’t respond, John asks, “Would you rather not have known?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock scoffs. Although their legs remain entangled, Sherlock keeps their upper bodies apart. If he sat up, he’d be kissing close. Leaning back, leaning away, he’s distant enough that John would have to reach to touch his shoulder. John remains upright, not leaning one way or the other.
“Nope,” John says. “Can’t help it. Ridiculous is my default state. I hide it well, but you’ve found me out.”
Sherlock turns his face, eyes on the wall. Just as he had this morning, he makes a go at staring through wallpaper and plaster. It makes John think of the gun he has safely back in his drawer upstairs, courtesy of Mycroft. The smiley face still smiles through its wounds. Faintly at first, then louder, John can hear the ticking of his own watch. The sound of passing cars outside.
“What’s tomorrow?” Sherlock asks. “What you don’t know, it’s something specific. I said you gained your ability by accident and it frightened you. Why? Because of the nature of that accident or because I was right?”
“You made me realize something, that’s all,” John explains. Attempts to explain. “But it doesn’t affect you.”
“But it does involve me.”
“Not you, no.”
If I’m a blind spot, how do you know it doesn’t involve me?”
“The same way I know that a rockslide in New Zealand won’t hit you on the head. Let’s just say I would be extremely surprised.”
To all appearances, Sherlock is impassive, unimpressed. John’s well aware it’s a bad sign, an even worse one when Sherlock asks, “And when was the last time you were... ‘extremely surprised’?”
“The first explosion,” John answers, not needing to think. “Hell of a thing not to see coming.”
Sherlock’s eyebrows pull together, his eyes sharp beneath.
“What?” John asks.
“You didn’t know?”
“What? No, of course I didn’t know.”
Arms crossed over his narrow chest, Sherlock manages to lean back even farther. He lifts his chin, mouth proud, his marked neck on unintentional display. “You left the flat in quite a hurry.”
“Instead of getting you away from the windows and Mrs. Hudson off the stairs,” John responds, knowing better than to bring up how Sherlock had practically chased him out. “I didn’t know. That’s how I realized Moriarty was a blind spot.”
Sherlock’s eyes flick away.
“Would I let someone hurt you?” John asks bluntly. His fingers curl around the cast, thumb stroking blue fibreglass. “If I had any choice in the matter, any whatsoever?”
Sherlock’s answer is grudging, but it comes all the same. “No.” As if he’s about to go and have a sulk over it.
“You know I want to tell you.”
“I like to think I know you well enough to know that,” Sherlock retorts and that’s when John gets it. Voice angry, arms defensive, eyes uncertain - John can only be seeing the smallest piece of it.
“You know what counts,” John says. It’s not a lie.
He risks a touch. Leaning forward, his hand lifts from cast to elbow. Through the dressing gown, the sharp jut of bone isn’t at all softened.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” John decides. “All of it.”
“I can solve this on my own.” His glare is hard, but he doesn’t shake John off. “I need more time.”
“I’d give you more if I could,” he says, or he lies. He’s really not sure. He had never thought this would tear Sherlock into so many pieces. Maybe he should have, but it’s too late now. “Thing is, I need your help with something.”
“With what?”
“Something that doesn’t make sense out of context,” John promises.
Sherlock unfolds his arms, dislodging John’s hand in the process. “Is that why you’re telling me now? Not a word, not a peep, but now that you need something-”
“Now that we’re shagging,” John corrects.
“Told Sarah, did you?”
“Nope,” John says. Never shagged her either. Sherlock must know that. His flatmate is jealous, insecure, lashing out. John’s never seen it so clearly. “And I wasn’t planning on it. There wasn’t any point.”
Sherlock’s fingers flex, hands almost lifting from his lap. The restrained motion catches John’s eye. He looks down, his pulse pounds, and he remembers that Sherlock’s pants and pyjama bottoms are still halfway across the room. Dressing gown or no, Sherlock’s fighting naked. Small wonder he’s vulnerable.
“What is the point?” Sherlock asks.
“The point is,” John says, “that this isn’t it.” He can feel his pulse across his body, within his ears and through his skin. “I’ve shown you the symptoms, not the disease. All this-” he waves his hand toward the coffee table, the written puzzle pieces set across it “-is like being able to see through camouflage because of colour-blindness. It’s only selectively helpful and I have to be looking.”
“You’re saying it’s an impairment.”
“I’m saying it’s a medical condition. And no, it’s not contagious.” As far as he knows.
“What are the other symptoms?”
“Some short term memory difficulties, occasional emotional instability, and a profound annoyance at being woken up too early.”
“That isn’t the full list,” Sherlock says. “What are the rest?”
He smiles at that. He doesn’t mean to, but he smiles all the same. “I said I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“Your accident, then. Not an accident in the traditional sense, but the onset of this, this condition. Chronic?”
“Very,” John says. “And undocumented. I’ve checked. I don’t think people like me come forward very often.” Not without being sectioned, at any rate.
Sherlock’s hands shift yet again. John takes indecision for invitation and brushes his knuckles across Sherlock’s side. His fingers slip between arm and ribs, palm light. He curls fingertips into fabric.
A slow movement, Sherlock pushes himself upright. Though sitting, he towers over John, lips at the level of his eyes. He’s a breath away. John’s arms twine around his back. Cheek to shoulder, such a hard pillow, and John sighs his eyes closed. He relaxes his body in an attempt to unwind Sherlock as well. A hopeless attempt, but he has to try something.
“You’ve told me almost everything, haven’t you?” Sherlock asks. “And I still don’t know.”
“I wasn’t asking you to figure it out,” John tells the soft skin of his neck. At the moment, it’s the only thing soft about him. “Not really.”
A puff of breath over John’s ear, disbelief and derision. “Then what?”
John doesn’t let go. He refuses to.
“I needed you to believe me,” he says. “I couldn’t think of any other way to convince you.”
Long fingers curl around John’s nape. A thumb strokes at his hairline. John trembles, all of him, skin and bone and breath.
“All right,” Sherlock says. “I’m convinced.”
“What time tomorrow?”
They’ve switched positions entirely by now, Sherlock on his back, John on top of him. Sharp hipbones dig against his stomach. His shoulder shakes from holding up his torso. The dressing gown has long since opened and John lies clothed atop a naked man, hips between pale thighs.
“Ten o’clock,” John says.
“At night?”
“In the morning.” They’ll need the rest of the day for explanations, much of the night for planning. If there is anything to be planned, that is, some remaining way for John to avoid Sherlock’s detection in his other London. Some way that Mycroft will let him.
“I’m not sleeping tonight,” Sherlock decides. His hands have long since ventured up the back of John’s untucked shirt. Ten fingertips ghost down his spine, up his ribs, such smooth, unending circles. “Not enough time.”
“All right.” He lowers himself to Sherlock’s chest, relaxing his shoulder, trapping his arms between Sherlock and the sofa cushion. His left hand has already fallen asleep.
Sherlock is hard and flat, muscle tensed into bone. His skin is suppler than it is soft, as well as slightly hairy. He’s cotton but no less comforting than a woman’s silk. He’s so pale, a long, unexposed stretch of torso and thigh.
“Let me kiss you?” John asks. “If it’s too much of a distraction, you don’t-”
Interruption comes at an awkward angle. John props himself up, Sherlock opens his mouth, and they lie there tasting each other, lips and tongue and uneven breath. Sherlock kisses with his eyes open, John discovers. At this moment or always, he has yet to learn.
His shirt bunches, rides up his back, his sides, his front. Sherlock’s hips nudge upward, a press of pelvis, such heat between the points of bone. Not quite soft against his stomach, becoming less so, rocking up, against. Kisses deepen. Warm hands steal down his spine, a ghosting touch that sets him shivering. He arches his back, presses his hips. They gasp together, not quite in sync.
Lower, around, under, those hands go, palming him through his zip. Every touch and twitch is a tease. No brief grope, it goes on without release. Pants and trousers between skin and heat. Much too quickly, Sherlock riles him. The prolonged grope turns torturous. Purposeful motions, each demanding acceleration. More, now, faster. Could be dangerous, come now, soon, try.
“God, this.” Whispered praise as he ruts against Sherlock’s too-light touch. “Need more of you.”
Sherlock nips at his lips when he groans, soon denies him his tongue, turns his face away.
“Sherlock,” John pants. His hips thrust and his mouth searches, but none of it is enough. He needs his trousers off but has his hands trapped beneath his madman’s back. “Sherlock.”
Breathy and low, a broken syllable: “Why?”
“What?” Christ, no. No mind games, not now. Can’t think. Needing skin. Needing to spill across it and lick it clean. Or inside. Anything.
That hand slips higher, off John’s prick, presses hard against his stomach. Long thighs squeeze John’s hips too hard for him to thrust, too high for him to touch. It’s a grip of leg that ought to mean orgasm, tight and claiming. “Why?” Sherlock insists.
“You’re not honestly-” God, he is.
“Why?”
“Need you,” he insists. “You know I- fuck, please.”
Knuckles play over his zip. “You need my hand.”
“All of you.” Desperate. “You said I could. All over you.” Coming and coming, he needs to come.
“My hand, my mouth, my arse,” Sherlock lists.
John can match his gaze but can’t catch his mouth. He fights to free his hands, either hand, both trapped below sharp shoulder blades. He frees the one, the left, the half-numb one. Reaches down between them and Sherlock seizes his wrist. Sherlock pulls John’s hand away from his zip, pulls him away from where he wasn’t reaching.
He touches Sherlock, smearing precum down the shaft. Sloppy, no finesse. Barely holds on as Sherlock jolts beneath him. “Idiot,” John gasps out. “You fucking idiot. Let me kiss you.”
Sherlock strains for him and John presses him down. Fingers at his zip now, finally, hand down his pants first, protecting from metal teeth, so very, very good. Trousers down, over the curve of his arse, Sherlock’s foot pushing fabric, legs spread wide. John ruts into him, pants into his mouth, and Sherlock’s hand wraps around his fingers, around both their pricks.
He opens his eyes and Sherlock stares into him. Always watching. Always, always, eyes wide open. How long? How long has he, has he this?
That hand releases, pulls at his. Fingers dig into his arse, tug him down and forward and against, and John’s on his forearms, on his knees. Closer, he needs closer, more, his shirt still bunched between their chests, thin chain and circles of metal caught up in cloth and sweat and skin.
A sudden press, below, his arse, the shock of it. His head snaps back. He shouts. Air vanishes. Grey. Sherlock’s eyes.
Hard shoulder. Chin on top. Cheek against pillow, wet heat under stomach. Quick breath in his ear, slowing, not slow. Motion beneath, aftershocks. Hands on his arse, fingertip over his hole. Circling. Twitch. Groan. Face to neck. Kiss.
In time, he relearns how to move.
“Don’t laugh,” John tells him, sometime later.
Lazy strokes down his back, smooth, unfaltering. “Laugh at what?”
His stomach tightens. His heart pounds the blood out from his head.
I almost text you, even when you don’t know me, and I’m jealous of a flatmate you’ve never met. I can’t be in London when you’re dead. I should avoid you tomorrow, insane brother or not, but you’ve killed my self-preservation.
“I miss you when I sleep,” he says.
The stroking pauses. Resumes.
Sherlock doesn’t laugh.
John slips naked beneath Sherlock’s duvet.
Across the bedroom, Sherlock perches on his cleared-off chair, desk lamp illuminating the papers before him.
John closes his eyes and sleeps.
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