Fic: Stranger at the Gate - 3/11 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: Stranger at the Gate
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 8.5k this part, 81k overall
Beta: seijichan
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: As far as initiation rites go, kidnapping a human doctor from a defended town ought to seem extreme. When James Moriarty offers him the challenge, Sherlock never considers saying no. (Fantasy vampire AU)
Warnings: Vampires, blood, explicit sex, glamour (as in mind control/hypnotism), dubcon.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven
The taste of tea is bitter and thin in John’s warm mouth. It mingles oddly with the sour remnants of tobacco and the fullness of smoke, but beneath these tastes, there is John. His flesh, not his blood, and compelling regardless.
John has lips and a tongue and a nuzzling nose. He has fingers and palms and sturdy arms. He has shoulders and spine. He has hips pressed between Sherlock’s thighs and a body concealed by malicious cloth barriers.
There’s not enough to touch and it’s clear John agrees. Aggravatingly, John has the poor sense to open Sherlock’s shirt rather than his own. Sherlock had already lost one layer before being backed against this wall. John is still so excessively bundled. The motions of the small man’s body drag wool against Sherlock’s bare skin.
“John,” he whines. He tugs.
John giggles against his lips, his cheek, his ear. “Give me a minute.”
“No.”
This time, John laughs aloud. His hands trail down Sherlock’s ribs, fingers folding until knuckles trace the path.
Sherlock squirms, oddly breathless, unimaginably dizzy, and he shifts his feet farther apart for balance. John presses closer, securing him to the wall with his hips.
“Your jumper is scratching me,” Sherlock complains.
John shucks it accordingly. The movement ruffles his hair upward, calling fingers to touch and tidy. With careful control over his hands, Sherlock tugs John back to him by his rear. The worn linen of his shirt is so much softer, even with the wooden buttons.
“Am I forgiven?” John asks. His palms stroke up Sherlock’s chest, seeking his shoulders. If the motion is meant to soothe, it fails utterly. Sherlock is roused, agitated, helpless. Though John presses hard and hot against his hip, Sherlock lies flaccid in his smallclothes, the force of his desire bottled beneath his skin.
“No,” Sherlock answers honestly. His voice is as small and petulant as the child he swears he isn’t.
“I’m very sorry,” John says, voice professional, cheeks flushed. He tugs his shirttails from his trousers as Sherlock fumbles at his buttons. The angle is strange, too new. Not so for John. The gatekeeper’s hand makes an easy slide down Sherlock’s stomach. He makes short work of Sherlock’s belt, a deft single-handed flick, before his fingers slip down farther. “How can I make it up to-”
John pauses.
“Ignore that,” Sherlock tells him, too breathless for glamour.
The delicate touch is removed. “Am I doing something wrong?” Blue eyes show vague concern and dwindling lust. Beneath them, the wounded confusion is the worst.
“Poor circulation. Unfortunate family trait.”
“Will you...?”
“Perhaps.” He hasn’t decided yet. He doesn’t have to have it. He can choose to do without. He can stop this whenever he wants to.
“I’ll take you in my mouth,” John promises. His hand returns, the back of his hand, rubbing lightly through cloth. “I can’t compare with you - god, that was brilliant - but I can suck you off.”
He understands the attraction of receiving such attention. A day removed from touch, he understands the attraction of any attention. As for performing, John is a giving person. All the same: “Do you like that? Do you want to?”
John immediately begins to push at Sherlock’s smallclothes.
Sherlock catches his hands. “That, um.” His tongue is thick.
At once, John stops reaching. “Sorry,” he says. This time, he means it.
“That isn’t what works,” Sherlock explains.
“What works?” His eyes gaze past their joined hands, lie on the greying white of Sherlock’s smallclothes where his loose trousers hang low. His tongue flicks across his lips.
Sherlock kisses him rather than answer.
This suffices, for a time.
When John is shirtless, and their chests press together, and John’s body strains into his, it isn’t enough. The deepest kiss is but a pittance against the thought of release. He wants to spill and hear John praise him. He wants the lambent glow between a quilt and straw mattress, but his body refuses to move, to quicken and harden and find release for all his wanting.
John’s hands cross his skin. They dip into his trousers and skirt the edges of his smallclothes. John rocks into him, against him, and Sherlock widens his stance to set them closer. John is flushed, his face and chest so very red. His breaths are shallow and lost against Sherlock’s skin.
“John, I need-”
“Yes.” Immediate, a moment’s interruption in the nips and licks at his throat. Tawny blond hair caresses his chin, his cheek. If Sherlock could come, he would have.
“Please,” Sherlock asks. His hands want. He keeps them on John’s skin, he means to keep them, but his fingertips succumb to the intimacy of a warm nape, the delicate blond strands.
“Tell me,” John presses into his skin.
“Last time,” Sherlock says. “When I....”
“Okay. Okay, yes, that’s- All right.”
Half-kneeling already, he hesitates. His voice. He can barely speak, barely think to speak. He settles to his knees between John and the wall where the thresh is thin. Fumbling on John’s belt, he can’t calm himself.
Hands stroke over his, rough in form and smooth in motion. They overcome the buckle. They unfasten buttons. They part fabric.
The touch so light, John brushes the curls from Sherlock’s brow.
His body jolts alive, no closer to release and all the more desperate for it. He presses up, up against, up into John’s palms, and then John, his fingers, his touch, carding through, massaging scalp, touching and touching and Sherlock groans against his thigh, blind with it. How he survived the first time, he’ll never know.
John is speaking. Praise and encouragement, prayers and half-playful curses.
“Picture it,” Sherlock commands. “I need-” He swallows, pushing down fears and morals alike. “I need to hear you describe it. Detailed, as much as possible.”
“Fuck,” John swears. “Fuck, is that what-? All right, yes, um. I can- yes.” He begins. Awkward at the first, then surer, more certain, more aroused. He’s quick to skip ahead to what he wants.
This time, what John describes brings an ache to Sherlock’s body, a deeper, lower craving. The skin beneath his lips is bruised from the first feeding and if he can only convince John of a fantasy once more, he can have it all again.
“Sherlock, please. Stop teasing, stop it, c’mon-”
“Yes, all right,” Sherlock agrees and John’s head snaps upward with a muffled shout. John lets loose high, brilliant noises, so breathy, and he keeps one hand in Sherlock’s hair. The other slaps against the wall.
“Yes,” John gasps. Next to Sherlock’s cheek, his erect cock twitches against air. “Oh god.”
Sherlock grips him by the hips in an attempt to hold him still. The movement against his palms is small, nudging. He has to adjust his position to properly bring his mouth to John’s thigh. He licks him soft and clean. He scrapes, ever careful, with his teeth. John doesn’t so much as pause in his rapid, panted monologue, something pertaining to Sherlock’s mouth and the heat therein.
The puncture is quick and clean. Sherlock licks him up, tonguing at the holes. He closes his mouth over the leak, around it, and feels John’s pulse in the flow. He feels John’s pulse in his own body, entirely psychosomatic and entirely seductive. His mouth fills slowly, his cock more slowly still, but by the third mouthful, he’s half hard.
He swallows and licks the area until the bleeding stops. The bruise is purple and wide and his.
John’s hand rides on his hair, torn between tugs and caresses, shockwaves and bliss.
All too soon, not soon enough, Sherlock removes his lips from skin, licks them clean, and reports, “John, I’m hard now.”
John’s voice is rough and low as he says, “You’re hard from sucking me.”
“I am,” Sherlock agrees, nuzzling the bruise, the claim. He’ll rub his scent all across John’s body, every inch he can reach. “I am, it’s good, I want- Can I?” His hand moves from John’s hip to his member, hard bone to hard flesh. John’s hand closes over his and teaches easy lessons. Not touching himself is almost more than he can stand but if he can last, if he can last longer than John can this time, please.
He can. John spills. The scent of it, that pungent scent. John’s handkerchief is filthy from his treatment of it. Sherlock might possibly want to steal it.
“Stand up,” John urges. “C’mon, let me have you.”
Somehow, Sherlock obeys.
Kneeling, John draws him out of his smallclothes right-handed, the other a steady presence against his stomach. Sherlock doesn’t know what to do with his own hands. The wall gives him nothing to grip. He can’t touch John’s hair. He hasn’t asked. He can’t-
Wet.
Wet heat.
Tongue. John’s. Wet and-
Pulling. No, sucking. Hand and mouth both. Suction.
Sherlock manages, just barely, to reopen his eyes.
His hips buck.
John gags.
John slams Sherlock’s hips against the wall.
Pressure spills out from beneath his skin, desperate relief.
Around him still. A mouth. Vibration.
He’s not sure what he’s saying but it might be John’s name.
Cold absence, after. He hears John spit.
His eyes are closed again.
When he forces them open a second time, he stares down at his hand upon John’s head. His nerves spark and flare, unconnected fuses still striving toward flame. His breathing is too quick, his skin too hot, flushed and painted with sweat.
John breathes against his navel, his hands so gentle. He strokes Sherlock’s sides as he would a spirited, exhausted horse, as he would any animal capable of bolting from pride alone. The odour of their semen rests in the back of Sherlock’s nose, pungent yet compelling.
“My legs are shaking,” Sherlock observes.
A smug hum vibrates against his stomach.
Absently, Sherlock pets his hair. “That was, um.” He has no words. Such a frequent occurrence, around John. It’s unnerving.
“Good?” John suggests. He pulls back slightly to look up, his hair stroking against Sherlock’s palm, and Sherlock snatches his hand away from the stolen intimacy.
“Sorry,” he says, the apology immediate. He knows he’s crossed a boundary, no permission granted. “I didn’t mean to, um. I didn’t mean to.”
A slow smile spreads across John’s face. It grows as a hanging vine, taking root in his eyes, flowering at his lips. New and almost delicate, the expression inspires the need to nurture, the compulsion. More, more, look at him like that more.
“It’s fine,” John says, as if Sherlock’s apology is endearing instead of necessary. “You didn’t pull.”
And, taking his hand, John guides him back. John positions him with palm loosely curled, fingertips against John’s scalp.
The world tilts, too light, too heavy. The balance shifts.
Are they lovers, then? Does John mean it? Does John even know what he’s saying, what he’s doing, what havoc he’s slipping through Sherlock’s skin?
Kneeling at his feet, John might. He might not. Yet there’s something about his eyes. There’s something about his murmur, the awestruck way he says “God, look at you” and how the words mirror Sherlock’s mind.
John climbs up his body, his movements slow. His right leg is stiff, his balance impaired. He grows paler as the sex flush fades and Sherlock knows enough not to be alarmed at the shade. He knows enough to avoid kisses, knows it in theory, but he fails utterly at the practice. John is much too quick, much too orally fixated. Attempting to verbally deter him only provides an opening. An unfortunate one.
With a startled noise into his mouth, John jerks his head back. “Are you bleeding?”
“Bit my tongue,” he lies. “I did try to tell you.”
John’s lips purse in sympathy.
“Shall we retire?” Sherlock asks.
John’s brow furrows.
“To bed?” Sherlock prompts.
“No one talks like you,” John says. Fingers curled in Sherlock’s nape, his thumb strokes waiting skin.
“No one?”
“No one.” John guides him down for a light brush of the lips. “But bed does sound lovely. You up first, I need to tidy. Do you want anything?”
“Yes.” An answering kiss.
A few answers more.
A silent conversation later, when he’s hazy and thrumming and so very warm, John sets a hand on his chest and eases him back.
“I meant to drink,” John says. “Wash the taste out.”
“It’s fine.” Pressing against that hand.
“You said bed,” John reminds him.
“This is more interesting,” he counters, leaning back in.
John’s distancing hand doesn’t quite hold firm. “Sherlock, I need to lie down,” he whispers, lips against lips. The stubble-sporting cheek beneath Sherlock’s hand grows warmer still. Lovely, so lovely.
“Can you make it up the ladder?” How much is the sex and how much is the blood loss? A half pint or so, twice taken. Roughly a pint lost in three days. It takes only a day or two to replace lost plasma, but the remaining fifth part of blood is weeks in the making.
“I could sleep on that ladder,” John tells him flatly. “You’d best get up it before I do.”
“With or without my clothing?” For all his chest is bare, his open trousers rest around his hips and he stands in his boots.
“Without.” John pulls back to look at him only to become visibly dizzy.
Sherlock gathers him up immediately. “Don’t tell me I’ve exhausted you.”
“Oh, shut up,” John says, more affection than command. His breath spills against Sherlock’s neck. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Don’t worry, John. The terrible apples are gone now.”
John laughs. His hand slaps lightly against Sherlock’s shoulder. “You be quiet.”
“Never,” Sherlock promises and, for no reason he can name, John kisses his neck. Sherlock sighs.
“Bed,” John orders.
Sherlock huffs. “Fine.”
He removes his boots and his trousers, leaving them on his chair, then climbs up the ladder to where the air is made of heat and tantalizing smoke. He crawls onto the mattress, shifting the sheet and quilt, and spends a short while attempting to shift the straw beneath him into a more comfortable cushion. When he hears John laugh below, he stops. When he hears John folding his things, their things, he doesn’t know what to do. It is the better cousin of panic, warm as well as paralyzing.
When John comes to him, he comes without reservation, reaching and reached for. They lie brow pressed to brow, their heads upon the single pillow. Their knees bump, unimportant.
“Still dizzy?” Sherlock whispers into the dark.
The answer is a puff of breath against his lips. A laugh?
“What?”
John shifts closer, sinking into Sherlock’s skin. His lips buzz against Sherlock’s collarbone as he murmurs, “You don’t need to fish for compliments.”
“I don’t?” he asks, content to follow John’s lead. He adjusts the arm under him to better tuck it over John’s shoulders. His hands are fond of the broad back, the muscles and bone beneath skin.
John hums a negative.
Slowly, Sherlock’s fingers steal higher. They touch ribs and side. They navigate the barrier of John’s sturdy arm. They creep, so cautious, into the man’s hair.
The motions of his hand are new, unpractised, and yet John relaxes further against him, into him, a wild creature tamed.
Sherlock begins to plan.
Calculating while dozing always brings him to dream of Victor.
In this dream, Victor peels his pencil like an apple. The long curls decorate the desk of his father’s study.
“Have you spoken with Irene?” Victor asks. He is a creature without scent, his voice is light and high. His features don’t quite make sense, the visage of a well-known boy transformed into an unknown man. “Irene would know. Irene knows about men.”
“We’re men,” Sherlock counters. “Could I use your pencil?”
Victor hands it to him, retaining his penknife. “Irene knows about fucking men.”
“She sings about it. That’s different.” He looks down and his paper is gone.
“She’s good at keeping blokes,” Victor points out.
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “At getting them. She’s dreadful at keeping them alive. Penknife.”
Victor hands him the penknife, handle first. “To be fair, it’s not her fault they keep drowning.”
Sherlock carves the numbers into the table.
“Humans are twelve pints,” Victor corrects, looking over his shoulder. “You’re thinking in deer. Deer are ten pints. The two-thirds death rule still applies.”
“With only nine pints, he dies,” Sherlock translates.
“No more than five fucks in the first five weeks,” Victor calculates. “Then maybe three for the next month before settling into once a fortnight. Less, if you want him active.”
“Of course I want him active!”
Victor laughs, the way he always does when Sherlock is endearing. “Good luck with that. You do realize this is why a bloodmate isn’t meant to be actual mate? And you’re meant to be taking swallows, not half-pints. At this rate, he’ll be dead before your body settles.”
Sherlock stabs the penknife through the mocking words, the mocking letters, pinning the envelopes to the mantel. “I’ll do it!” he yells at Victor’s correspondence. “I’ll have him!”
He tugs the knife free from the wood with a hard jerk before searching the letters for a reply. Envelope after envelope, he searches for a feasible plan.
Every page is blank.
He wakes mid-kiss, his body tight and needful beneath John’s welcome weight, his mind racing from sleep to awareness. His legs spread of their own accord and John nestles between, soothing even as he excites. As the sun rises and the birds cry, John brings them to their full.
He shoulders his satchel, the motion familiar and grounding. “I’ll be back in a week.”
John looks at him with an abrupt turn of the head. It’s a moment before he straightens from the fire, swinging the kettle back over the flame. “Oh?”
“Duties farther east,” he says.
“Oh,” John repeats. “All right.”
Sherlock readjusts the strap of his satchel.
“What about that parcel for, who was it, Anderson?” John asks.
It doesn’t exist. “I’ve sent a letter to enquire. All manner of delay are possible in the west.”
John nods. “I’ve heard.... Well, I’ve heard lots of things. Most are probably just stories, but I listen.”
Of course he does. John must be so bored here, dying for a shred of entertainment. It’s the only reason Sherlock can think of to explain John’s need for communication being greater than his longing for sex. With the ability to orgasm on demand, it’s incredible that humans get anything done. All the humans up at the crack of dawn, interrupting his afterglow with John in order to leave Bart’s, none of them make a shred of sense.
“What have you heard recently?” Sherlock asks.
“Just your basic summary. Bandits a bit of an issue out west,” John says. “It could be worse. There are more draughtsmen about than usual in the east.”
“Draughtsmen?” Sherlock repeats. He keeps hearing that term, usually from parents chiding their children. He’d assumed it was some sort of fabricated bogeyman, not an actual threat. “Are you saying game pieces are on the move?”
“Not draughts the game. Draughts like a draught of ale, a measurement?”
Sherlock pieces it together with a lurch in his stomach. “And a draughtsman’s draught is of blood.”
John nods. “Think it used to be a pun about pulling a pint, but it stuck, at least down by the coast. What do you call them back home?”
People.
“Lots of names,” he says. Such as Mycroft, or Victor. And Mummy, of course. Even, once, Father. For groups, it’s leeches or fleas, most commonly. A leech is like Sherlock, a product of southern civilization and sharing the slang for a doctor. Fleas are Moriarty and his kind, traditional in their drinking habits. Sherlock has always been told that fleas are dangerous, but the more he sees of where they live, the more he finds them justified. He offers some of the other slang instead, the derogatory words John might like better.
“Have you ever seen one?” John asks.
Somehow, Sherlock doesn’t laugh. “With my circulation, what would one want with me?”
“I don’t mean attacked,” John says. “It’s a bit obvious you’re still alive.”
Rather than truly answer, he counters, “Have you seen one yourself?”
“I’ve seen men under glamour. Accused of it, at least,” he amends. “Back in the army, standing orders were not to risk it. Otherwise, you could see people claiming it as an excuse to get away with anything. Same as nowadays, really, seeing as Lord Mayhew sets the policy.”
Low in his gut, the remnants of John still inside him have turned to ice. “Which policy?” Sherlock asks. “I’ve noticed the town walls and gates with holly - somewhat difficult to miss - but I’m not familiar with all.”
“The beheading one,” John answers.
“Oh,” Sherlock says. He can hear himself say this. “That one.”
“There are proper trials nowadays, thankfully.”
“Nowadays,” Sherlock echoes.
“Things are better now,” John says, but that is clearly all he’ll say.
Sherlock’s body forgets how to move. It stands there, simply stands there.
“Are you all right?” John asks. He draws closer. “Sherlock?”
“Is Mayhew aware that glamour can be broken?” This senseless, stupid- “If the- the draughtsman controlling the glamour releases it or dies, no lasting delusion or command can remain.” There are other techniques, complicated and expensive, but those are experimental and new.
“Yeah, but killing them is a bit problematic,” John says, as if this were remotely what Sherlock was talking about.
“Is that the sound of firsthand experience?” Sherlock finds himself asking.
John raises an eyebrow. “Do I look dead to you?”
“No,” Sherlock says. He summons his own natural charisma, needing to go, needing to get out. “However, the lighting is very poor in here.” He reaches behind him and opens the door, opens it wide. In sudden daylight, John is a dim, unremarkable creature.
John follows him to the door, torso angled toward Sherlock as if a sapling toward the sun. “And now?”
Sherlock makes an indifferent noise.
John laughs. “Fine,” he says. He catches Sherlock’s hand and brings unresisting fingers to his mouth. “Be safe.”
“I will,” Sherlock answers.
True to his word, Sherlock puts as much distance between them as soon as he possibly can.
Snug back in his room in Montague, Sherlock belatedly realizes what would have happened to Angelo here, had Sherlock relented and allowed the older man to accompany him across the river. As Sherlock ages, Angelo’s glamour-wrought delusions of his boyish charge grow ever more obviously wrong.
He thinks of the scent of flour mingling with yeast; the fragrance of hair oil lingering against the backs of chairs; the fierce dry heat of an oven against his cheeks, a blast of honey-scented air; an ever-enthusiastic voice telling him to taste and never swallow. He thinks of lockpicks and pickpocketing Mycroft and the proud clap of a hand on his shoulder. He thinks of honeycomb on his birthdays and that patient, unending embrace the day his mother died.
He thinks of Angelo dead. Not gone, but dead.
He thinks of someone chopping off Angelo’s head.
That night, he longs to pen another letter, never mind that it’s Angelo’s turn to write. He can’t justify the waste of paper, and neither can he justify sending any message of distress. Angelo would rush to his side. There’s no question of it. Angelo would fly to him and hold him tight and call him his precious child.
Sherlock wants that with an intensity he will forever deny.
Angelo is too obvious to risk. This hasn’t changed. Until Sherlock can acquire Moriarty’s technique and overwrite his mother’s glamour, Angelo will always be too obvious to risk. His brother’s glamour, Sherlock mentally rephrases. Inherited control.
Sherlock wonders, vaguely, if he’ll ever be able to tell Angelo about John. Tell him properly. If Sherlock tried to ask him about this issue with the sex and the kissing, the shouts of child molester would likely be the last sounds John ever heard. Angelo can’t cope with the concept of Sherlock beginning the first portion of puberty, let alone the voluntary second half. When Sherlock returns across the gulf, he’ll have to be careful about shaving. For that matter, he’ll have to learn to shave.
On the bright side, Mycroft would throw a fit if he knew Sherlock was currently intimate with a barbarian.
With a wry smile, Sherlock blows out the candle and puts himself to bed. His dreams are rough and strange, his body reaching through restless sleep for something no longer there.
A week is a long time.
In a week, his body no longer feels as if it might rip itself apart from the need to be against a soldier’s skin.
In a week, Sherlock has almost come to understand why John might prioritize conversation over sex.
In a week, walking unfamiliar roads and keeping ever vigilant control over his own voice, Sherlock is desperate for company he can trust.
He can’t expect an answering letter from Angelo for weeks. The last letter was simple, poorly spelled, and, presently, more well-worn than the missive and diagrams in Moriarty’s precise hand. This is, in part, because he can no longer look at the missive without thinking of John.
He can’t think of John without the need to confront, to challenge. Things don’t have to be this way. Surely John can see that. The world is, as Mummy had always said, a mutual place. Speakers and listeners, rulers and ruled. Understanding is all-important. Comprehension is more than mere power.
He can’t imagine a world more unlike his own than this. Wary respect is outright fear. Politicized dislike is irrational hatred. The recipient of an unsanctioned glamour is killed out of hand. There is no such thing as a sanctioned glamour, no man like Lestrade bringing thieves and ruffians to the doors of his lord with a writ from the mayor, requesting the criminals to be bound to the law. There are no doctors come to ask for assistance, no amputees who have had their pain blocked. This is a world where Anderson and his flea-themed insults are so small, so insignificant as to be lost against the background of daily life.
When he considers it, he finds he finally understands why Moriarty has developed his glamour to such an extent. Their people aren’t fighters. They never have been. They are liars and seducers. They are mesmerists.
When he had first heard of the man, Moriarty had been as inexplicable as he had been inspiring. Having come here, having passed trial by holly after trial by holly, having prompted stories of draughtsmen and listened to the inflated horrors, he understands.
The week passes. His mind and feet turn in circles, ever-moving, advancing nowhere.
A day late, he knocks upon the door and offers his hand. He is made to hold the holly. The voice and the touch from within are unknown, the scent not unfamiliar.
“Are you Bill?” Sherlock asks.
“That would be me, yeah,” the guard replies. There’s a pause as he inspects Sherlock’s palm for marks from the holly. Then: “You wouldn’t happen to be Sherlock, would you?”
“I, yes.”
“Right then. Hold on a mo’, shouldn’t take long.”
Bill releases him and shuts the window. His footsteps audibly travel to the bridge-side door, that door opens and instead of trying to bid Sherlock across the bridge, Bill simply stands there. The human is entirely out of sight but clearly signalling something.
Has the glamour worn off? Has John noticed the bite marks and told his fellow guards? The sun is setting, but it’s not too late to return to Euston, not if he runs. And he may have to run.
Over the distant rush of the water below, Sherlock hears brisk footsteps crossing the bridge, crossing toward him. He knows their sound. He hears words exchanged, Bill instructing John to retrieve some unspecified “it” and John responding in cheerful profanity. There is a hard slap of contact, possibly a hug - “you’re the best, mate, the absolute best” - and the sound of one man entering the gatehouse while the other walks back across the bridge.
This time when the window opens, the hand on the other side is familiar. There’s a quick, warm squeeze around his fingers before he withdraws, before the door opens.
John takes one look at him and says, “Oh hell.”
Sherlock says nothing, tacitly permitting John to take him by the arms and guide him in. He stands still, memorizing the trail of John’s hands as the human checks him for injuries.
“I’m fine,” Sherlock manages.
“Something scared you,” John corrects. “Were you robbed? Did someone threaten you?”
Sherlock shakes his head and shakes his head.
John takes his satchel and coat. “I’ll make tea.”
“I don’t want tea. It’s expensive - don’t waste it.”
“You might want tea later,” John insists. “Stranger things have been known to happen.”
Sherlock sits in his chair, watching John perform the smooth motions of hanging coat and satchel, of locking the door, of ladling water from barrel to kettle. The soldier’s movements have the grace of efficiency and repetition. The same steps on the same floor, each footfall so often fallen that mere practice transforms a brisk walk half into dance.
Sherlock folds his arms on the table and drops his chin on them, watching.
John sits across from him, every line of his body speaking of controlled concern, the need and the ability to help.
Gradually, Sherlock’s shoulders unbind from their hunch.
John’s body language quiets.
The kettle boils, John fixes tea, and Sherlock’s eyes follow the path of white steam from the mug set before him.
John tells him, utterly certain and wholly honest, “If anyone threatened you on the road, I can take care of it. There should be more patrols than this. There used to be. Bryant’s concentrated in his eastern territory, these days.”
To fend off draughtsmen, no doubt. “No one threatened me.” A society isn’t a Person. A society isn’t even a human.
The second mug rattles against the table, ceramic fused to wood by water only to be pushed free by John’s idle fingers. John secures his mug with a quick touch. He wraps his hands around it. “Is it everything, then?”
Sherlock lifts his head from his arms, too curious.
“Everything,” John repeats, as if this were clarification. “You don’t know where it starts from, but once fear catches one person, it spreads through everyone else. You know you’re probably safe, but ‘probably safe’ starts to look like bad odds.”
Is that the human dread of People here? Or perhaps John is referring to something else.
“Is that what the army was like?” Sherlock ventures.
“Sometimes,” John says, his gaze on his tea. The cradling touch turns his eyes affectionate to the beverage rather than distant to Sherlock.
“It doesn’t seem to touch you.”
John’s lips quirk. “Most people say that.”
“Most?” Sherlock repeats.
John ducks his head slightly, then levels his gaze. “The ones who haven’t heard me having screaming nightmares.”
Sherlock sits up straighter. “Do you often? Have them.”
“Mostly when sleeping alone,” John admits. The quirk of his lips becomes something so subtly different, so infinitely better. “Or when I can’t hear Harry snoring through the wall at home. Thought I should warn you anyway.”
“Somewhat belatedly.”
“Somewhat belatedly,” John agrees. “But if you’re going to keep coming, I thought....” He shrugs lightly, the right shoulder.
“I don’t want to have sex tonight,” Sherlock warns him, mental truth and physical lie.
There’s a slight pause before John says, “Not the kind of coming I meant.”
There’s a slightly longer pause before both of them are giggling.
When they can breathe again, they waste precious moments grinning at one another.
“But I do want to sleep in your bed and I would like to kiss you,” Sherlock amends. Let it not be said he can’t compromise.
“Good,” says John. “You could try sleeping on the floor but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“No?”
“No.”
“I’ll stay in your bed, then.”
“Probably for the best,” John agrees.
It probably isn’t, but Sherlock will never say.
Later, after John tells him stories of apples and armour, after two mugs of tea go cold, Sherlock dares to touch his hand. Later, pressing his lips to John’s hair, his chest aligned with the curve of the smaller man’s spine, a feeling far too akin to terror finally begins to fade. The worst of it abated days ago, its force exhausted, and yet the insecurity had lingered all the same.
John hums his approval. Of Sherlock’s relaxing body, of the light kiss, there’s little means by which to tell.
“I think I know what’s wrong,” Sherlock whispers. He’s thought of it now, only just, thinking of John listening to his sister’s snores.
“Hm?”
“This is the longest I’ve been on my own,” he says.
“How long?” John asks.
“Four months, two weeks, five days.”
John shifts slightly, adjusting his arm against the mattress. “That was... precise.”
“I have a good memory.” He strokes his hand down John’s other arm and catches his fingers. John lets him touch and play. “For example, thirteen days ago, you were whittling a figurine of a cat. It was on the table to the left of the candle.”
John rolls over in his arms, brow furrowed in the dark. He rubs at his left shoulder. “Thirteen days, really? That’s all?”
“Mm,” Sherlock agrees.
“Seems like....” John trails off into a yawn. His jaw cracks then closes. He makes a sleepy sound and nuzzles his face into the crook of Sherlock’s neck. John is heat and hardness. These positions are new, the intimacy beyond comprehension, and when Sherlock wants John, he is no longer certain for what part.
Sherlock dares a hand into his hair.
John wraps his leg around Sherlock’s, thigh over thigh.
They tug each other closer and whisper into the night.
The following week, they do the very same.
The week after, John asks for it. He asks so gently, as if Sherlock might not want him, as if Sherlock hasn’t been driven to distraction by distance and want and an eternity of celibacy. The tightness of his skin eases as he swallows John down. He spills into John’s hands, warm and loose, and John tells him he did so well, he was so good, please don’t be shy. Late that night, John touches him and touches him until he spills a second time. Come morning, John reaches for him anew, whispering praise all the while.
The next week, John still looks a bit pale and his sister has come to see him. The three of them speak in Franc, their degrees of fluency varying in the extreme. It turns the conversation rough and limping, but the relief of speaking his own language is immense and must show on his face.
The siblings reminisce about their grandfather, about the orchard. When they ask about Sherlock’s past, he tells them, as always, of Angelo. When he and John hold hands under the table, Harry does them the courtesy of only mocking them slightly.
Ostensibly, it’s for the best that Sherlock leaves that afternoon with only the barest kiss goodbye, but the pique and longing behind John’s eyes disagree.
The instance following this, Sherlock wakes to the sounds of John below the loft and rain above the roof.
This, he thinks, is a bit not good.
He lies still as long as he can, bidding the rain to pour itself out. The sound against the thatch is light and steady, a cold tapping that speaks of endurance. All he needs is an hour, just one hour to reach Euston.
The morning drags on as he feigns unconsciousness. The whistle of the kettle drowns the regular scratch of John’s whittling. Chair legs scrape against the floor. A soft, vaguely lyrical murmur rises up, John singing to himself. The tune is half-familiar.
When John finally returns to wake him, Sherlock has lost track of time. He’s long since begun to sleep through the calls of travellers.
“Hey.” A cold hand slips below the quilt and closes around his ankle. When Sherlock tries to jerk away, the reaction involuntary, John holds him firm despite his position on the ladder. “What kind of baker’s son are you? Morning’s half gone.” He switches between their languages where he can, his vocabulary growing with each visit Sherlock makes.
“It’s raining,” he answers, training his voice into laziness. “I’m not travelling in this.”
“Who says I’m asking you to leave?”
Something curls low in his stomach. It’s warm and lovely.
“Not getting up,” he plainly states.
“Sherlock.”
“Not moving.” Every word is a bid for time.
John pats his ankle once before removing his hand. “I’ll just sit down below and not snog anyone, shall I?”
Sherlock pretends to consider this. “That would be a waste.”
“Do you have another option?”
“Come back to bed.” They haven’t had sex yet and he’s already gone two weeks without release.
“Sherlock.” Half-chiding, only half.
Hands against the mattress, he sits up, letting the quilt fall from his chest. By the light of John’s little lamp, he catches the other man’s eyes. His voice turns low and liquid. “Please come back to bed.”
John sighs before climbing onto the loft, before crawling up Sherlock’s body, containing him between hands and knees. His kisses this morning are slow, unending licks into his mouth. A wet temptation between the lips, just for a moment, just for another.
With such incentive, his mouth opens quite willingly. His elbows unlock, fold, and he lies back, coaxing John to pursue. John’s lips trail down his jaw, his neck, his chest. The touch of a tongue in his navel sets him gasping, grasping, hand in John’s hair and legs around his torso. Beneath the lumped quilt and his own smallclothes, his cock wants John’s touch, wants to harden and spill. Two weeks since his last release and John has yet to notice a single bite. The glamour has held beyond expectations.
John hums as he sucks at his skin, thrilling him with vibration. More. More. John knows how to do these things. John knows how to suck and lick and bite - and isn’t that last a shock - and the motions of his mouth are superior to Sherlock’s best imaginings.
It’s all too apparent that John’s imaginings remain another level entirely. He brings Sherlock to squirm and twist, to press up beneath his mouth. His arm slips beneath Sherlock as his back arches. All motion becomes involuntary, becomes response and reaction. He sucks in his stomach at a lick and a breath of cool air. He twitches and shakes and the idea of going without is absurd.
“That’s it,” John urges. His voice is heat and air and chill against Sherlock’s exposed abdomen. “God, look at you. I’ll take you in my mouth, Sherlock. I’ll hold you until you’re ready. Do you want that? To get hard on my tongue?”
“John.”
“Do you need me to keep talking instead? Should I talk about your cock in my mouth? Or mine in yours? Oh, look at you. I can see your heart pounding. God, you’re thin.”
He buries his hand in John’s hair, forces that mouth to return to his skin. John’s chuckles set him to immediate squirming and they wrestle the quilt out from between them. With the barrier cast aside, Sherlock’s legs wrap about his torso, tug him and hold him closer. Anything to hold onto him. “More,” Sherlock gasps.
“Do you want me to sod you?” John asks. He presses down into the tight clutch of Sherlock’s thighs. “Is that it? Me inside you, do you want that?”
Sherlock nods, head rolling against the mattress, flush with the memory of thick heat easing down his throat. “Inside me,” he repeats, half-insensible, more than half.
“Next time,” John promises. “I haven’t got any- Next time. Have to leave you able to walk.”
“Want you,” he protests.
John kisses his stomach, stubble rough and lips firm. “What else? What are you craving?”
The noise Sherlock makes is high-pitched and confused.
“Do you want me in your mouth?” John asks. Already reaching down, around Sherlock’s legs, struggling with his own belt, equally desperate.
“Yes.” Without hesitation, yes. “Let me- I need to-”
“You’re going to suck me,” John says. “I’m going to spill inside your mouth and you’re going to drink me down. Is that it?” It’s innuendo, merely that, only that, but oh. John’s nothing short of glorious when he asks, aggressive and playful in his own need, “Is that what you need?”
“Let me,” Sherlock begs. “Please, John.”
“Yeah, we can, yes,” John promises, shoving at Sherlock’s legs. “Let me into position, just let me- Yeah.”
Trousers unfastened, shirts untucked, John swings his body around, lying on his side with his head at Sherlock’s crotch, his own exposed cock straining toward Sherlock’s shoulder. His hands seize Sherlock’s rear beneath his smallclothes and pull him free, drag him closer. His tongue dampens Sherlock’s flaccid length, a true torture. “Go on, then,” John urges, then takes him into his mouth.
Sherlock bites.
He bites and sucks and keeps his mouth pressed to John’s thigh regardless of the other man’s shout, words muffled into blunt vibration around his cock. John takes no preparation now, absolutely none, his mind translating pain flawlessly into bliss. Sherlock suckles and licks and soothes until John is twisting in his hands. Fire hot and oddly endearing, the side of John’s cock strikes against his cheek.
Inside John’s mouth, he feels himself grow hard. It’s more than he can stand, it’s already more, it’s been more this entire time, this entire week, and he comes with the inevitable snap of a frayed rope. John chokes and gags, the perfect accompaniment to Sherlock’s moans.
The cock against Sherlock’s face twitches. It’s not as hard as it was only moments ago, but is still quite firm, blood loss aside. This is interesting and pleasant in the way that everything about John is interesting and pleasant. Lovely, but viewed through an increasing haze of satisfaction. He’s certain there’s more.
He’s less certain when more entails the damn head of John’s prick smearing against his lips. He grips nudging hips and turns his face away.
“Stop being a tease!” John orders. “Sherlock, you can’t just-”
“Wouldn’t you rather something else?”
John very noticeably stops breathing.
“I want it too, John,” he continues, voice low against skin. He’ll accept anything involving minimal skill, simple to convincingly fake. The sexual prowess John attributes to him is a heady thing. He craves true talent. His hands on John’s hips learn to move, brushing touches and curling fingers, the caresses of knuckles as well as palms. “Please, John....”
“I haven’t-” John swallows audibly beneath the pattering of rain upon thatch. “I haven’t anything.”
Careful in his ministrations, he brings his lips to the member so close to his face. “Don’t be so modest,” he murmurs.
The response is a curse and a flurry of movement. John scrambles, then sways. He rolls Sherlock onto his stomach before commanding him to his knees. Kneeling behind him, wrapping arms around his front, John hauls him up. Sherlock sags against him, into his chest, a half-limp bundle from so much warmth and attention. His head lolls onto John’s clothed shoulder. Rough spun fabric scrapes against his back and sets him trembling within that secure embrace.
“Thighs together,” John instructs, his knees framing Sherlock’s. One of his hands leaves Sherlock’s chest, Sherlock hears him spitting, hears him slicking, and John presses himself closer. Below his arse, against his balls, John’s hot prick rubs. “That’s it,” John praises. He mouths at Sherlock’s neck. “That’s it. Tighter, can you, tighter? Fuck.”
Every breath presses John against his back. John’s arms pin Sherlock closer still, one about his waist, the other across his chest where fingertips pinch an unsuspecting nipple. Sherlock’s head lolls. He twitches for more in too many directions. Words fall from his mouth, such stupid, embarrassing words.
John fucks his thighs, his hips snapping, cock sliding, breath puffing. John holds him up, pins him close, and all Sherlock need do is tremble. He presses John’s hands harder against his skin, shaking, whining as his cock decides to come alive a second time.
His fingers fall from John’s wrist to his own member. He fumbles with himself, John’s thrusts pushing him into his own hand. Sensitive, too sensitive, can’t stop. Blunt teeth scrape against his neck. John’s hand finding him, John touching him. The stumble in flawless rhythm. John’s hips stutter. They stall. Viscous fluid strikes the side of Sherlock’s hand. John bites his shoulder.
Sherlock’s eyes forget how to see.
When they remember, they focus on the angle of the roof. The knots in the beams make interesting patterns from this angle. Sherlock is horizontal, strewn on his side. His upper body is not on the mattress.
John’s front is against his back. John’s hand is on his chest. John’s breathing is slow against his neck.
“John,” Sherlock says. It’s easily said, a word for a mouth agape, for slack lips and a stumbling mind. A fine word.
John kisses his shoulder where it hurts. The bite. The sound of it is wet.
“John,” he repeats.
“Mm?”
“I think you’ve killed me.”
A few long, slowing breaths before John answers, “Oops.”
The laugh from Sherlock’s throat startles them both. John giggles, curling around him, and Sherlock subsides into compliance.
“I will never mean to kill you,” John confides once he calms. “Exhaust you, maybe. Which wasn’t the best way to get you out of bed, come to think of it.” A pause. “...I think I can hear you grinning.”
“Can you?”
“Oh, now I definitely can.”
“I can hear you too,” Sherlock replies.
A few moments longer and John begins to move.
“Stop that,” Sherlock protests.
“I’m on duty.” As if this in any way rationalizes fucking with his clothes on.
Sherlock twists around to better secure him, heedless of his skin scraping against the floor of the loft. “It’s raining. No one wants to travel today.”
Somehow, John manages to lift Sherlock the inches it takes to thump his sweetly aching body back on the mattress. “Oh, is that why you’re still here?”
“Obviously.”
“Mmhm.”
They lean their brows together, the proximity like a kiss.
John pulls away, shaking his head. “Behave,” he chides.
“No.”
This time, he can see John grinning.
“Fine,” John says. “You do that. I’m going to get cleaned up and sit by a warm fire all by myself. You can stay up here and shiver in the altogether.”
Sherlock waves a dismissive hand. “You’ll be back.”
“You’ll be cold,” John replies, tucking away his shirts and buttoning up his trousers. He finds where Sherlock’s smallclothes have gone and returns them.
“These won’t be much help.”
“That’s really too bad,” John says.
“Stay up here.”
“On duty.” All the same, he settles down beside Sherlock, sitting cross-legged. Very slightly, he sags, but he nevertheless holds himself in check against the fatigue of blood loss. He touches Sherlock in the dim light, explorative contact intended to satisfy rather than excite. His chest, his arm, his neck and face; wherever can be touched from where John sits.
“I was beginning to wonder if you ever had stubble,” John tells him.
Before John? Never. “That’s a new smile,” Sherlock notes.
“Is it?”
“Yes. It’s in your eyes and forehead. You were tense, before.”
“So were you,” John replies, simple words turning his eyes deeper, darker, as sweet with promise as freshly tilled earth. “You always are, a bit.”
The urge to squirm and fidget returns. To be the best of his ability, he retains his composure. Except, perhaps, in the eyes. With John’s fingers sneaking into his hair, it simply can’t be helped.
“Do you feel safer now?” John asks, stroking dark curls. “Now that you’ve begun to settle in.”
Sherlock scoffs, nuzzling into the touch. “I always feel safe with you.”
“I’m glad,” says John, voice soft beneath the murmur of rain. His fingers tighten in Sherlock’s hair. “You should, you know.”
“I know,” Sherlock echoes, an absolute lie, and John kisses him, so slow, so sweet, as if Sherlock were a treat to be savoured, honey from the comb.
It’s far from the first time John has kissed him like this, but is the first time he shows no intention of stopping. Such tiny motions of the lips and yet Sherlock squirms beneath the touch, desperate for more, more, always more. Not his exhausted prick, merely his mouth, merely his hands in John’s short hair. Something writhes inside his chest, shaking like a child stripped of its blankets and thrown into a pond. It cries for suffusing warmth and seeks it in human skin.
“John?” he asks, abrupt, scared.
“Yeah,” John answers. “I’m- Yeah. Me, too.”
Through relearning how, he realizes he’d forgotten how to breathe. “Frightened?” he challenges.
“Terrified,” John tells him dryly, fingertips steady on his cheek. Terror is the last thing in his tone. He sounds much too fond for that. “But you keep coming back, so that’s all right.”
“Because the sex is excellent.”
John laughs. His fingers dip into Sherlock’s curls. He’s long-since discovered how stupidly this can make Sherlock smile. “Tell me again.”
“Your mouth on my cock is particularly delightful,” Sherlock adds.
“I should be saying that,” John disagrees, “but no, that’s not what I meant.” He says this without clarifying, his head pulled slightly to the side. He looks as young as Sherlock sometimes acts.
Sherlock’s lips curl indulgently. “Hm?”
“The part where I make you feel safe,” John tells him quietly.
“Always make me feel safe,” Sherlock corrects. “If you’re going to be sentimental, get it right.”
Ducking his head, John grins slow and wide. The sight of it wreaks havoc inside Sherlock’s chest yet again.
“Stop that,” he orders. The fear is back and he’s not certain why. He feels as prickly as a holly leaf. “You’re a trained swordsman with a vested interest in my well-being. You’re protective by nature, determinedly loyal and reasonably compassionate. Obviously, you’re- You’re still grinning, stop it.”
“Nope,” says John, grinning wider than before. “Don’t think I will.”
Sherlock huffs and squirms onto his side, utterly failing to put distance between them. John’s thigh is a solid presence against the small of his back. “Go back to your stupid post.”
“In a minute,” John murmurs into his nape, gathering him closer still. “No one’s travelling today.”
next
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 8.5k this part, 81k overall
Beta: seijichan
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: As far as initiation rites go, kidnapping a human doctor from a defended town ought to seem extreme. When James Moriarty offers him the challenge, Sherlock never considers saying no. (Fantasy vampire AU)
Warnings: Vampires, blood, explicit sex, glamour (as in mind control/hypnotism), dubcon.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven
The taste of tea is bitter and thin in John’s warm mouth. It mingles oddly with the sour remnants of tobacco and the fullness of smoke, but beneath these tastes, there is John. His flesh, not his blood, and compelling regardless.
John has lips and a tongue and a nuzzling nose. He has fingers and palms and sturdy arms. He has shoulders and spine. He has hips pressed between Sherlock’s thighs and a body concealed by malicious cloth barriers.
There’s not enough to touch and it’s clear John agrees. Aggravatingly, John has the poor sense to open Sherlock’s shirt rather than his own. Sherlock had already lost one layer before being backed against this wall. John is still so excessively bundled. The motions of the small man’s body drag wool against Sherlock’s bare skin.
“John,” he whines. He tugs.
John giggles against his lips, his cheek, his ear. “Give me a minute.”
“No.”
This time, John laughs aloud. His hands trail down Sherlock’s ribs, fingers folding until knuckles trace the path.
Sherlock squirms, oddly breathless, unimaginably dizzy, and he shifts his feet farther apart for balance. John presses closer, securing him to the wall with his hips.
“Your jumper is scratching me,” Sherlock complains.
John shucks it accordingly. The movement ruffles his hair upward, calling fingers to touch and tidy. With careful control over his hands, Sherlock tugs John back to him by his rear. The worn linen of his shirt is so much softer, even with the wooden buttons.
“Am I forgiven?” John asks. His palms stroke up Sherlock’s chest, seeking his shoulders. If the motion is meant to soothe, it fails utterly. Sherlock is roused, agitated, helpless. Though John presses hard and hot against his hip, Sherlock lies flaccid in his smallclothes, the force of his desire bottled beneath his skin.
“No,” Sherlock answers honestly. His voice is as small and petulant as the child he swears he isn’t.
“I’m very sorry,” John says, voice professional, cheeks flushed. He tugs his shirttails from his trousers as Sherlock fumbles at his buttons. The angle is strange, too new. Not so for John. The gatekeeper’s hand makes an easy slide down Sherlock’s stomach. He makes short work of Sherlock’s belt, a deft single-handed flick, before his fingers slip down farther. “How can I make it up to-”
John pauses.
“Ignore that,” Sherlock tells him, too breathless for glamour.
The delicate touch is removed. “Am I doing something wrong?” Blue eyes show vague concern and dwindling lust. Beneath them, the wounded confusion is the worst.
“Poor circulation. Unfortunate family trait.”
“Will you...?”
“Perhaps.” He hasn’t decided yet. He doesn’t have to have it. He can choose to do without. He can stop this whenever he wants to.
“I’ll take you in my mouth,” John promises. His hand returns, the back of his hand, rubbing lightly through cloth. “I can’t compare with you - god, that was brilliant - but I can suck you off.”
He understands the attraction of receiving such attention. A day removed from touch, he understands the attraction of any attention. As for performing, John is a giving person. All the same: “Do you like that? Do you want to?”
John immediately begins to push at Sherlock’s smallclothes.
Sherlock catches his hands. “That, um.” His tongue is thick.
At once, John stops reaching. “Sorry,” he says. This time, he means it.
“That isn’t what works,” Sherlock explains.
“What works?” His eyes gaze past their joined hands, lie on the greying white of Sherlock’s smallclothes where his loose trousers hang low. His tongue flicks across his lips.
Sherlock kisses him rather than answer.
This suffices, for a time.
When John is shirtless, and their chests press together, and John’s body strains into his, it isn’t enough. The deepest kiss is but a pittance against the thought of release. He wants to spill and hear John praise him. He wants the lambent glow between a quilt and straw mattress, but his body refuses to move, to quicken and harden and find release for all his wanting.
John’s hands cross his skin. They dip into his trousers and skirt the edges of his smallclothes. John rocks into him, against him, and Sherlock widens his stance to set them closer. John is flushed, his face and chest so very red. His breaths are shallow and lost against Sherlock’s skin.
“John, I need-”
“Yes.” Immediate, a moment’s interruption in the nips and licks at his throat. Tawny blond hair caresses his chin, his cheek. If Sherlock could come, he would have.
“Please,” Sherlock asks. His hands want. He keeps them on John’s skin, he means to keep them, but his fingertips succumb to the intimacy of a warm nape, the delicate blond strands.
“Tell me,” John presses into his skin.
“Last time,” Sherlock says. “When I....”
“Okay. Okay, yes, that’s- All right.”
Half-kneeling already, he hesitates. His voice. He can barely speak, barely think to speak. He settles to his knees between John and the wall where the thresh is thin. Fumbling on John’s belt, he can’t calm himself.
Hands stroke over his, rough in form and smooth in motion. They overcome the buckle. They unfasten buttons. They part fabric.
The touch so light, John brushes the curls from Sherlock’s brow.
His body jolts alive, no closer to release and all the more desperate for it. He presses up, up against, up into John’s palms, and then John, his fingers, his touch, carding through, massaging scalp, touching and touching and Sherlock groans against his thigh, blind with it. How he survived the first time, he’ll never know.
John is speaking. Praise and encouragement, prayers and half-playful curses.
“Picture it,” Sherlock commands. “I need-” He swallows, pushing down fears and morals alike. “I need to hear you describe it. Detailed, as much as possible.”
“Fuck,” John swears. “Fuck, is that what-? All right, yes, um. I can- yes.” He begins. Awkward at the first, then surer, more certain, more aroused. He’s quick to skip ahead to what he wants.
This time, what John describes brings an ache to Sherlock’s body, a deeper, lower craving. The skin beneath his lips is bruised from the first feeding and if he can only convince John of a fantasy once more, he can have it all again.
“Sherlock, please. Stop teasing, stop it, c’mon-”
“Yes, all right,” Sherlock agrees and John’s head snaps upward with a muffled shout. John lets loose high, brilliant noises, so breathy, and he keeps one hand in Sherlock’s hair. The other slaps against the wall.
“Yes,” John gasps. Next to Sherlock’s cheek, his erect cock twitches against air. “Oh god.”
Sherlock grips him by the hips in an attempt to hold him still. The movement against his palms is small, nudging. He has to adjust his position to properly bring his mouth to John’s thigh. He licks him soft and clean. He scrapes, ever careful, with his teeth. John doesn’t so much as pause in his rapid, panted monologue, something pertaining to Sherlock’s mouth and the heat therein.
The puncture is quick and clean. Sherlock licks him up, tonguing at the holes. He closes his mouth over the leak, around it, and feels John’s pulse in the flow. He feels John’s pulse in his own body, entirely psychosomatic and entirely seductive. His mouth fills slowly, his cock more slowly still, but by the third mouthful, he’s half hard.
He swallows and licks the area until the bleeding stops. The bruise is purple and wide and his.
John’s hand rides on his hair, torn between tugs and caresses, shockwaves and bliss.
All too soon, not soon enough, Sherlock removes his lips from skin, licks them clean, and reports, “John, I’m hard now.”
John’s voice is rough and low as he says, “You’re hard from sucking me.”
“I am,” Sherlock agrees, nuzzling the bruise, the claim. He’ll rub his scent all across John’s body, every inch he can reach. “I am, it’s good, I want- Can I?” His hand moves from John’s hip to his member, hard bone to hard flesh. John’s hand closes over his and teaches easy lessons. Not touching himself is almost more than he can stand but if he can last, if he can last longer than John can this time, please.
He can. John spills. The scent of it, that pungent scent. John’s handkerchief is filthy from his treatment of it. Sherlock might possibly want to steal it.
“Stand up,” John urges. “C’mon, let me have you.”
Somehow, Sherlock obeys.
Kneeling, John draws him out of his smallclothes right-handed, the other a steady presence against his stomach. Sherlock doesn’t know what to do with his own hands. The wall gives him nothing to grip. He can’t touch John’s hair. He hasn’t asked. He can’t-
Wet.
Wet heat.
Tongue. John’s. Wet and-
Pulling. No, sucking. Hand and mouth both. Suction.
Sherlock manages, just barely, to reopen his eyes.
His hips buck.
John gags.
John slams Sherlock’s hips against the wall.
Pressure spills out from beneath his skin, desperate relief.
Around him still. A mouth. Vibration.
He’s not sure what he’s saying but it might be John’s name.
Cold absence, after. He hears John spit.
His eyes are closed again.
When he forces them open a second time, he stares down at his hand upon John’s head. His nerves spark and flare, unconnected fuses still striving toward flame. His breathing is too quick, his skin too hot, flushed and painted with sweat.
John breathes against his navel, his hands so gentle. He strokes Sherlock’s sides as he would a spirited, exhausted horse, as he would any animal capable of bolting from pride alone. The odour of their semen rests in the back of Sherlock’s nose, pungent yet compelling.
“My legs are shaking,” Sherlock observes.
A smug hum vibrates against his stomach.
Absently, Sherlock pets his hair. “That was, um.” He has no words. Such a frequent occurrence, around John. It’s unnerving.
“Good?” John suggests. He pulls back slightly to look up, his hair stroking against Sherlock’s palm, and Sherlock snatches his hand away from the stolen intimacy.
“Sorry,” he says, the apology immediate. He knows he’s crossed a boundary, no permission granted. “I didn’t mean to, um. I didn’t mean to.”
A slow smile spreads across John’s face. It grows as a hanging vine, taking root in his eyes, flowering at his lips. New and almost delicate, the expression inspires the need to nurture, the compulsion. More, more, look at him like that more.
“It’s fine,” John says, as if Sherlock’s apology is endearing instead of necessary. “You didn’t pull.”
And, taking his hand, John guides him back. John positions him with palm loosely curled, fingertips against John’s scalp.
The world tilts, too light, too heavy. The balance shifts.
Are they lovers, then? Does John mean it? Does John even know what he’s saying, what he’s doing, what havoc he’s slipping through Sherlock’s skin?
Kneeling at his feet, John might. He might not. Yet there’s something about his eyes. There’s something about his murmur, the awestruck way he says “God, look at you” and how the words mirror Sherlock’s mind.
John climbs up his body, his movements slow. His right leg is stiff, his balance impaired. He grows paler as the sex flush fades and Sherlock knows enough not to be alarmed at the shade. He knows enough to avoid kisses, knows it in theory, but he fails utterly at the practice. John is much too quick, much too orally fixated. Attempting to verbally deter him only provides an opening. An unfortunate one.
With a startled noise into his mouth, John jerks his head back. “Are you bleeding?”
“Bit my tongue,” he lies. “I did try to tell you.”
John’s lips purse in sympathy.
“Shall we retire?” Sherlock asks.
John’s brow furrows.
“To bed?” Sherlock prompts.
“No one talks like you,” John says. Fingers curled in Sherlock’s nape, his thumb strokes waiting skin.
“No one?”
“No one.” John guides him down for a light brush of the lips. “But bed does sound lovely. You up first, I need to tidy. Do you want anything?”
“Yes.” An answering kiss.
A few answers more.
A silent conversation later, when he’s hazy and thrumming and so very warm, John sets a hand on his chest and eases him back.
“I meant to drink,” John says. “Wash the taste out.”
“It’s fine.” Pressing against that hand.
“You said bed,” John reminds him.
“This is more interesting,” he counters, leaning back in.
John’s distancing hand doesn’t quite hold firm. “Sherlock, I need to lie down,” he whispers, lips against lips. The stubble-sporting cheek beneath Sherlock’s hand grows warmer still. Lovely, so lovely.
“Can you make it up the ladder?” How much is the sex and how much is the blood loss? A half pint or so, twice taken. Roughly a pint lost in three days. It takes only a day or two to replace lost plasma, but the remaining fifth part of blood is weeks in the making.
“I could sleep on that ladder,” John tells him flatly. “You’d best get up it before I do.”
“With or without my clothing?” For all his chest is bare, his open trousers rest around his hips and he stands in his boots.
“Without.” John pulls back to look at him only to become visibly dizzy.
Sherlock gathers him up immediately. “Don’t tell me I’ve exhausted you.”
“Oh, shut up,” John says, more affection than command. His breath spills against Sherlock’s neck. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Don’t worry, John. The terrible apples are gone now.”
John laughs. His hand slaps lightly against Sherlock’s shoulder. “You be quiet.”
“Never,” Sherlock promises and, for no reason he can name, John kisses his neck. Sherlock sighs.
“Bed,” John orders.
Sherlock huffs. “Fine.”
He removes his boots and his trousers, leaving them on his chair, then climbs up the ladder to where the air is made of heat and tantalizing smoke. He crawls onto the mattress, shifting the sheet and quilt, and spends a short while attempting to shift the straw beneath him into a more comfortable cushion. When he hears John laugh below, he stops. When he hears John folding his things, their things, he doesn’t know what to do. It is the better cousin of panic, warm as well as paralyzing.
When John comes to him, he comes without reservation, reaching and reached for. They lie brow pressed to brow, their heads upon the single pillow. Their knees bump, unimportant.
“Still dizzy?” Sherlock whispers into the dark.
The answer is a puff of breath against his lips. A laugh?
“What?”
John shifts closer, sinking into Sherlock’s skin. His lips buzz against Sherlock’s collarbone as he murmurs, “You don’t need to fish for compliments.”
“I don’t?” he asks, content to follow John’s lead. He adjusts the arm under him to better tuck it over John’s shoulders. His hands are fond of the broad back, the muscles and bone beneath skin.
John hums a negative.
Slowly, Sherlock’s fingers steal higher. They touch ribs and side. They navigate the barrier of John’s sturdy arm. They creep, so cautious, into the man’s hair.
The motions of his hand are new, unpractised, and yet John relaxes further against him, into him, a wild creature tamed.
Sherlock begins to plan.
Calculating while dozing always brings him to dream of Victor.
In this dream, Victor peels his pencil like an apple. The long curls decorate the desk of his father’s study.
“Have you spoken with Irene?” Victor asks. He is a creature without scent, his voice is light and high. His features don’t quite make sense, the visage of a well-known boy transformed into an unknown man. “Irene would know. Irene knows about men.”
“We’re men,” Sherlock counters. “Could I use your pencil?”
Victor hands it to him, retaining his penknife. “Irene knows about fucking men.”
“She sings about it. That’s different.” He looks down and his paper is gone.
“She’s good at keeping blokes,” Victor points out.
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “At getting them. She’s dreadful at keeping them alive. Penknife.”
Victor hands him the penknife, handle first. “To be fair, it’s not her fault they keep drowning.”
Sherlock carves the numbers into the table.
“Humans are twelve pints,” Victor corrects, looking over his shoulder. “You’re thinking in deer. Deer are ten pints. The two-thirds death rule still applies.”
“With only nine pints, he dies,” Sherlock translates.
“No more than five fucks in the first five weeks,” Victor calculates. “Then maybe three for the next month before settling into once a fortnight. Less, if you want him active.”
“Of course I want him active!”
Victor laughs, the way he always does when Sherlock is endearing. “Good luck with that. You do realize this is why a bloodmate isn’t meant to be actual mate? And you’re meant to be taking swallows, not half-pints. At this rate, he’ll be dead before your body settles.”
Sherlock stabs the penknife through the mocking words, the mocking letters, pinning the envelopes to the mantel. “I’ll do it!” he yells at Victor’s correspondence. “I’ll have him!”
He tugs the knife free from the wood with a hard jerk before searching the letters for a reply. Envelope after envelope, he searches for a feasible plan.
Every page is blank.
He wakes mid-kiss, his body tight and needful beneath John’s welcome weight, his mind racing from sleep to awareness. His legs spread of their own accord and John nestles between, soothing even as he excites. As the sun rises and the birds cry, John brings them to their full.
He shoulders his satchel, the motion familiar and grounding. “I’ll be back in a week.”
John looks at him with an abrupt turn of the head. It’s a moment before he straightens from the fire, swinging the kettle back over the flame. “Oh?”
“Duties farther east,” he says.
“Oh,” John repeats. “All right.”
Sherlock readjusts the strap of his satchel.
“What about that parcel for, who was it, Anderson?” John asks.
It doesn’t exist. “I’ve sent a letter to enquire. All manner of delay are possible in the west.”
John nods. “I’ve heard.... Well, I’ve heard lots of things. Most are probably just stories, but I listen.”
Of course he does. John must be so bored here, dying for a shred of entertainment. It’s the only reason Sherlock can think of to explain John’s need for communication being greater than his longing for sex. With the ability to orgasm on demand, it’s incredible that humans get anything done. All the humans up at the crack of dawn, interrupting his afterglow with John in order to leave Bart’s, none of them make a shred of sense.
“What have you heard recently?” Sherlock asks.
“Just your basic summary. Bandits a bit of an issue out west,” John says. “It could be worse. There are more draughtsmen about than usual in the east.”
“Draughtsmen?” Sherlock repeats. He keeps hearing that term, usually from parents chiding their children. He’d assumed it was some sort of fabricated bogeyman, not an actual threat. “Are you saying game pieces are on the move?”
“Not draughts the game. Draughts like a draught of ale, a measurement?”
Sherlock pieces it together with a lurch in his stomach. “And a draughtsman’s draught is of blood.”
John nods. “Think it used to be a pun about pulling a pint, but it stuck, at least down by the coast. What do you call them back home?”
People.
“Lots of names,” he says. Such as Mycroft, or Victor. And Mummy, of course. Even, once, Father. For groups, it’s leeches or fleas, most commonly. A leech is like Sherlock, a product of southern civilization and sharing the slang for a doctor. Fleas are Moriarty and his kind, traditional in their drinking habits. Sherlock has always been told that fleas are dangerous, but the more he sees of where they live, the more he finds them justified. He offers some of the other slang instead, the derogatory words John might like better.
“Have you ever seen one?” John asks.
Somehow, Sherlock doesn’t laugh. “With my circulation, what would one want with me?”
“I don’t mean attacked,” John says. “It’s a bit obvious you’re still alive.”
Rather than truly answer, he counters, “Have you seen one yourself?”
“I’ve seen men under glamour. Accused of it, at least,” he amends. “Back in the army, standing orders were not to risk it. Otherwise, you could see people claiming it as an excuse to get away with anything. Same as nowadays, really, seeing as Lord Mayhew sets the policy.”
Low in his gut, the remnants of John still inside him have turned to ice. “Which policy?” Sherlock asks. “I’ve noticed the town walls and gates with holly - somewhat difficult to miss - but I’m not familiar with all.”
“The beheading one,” John answers.
“Oh,” Sherlock says. He can hear himself say this. “That one.”
“There are proper trials nowadays, thankfully.”
“Nowadays,” Sherlock echoes.
“Things are better now,” John says, but that is clearly all he’ll say.
Sherlock’s body forgets how to move. It stands there, simply stands there.
“Are you all right?” John asks. He draws closer. “Sherlock?”
“Is Mayhew aware that glamour can be broken?” This senseless, stupid- “If the- the draughtsman controlling the glamour releases it or dies, no lasting delusion or command can remain.” There are other techniques, complicated and expensive, but those are experimental and new.
“Yeah, but killing them is a bit problematic,” John says, as if this were remotely what Sherlock was talking about.
“Is that the sound of firsthand experience?” Sherlock finds himself asking.
John raises an eyebrow. “Do I look dead to you?”
“No,” Sherlock says. He summons his own natural charisma, needing to go, needing to get out. “However, the lighting is very poor in here.” He reaches behind him and opens the door, opens it wide. In sudden daylight, John is a dim, unremarkable creature.
John follows him to the door, torso angled toward Sherlock as if a sapling toward the sun. “And now?”
Sherlock makes an indifferent noise.
John laughs. “Fine,” he says. He catches Sherlock’s hand and brings unresisting fingers to his mouth. “Be safe.”
“I will,” Sherlock answers.
True to his word, Sherlock puts as much distance between them as soon as he possibly can.
Snug back in his room in Montague, Sherlock belatedly realizes what would have happened to Angelo here, had Sherlock relented and allowed the older man to accompany him across the river. As Sherlock ages, Angelo’s glamour-wrought delusions of his boyish charge grow ever more obviously wrong.
He thinks of the scent of flour mingling with yeast; the fragrance of hair oil lingering against the backs of chairs; the fierce dry heat of an oven against his cheeks, a blast of honey-scented air; an ever-enthusiastic voice telling him to taste and never swallow. He thinks of lockpicks and pickpocketing Mycroft and the proud clap of a hand on his shoulder. He thinks of honeycomb on his birthdays and that patient, unending embrace the day his mother died.
He thinks of Angelo dead. Not gone, but dead.
He thinks of someone chopping off Angelo’s head.
That night, he longs to pen another letter, never mind that it’s Angelo’s turn to write. He can’t justify the waste of paper, and neither can he justify sending any message of distress. Angelo would rush to his side. There’s no question of it. Angelo would fly to him and hold him tight and call him his precious child.
Sherlock wants that with an intensity he will forever deny.
Angelo is too obvious to risk. This hasn’t changed. Until Sherlock can acquire Moriarty’s technique and overwrite his mother’s glamour, Angelo will always be too obvious to risk. His brother’s glamour, Sherlock mentally rephrases. Inherited control.
Sherlock wonders, vaguely, if he’ll ever be able to tell Angelo about John. Tell him properly. If Sherlock tried to ask him about this issue with the sex and the kissing, the shouts of child molester would likely be the last sounds John ever heard. Angelo can’t cope with the concept of Sherlock beginning the first portion of puberty, let alone the voluntary second half. When Sherlock returns across the gulf, he’ll have to be careful about shaving. For that matter, he’ll have to learn to shave.
On the bright side, Mycroft would throw a fit if he knew Sherlock was currently intimate with a barbarian.
With a wry smile, Sherlock blows out the candle and puts himself to bed. His dreams are rough and strange, his body reaching through restless sleep for something no longer there.
A week is a long time.
In a week, his body no longer feels as if it might rip itself apart from the need to be against a soldier’s skin.
In a week, Sherlock has almost come to understand why John might prioritize conversation over sex.
In a week, walking unfamiliar roads and keeping ever vigilant control over his own voice, Sherlock is desperate for company he can trust.
He can’t expect an answering letter from Angelo for weeks. The last letter was simple, poorly spelled, and, presently, more well-worn than the missive and diagrams in Moriarty’s precise hand. This is, in part, because he can no longer look at the missive without thinking of John.
He can’t think of John without the need to confront, to challenge. Things don’t have to be this way. Surely John can see that. The world is, as Mummy had always said, a mutual place. Speakers and listeners, rulers and ruled. Understanding is all-important. Comprehension is more than mere power.
He can’t imagine a world more unlike his own than this. Wary respect is outright fear. Politicized dislike is irrational hatred. The recipient of an unsanctioned glamour is killed out of hand. There is no such thing as a sanctioned glamour, no man like Lestrade bringing thieves and ruffians to the doors of his lord with a writ from the mayor, requesting the criminals to be bound to the law. There are no doctors come to ask for assistance, no amputees who have had their pain blocked. This is a world where Anderson and his flea-themed insults are so small, so insignificant as to be lost against the background of daily life.
When he considers it, he finds he finally understands why Moriarty has developed his glamour to such an extent. Their people aren’t fighters. They never have been. They are liars and seducers. They are mesmerists.
When he had first heard of the man, Moriarty had been as inexplicable as he had been inspiring. Having come here, having passed trial by holly after trial by holly, having prompted stories of draughtsmen and listened to the inflated horrors, he understands.
The week passes. His mind and feet turn in circles, ever-moving, advancing nowhere.
A day late, he knocks upon the door and offers his hand. He is made to hold the holly. The voice and the touch from within are unknown, the scent not unfamiliar.
“Are you Bill?” Sherlock asks.
“That would be me, yeah,” the guard replies. There’s a pause as he inspects Sherlock’s palm for marks from the holly. Then: “You wouldn’t happen to be Sherlock, would you?”
“I, yes.”
“Right then. Hold on a mo’, shouldn’t take long.”
Bill releases him and shuts the window. His footsteps audibly travel to the bridge-side door, that door opens and instead of trying to bid Sherlock across the bridge, Bill simply stands there. The human is entirely out of sight but clearly signalling something.
Has the glamour worn off? Has John noticed the bite marks and told his fellow guards? The sun is setting, but it’s not too late to return to Euston, not if he runs. And he may have to run.
Over the distant rush of the water below, Sherlock hears brisk footsteps crossing the bridge, crossing toward him. He knows their sound. He hears words exchanged, Bill instructing John to retrieve some unspecified “it” and John responding in cheerful profanity. There is a hard slap of contact, possibly a hug - “you’re the best, mate, the absolute best” - and the sound of one man entering the gatehouse while the other walks back across the bridge.
This time when the window opens, the hand on the other side is familiar. There’s a quick, warm squeeze around his fingers before he withdraws, before the door opens.
John takes one look at him and says, “Oh hell.”
Sherlock says nothing, tacitly permitting John to take him by the arms and guide him in. He stands still, memorizing the trail of John’s hands as the human checks him for injuries.
“I’m fine,” Sherlock manages.
“Something scared you,” John corrects. “Were you robbed? Did someone threaten you?”
Sherlock shakes his head and shakes his head.
John takes his satchel and coat. “I’ll make tea.”
“I don’t want tea. It’s expensive - don’t waste it.”
“You might want tea later,” John insists. “Stranger things have been known to happen.”
Sherlock sits in his chair, watching John perform the smooth motions of hanging coat and satchel, of locking the door, of ladling water from barrel to kettle. The soldier’s movements have the grace of efficiency and repetition. The same steps on the same floor, each footfall so often fallen that mere practice transforms a brisk walk half into dance.
Sherlock folds his arms on the table and drops his chin on them, watching.
John sits across from him, every line of his body speaking of controlled concern, the need and the ability to help.
Gradually, Sherlock’s shoulders unbind from their hunch.
John’s body language quiets.
The kettle boils, John fixes tea, and Sherlock’s eyes follow the path of white steam from the mug set before him.
John tells him, utterly certain and wholly honest, “If anyone threatened you on the road, I can take care of it. There should be more patrols than this. There used to be. Bryant’s concentrated in his eastern territory, these days.”
To fend off draughtsmen, no doubt. “No one threatened me.” A society isn’t a Person. A society isn’t even a human.
The second mug rattles against the table, ceramic fused to wood by water only to be pushed free by John’s idle fingers. John secures his mug with a quick touch. He wraps his hands around it. “Is it everything, then?”
Sherlock lifts his head from his arms, too curious.
“Everything,” John repeats, as if this were clarification. “You don’t know where it starts from, but once fear catches one person, it spreads through everyone else. You know you’re probably safe, but ‘probably safe’ starts to look like bad odds.”
Is that the human dread of People here? Or perhaps John is referring to something else.
“Is that what the army was like?” Sherlock ventures.
“Sometimes,” John says, his gaze on his tea. The cradling touch turns his eyes affectionate to the beverage rather than distant to Sherlock.
“It doesn’t seem to touch you.”
John’s lips quirk. “Most people say that.”
“Most?” Sherlock repeats.
John ducks his head slightly, then levels his gaze. “The ones who haven’t heard me having screaming nightmares.”
Sherlock sits up straighter. “Do you often? Have them.”
“Mostly when sleeping alone,” John admits. The quirk of his lips becomes something so subtly different, so infinitely better. “Or when I can’t hear Harry snoring through the wall at home. Thought I should warn you anyway.”
“Somewhat belatedly.”
“Somewhat belatedly,” John agrees. “But if you’re going to keep coming, I thought....” He shrugs lightly, the right shoulder.
“I don’t want to have sex tonight,” Sherlock warns him, mental truth and physical lie.
There’s a slight pause before John says, “Not the kind of coming I meant.”
There’s a slightly longer pause before both of them are giggling.
When they can breathe again, they waste precious moments grinning at one another.
“But I do want to sleep in your bed and I would like to kiss you,” Sherlock amends. Let it not be said he can’t compromise.
“Good,” says John. “You could try sleeping on the floor but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“No?”
“No.”
“I’ll stay in your bed, then.”
“Probably for the best,” John agrees.
It probably isn’t, but Sherlock will never say.
Later, after John tells him stories of apples and armour, after two mugs of tea go cold, Sherlock dares to touch his hand. Later, pressing his lips to John’s hair, his chest aligned with the curve of the smaller man’s spine, a feeling far too akin to terror finally begins to fade. The worst of it abated days ago, its force exhausted, and yet the insecurity had lingered all the same.
John hums his approval. Of Sherlock’s relaxing body, of the light kiss, there’s little means by which to tell.
“I think I know what’s wrong,” Sherlock whispers. He’s thought of it now, only just, thinking of John listening to his sister’s snores.
“Hm?”
“This is the longest I’ve been on my own,” he says.
“How long?” John asks.
“Four months, two weeks, five days.”
John shifts slightly, adjusting his arm against the mattress. “That was... precise.”
“I have a good memory.” He strokes his hand down John’s other arm and catches his fingers. John lets him touch and play. “For example, thirteen days ago, you were whittling a figurine of a cat. It was on the table to the left of the candle.”
John rolls over in his arms, brow furrowed in the dark. He rubs at his left shoulder. “Thirteen days, really? That’s all?”
“Mm,” Sherlock agrees.
“Seems like....” John trails off into a yawn. His jaw cracks then closes. He makes a sleepy sound and nuzzles his face into the crook of Sherlock’s neck. John is heat and hardness. These positions are new, the intimacy beyond comprehension, and when Sherlock wants John, he is no longer certain for what part.
Sherlock dares a hand into his hair.
John wraps his leg around Sherlock’s, thigh over thigh.
They tug each other closer and whisper into the night.
The following week, they do the very same.
The week after, John asks for it. He asks so gently, as if Sherlock might not want him, as if Sherlock hasn’t been driven to distraction by distance and want and an eternity of celibacy. The tightness of his skin eases as he swallows John down. He spills into John’s hands, warm and loose, and John tells him he did so well, he was so good, please don’t be shy. Late that night, John touches him and touches him until he spills a second time. Come morning, John reaches for him anew, whispering praise all the while.
The next week, John still looks a bit pale and his sister has come to see him. The three of them speak in Franc, their degrees of fluency varying in the extreme. It turns the conversation rough and limping, but the relief of speaking his own language is immense and must show on his face.
The siblings reminisce about their grandfather, about the orchard. When they ask about Sherlock’s past, he tells them, as always, of Angelo. When he and John hold hands under the table, Harry does them the courtesy of only mocking them slightly.
Ostensibly, it’s for the best that Sherlock leaves that afternoon with only the barest kiss goodbye, but the pique and longing behind John’s eyes disagree.
The instance following this, Sherlock wakes to the sounds of John below the loft and rain above the roof.
This, he thinks, is a bit not good.
He lies still as long as he can, bidding the rain to pour itself out. The sound against the thatch is light and steady, a cold tapping that speaks of endurance. All he needs is an hour, just one hour to reach Euston.
The morning drags on as he feigns unconsciousness. The whistle of the kettle drowns the regular scratch of John’s whittling. Chair legs scrape against the floor. A soft, vaguely lyrical murmur rises up, John singing to himself. The tune is half-familiar.
When John finally returns to wake him, Sherlock has lost track of time. He’s long since begun to sleep through the calls of travellers.
“Hey.” A cold hand slips below the quilt and closes around his ankle. When Sherlock tries to jerk away, the reaction involuntary, John holds him firm despite his position on the ladder. “What kind of baker’s son are you? Morning’s half gone.” He switches between their languages where he can, his vocabulary growing with each visit Sherlock makes.
“It’s raining,” he answers, training his voice into laziness. “I’m not travelling in this.”
“Who says I’m asking you to leave?”
Something curls low in his stomach. It’s warm and lovely.
“Not getting up,” he plainly states.
“Sherlock.”
“Not moving.” Every word is a bid for time.
John pats his ankle once before removing his hand. “I’ll just sit down below and not snog anyone, shall I?”
Sherlock pretends to consider this. “That would be a waste.”
“Do you have another option?”
“Come back to bed.” They haven’t had sex yet and he’s already gone two weeks without release.
“Sherlock.” Half-chiding, only half.
Hands against the mattress, he sits up, letting the quilt fall from his chest. By the light of John’s little lamp, he catches the other man’s eyes. His voice turns low and liquid. “Please come back to bed.”
John sighs before climbing onto the loft, before crawling up Sherlock’s body, containing him between hands and knees. His kisses this morning are slow, unending licks into his mouth. A wet temptation between the lips, just for a moment, just for another.
With such incentive, his mouth opens quite willingly. His elbows unlock, fold, and he lies back, coaxing John to pursue. John’s lips trail down his jaw, his neck, his chest. The touch of a tongue in his navel sets him gasping, grasping, hand in John’s hair and legs around his torso. Beneath the lumped quilt and his own smallclothes, his cock wants John’s touch, wants to harden and spill. Two weeks since his last release and John has yet to notice a single bite. The glamour has held beyond expectations.
John hums as he sucks at his skin, thrilling him with vibration. More. More. John knows how to do these things. John knows how to suck and lick and bite - and isn’t that last a shock - and the motions of his mouth are superior to Sherlock’s best imaginings.
It’s all too apparent that John’s imaginings remain another level entirely. He brings Sherlock to squirm and twist, to press up beneath his mouth. His arm slips beneath Sherlock as his back arches. All motion becomes involuntary, becomes response and reaction. He sucks in his stomach at a lick and a breath of cool air. He twitches and shakes and the idea of going without is absurd.
“That’s it,” John urges. His voice is heat and air and chill against Sherlock’s exposed abdomen. “God, look at you. I’ll take you in my mouth, Sherlock. I’ll hold you until you’re ready. Do you want that? To get hard on my tongue?”
“John.”
“Do you need me to keep talking instead? Should I talk about your cock in my mouth? Or mine in yours? Oh, look at you. I can see your heart pounding. God, you’re thin.”
He buries his hand in John’s hair, forces that mouth to return to his skin. John’s chuckles set him to immediate squirming and they wrestle the quilt out from between them. With the barrier cast aside, Sherlock’s legs wrap about his torso, tug him and hold him closer. Anything to hold onto him. “More,” Sherlock gasps.
“Do you want me to sod you?” John asks. He presses down into the tight clutch of Sherlock’s thighs. “Is that it? Me inside you, do you want that?”
Sherlock nods, head rolling against the mattress, flush with the memory of thick heat easing down his throat. “Inside me,” he repeats, half-insensible, more than half.
“Next time,” John promises. “I haven’t got any- Next time. Have to leave you able to walk.”
“Want you,” he protests.
John kisses his stomach, stubble rough and lips firm. “What else? What are you craving?”
The noise Sherlock makes is high-pitched and confused.
“Do you want me in your mouth?” John asks. Already reaching down, around Sherlock’s legs, struggling with his own belt, equally desperate.
“Yes.” Without hesitation, yes. “Let me- I need to-”
“You’re going to suck me,” John says. “I’m going to spill inside your mouth and you’re going to drink me down. Is that it?” It’s innuendo, merely that, only that, but oh. John’s nothing short of glorious when he asks, aggressive and playful in his own need, “Is that what you need?”
“Let me,” Sherlock begs. “Please, John.”
“Yeah, we can, yes,” John promises, shoving at Sherlock’s legs. “Let me into position, just let me- Yeah.”
Trousers unfastened, shirts untucked, John swings his body around, lying on his side with his head at Sherlock’s crotch, his own exposed cock straining toward Sherlock’s shoulder. His hands seize Sherlock’s rear beneath his smallclothes and pull him free, drag him closer. His tongue dampens Sherlock’s flaccid length, a true torture. “Go on, then,” John urges, then takes him into his mouth.
Sherlock bites.
He bites and sucks and keeps his mouth pressed to John’s thigh regardless of the other man’s shout, words muffled into blunt vibration around his cock. John takes no preparation now, absolutely none, his mind translating pain flawlessly into bliss. Sherlock suckles and licks and soothes until John is twisting in his hands. Fire hot and oddly endearing, the side of John’s cock strikes against his cheek.
Inside John’s mouth, he feels himself grow hard. It’s more than he can stand, it’s already more, it’s been more this entire time, this entire week, and he comes with the inevitable snap of a frayed rope. John chokes and gags, the perfect accompaniment to Sherlock’s moans.
The cock against Sherlock’s face twitches. It’s not as hard as it was only moments ago, but is still quite firm, blood loss aside. This is interesting and pleasant in the way that everything about John is interesting and pleasant. Lovely, but viewed through an increasing haze of satisfaction. He’s certain there’s more.
He’s less certain when more entails the damn head of John’s prick smearing against his lips. He grips nudging hips and turns his face away.
“Stop being a tease!” John orders. “Sherlock, you can’t just-”
“Wouldn’t you rather something else?”
John very noticeably stops breathing.
“I want it too, John,” he continues, voice low against skin. He’ll accept anything involving minimal skill, simple to convincingly fake. The sexual prowess John attributes to him is a heady thing. He craves true talent. His hands on John’s hips learn to move, brushing touches and curling fingers, the caresses of knuckles as well as palms. “Please, John....”
“I haven’t-” John swallows audibly beneath the pattering of rain upon thatch. “I haven’t anything.”
Careful in his ministrations, he brings his lips to the member so close to his face. “Don’t be so modest,” he murmurs.
The response is a curse and a flurry of movement. John scrambles, then sways. He rolls Sherlock onto his stomach before commanding him to his knees. Kneeling behind him, wrapping arms around his front, John hauls him up. Sherlock sags against him, into his chest, a half-limp bundle from so much warmth and attention. His head lolls onto John’s clothed shoulder. Rough spun fabric scrapes against his back and sets him trembling within that secure embrace.
“Thighs together,” John instructs, his knees framing Sherlock’s. One of his hands leaves Sherlock’s chest, Sherlock hears him spitting, hears him slicking, and John presses himself closer. Below his arse, against his balls, John’s hot prick rubs. “That’s it,” John praises. He mouths at Sherlock’s neck. “That’s it. Tighter, can you, tighter? Fuck.”
Every breath presses John against his back. John’s arms pin Sherlock closer still, one about his waist, the other across his chest where fingertips pinch an unsuspecting nipple. Sherlock’s head lolls. He twitches for more in too many directions. Words fall from his mouth, such stupid, embarrassing words.
John fucks his thighs, his hips snapping, cock sliding, breath puffing. John holds him up, pins him close, and all Sherlock need do is tremble. He presses John’s hands harder against his skin, shaking, whining as his cock decides to come alive a second time.
His fingers fall from John’s wrist to his own member. He fumbles with himself, John’s thrusts pushing him into his own hand. Sensitive, too sensitive, can’t stop. Blunt teeth scrape against his neck. John’s hand finding him, John touching him. The stumble in flawless rhythm. John’s hips stutter. They stall. Viscous fluid strikes the side of Sherlock’s hand. John bites his shoulder.
Sherlock’s eyes forget how to see.
When they remember, they focus on the angle of the roof. The knots in the beams make interesting patterns from this angle. Sherlock is horizontal, strewn on his side. His upper body is not on the mattress.
John’s front is against his back. John’s hand is on his chest. John’s breathing is slow against his neck.
“John,” Sherlock says. It’s easily said, a word for a mouth agape, for slack lips and a stumbling mind. A fine word.
John kisses his shoulder where it hurts. The bite. The sound of it is wet.
“John,” he repeats.
“Mm?”
“I think you’ve killed me.”
A few long, slowing breaths before John answers, “Oops.”
The laugh from Sherlock’s throat startles them both. John giggles, curling around him, and Sherlock subsides into compliance.
“I will never mean to kill you,” John confides once he calms. “Exhaust you, maybe. Which wasn’t the best way to get you out of bed, come to think of it.” A pause. “...I think I can hear you grinning.”
“Can you?”
“Oh, now I definitely can.”
“I can hear you too,” Sherlock replies.
A few moments longer and John begins to move.
“Stop that,” Sherlock protests.
“I’m on duty.” As if this in any way rationalizes fucking with his clothes on.
Sherlock twists around to better secure him, heedless of his skin scraping against the floor of the loft. “It’s raining. No one wants to travel today.”
Somehow, John manages to lift Sherlock the inches it takes to thump his sweetly aching body back on the mattress. “Oh, is that why you’re still here?”
“Obviously.”
“Mmhm.”
They lean their brows together, the proximity like a kiss.
John pulls away, shaking his head. “Behave,” he chides.
“No.”
This time, he can see John grinning.
“Fine,” John says. “You do that. I’m going to get cleaned up and sit by a warm fire all by myself. You can stay up here and shiver in the altogether.”
Sherlock waves a dismissive hand. “You’ll be back.”
“You’ll be cold,” John replies, tucking away his shirts and buttoning up his trousers. He finds where Sherlock’s smallclothes have gone and returns them.
“These won’t be much help.”
“That’s really too bad,” John says.
“Stay up here.”
“On duty.” All the same, he settles down beside Sherlock, sitting cross-legged. Very slightly, he sags, but he nevertheless holds himself in check against the fatigue of blood loss. He touches Sherlock in the dim light, explorative contact intended to satisfy rather than excite. His chest, his arm, his neck and face; wherever can be touched from where John sits.
“I was beginning to wonder if you ever had stubble,” John tells him.
Before John? Never. “That’s a new smile,” Sherlock notes.
“Is it?”
“Yes. It’s in your eyes and forehead. You were tense, before.”
“So were you,” John replies, simple words turning his eyes deeper, darker, as sweet with promise as freshly tilled earth. “You always are, a bit.”
The urge to squirm and fidget returns. To be the best of his ability, he retains his composure. Except, perhaps, in the eyes. With John’s fingers sneaking into his hair, it simply can’t be helped.
“Do you feel safer now?” John asks, stroking dark curls. “Now that you’ve begun to settle in.”
Sherlock scoffs, nuzzling into the touch. “I always feel safe with you.”
“I’m glad,” says John, voice soft beneath the murmur of rain. His fingers tighten in Sherlock’s hair. “You should, you know.”
“I know,” Sherlock echoes, an absolute lie, and John kisses him, so slow, so sweet, as if Sherlock were a treat to be savoured, honey from the comb.
It’s far from the first time John has kissed him like this, but is the first time he shows no intention of stopping. Such tiny motions of the lips and yet Sherlock squirms beneath the touch, desperate for more, more, always more. Not his exhausted prick, merely his mouth, merely his hands in John’s short hair. Something writhes inside his chest, shaking like a child stripped of its blankets and thrown into a pond. It cries for suffusing warmth and seeks it in human skin.
“John?” he asks, abrupt, scared.
“Yeah,” John answers. “I’m- Yeah. Me, too.”
Through relearning how, he realizes he’d forgotten how to breathe. “Frightened?” he challenges.
“Terrified,” John tells him dryly, fingertips steady on his cheek. Terror is the last thing in his tone. He sounds much too fond for that. “But you keep coming back, so that’s all right.”
“Because the sex is excellent.”
John laughs. His fingers dip into Sherlock’s curls. He’s long-since discovered how stupidly this can make Sherlock smile. “Tell me again.”
“Your mouth on my cock is particularly delightful,” Sherlock adds.
“I should be saying that,” John disagrees, “but no, that’s not what I meant.” He says this without clarifying, his head pulled slightly to the side. He looks as young as Sherlock sometimes acts.
Sherlock’s lips curl indulgently. “Hm?”
“The part where I make you feel safe,” John tells him quietly.
“Always make me feel safe,” Sherlock corrects. “If you’re going to be sentimental, get it right.”
Ducking his head, John grins slow and wide. The sight of it wreaks havoc inside Sherlock’s chest yet again.
“Stop that,” he orders. The fear is back and he’s not certain why. He feels as prickly as a holly leaf. “You’re a trained swordsman with a vested interest in my well-being. You’re protective by nature, determinedly loyal and reasonably compassionate. Obviously, you’re- You’re still grinning, stop it.”
“Nope,” says John, grinning wider than before. “Don’t think I will.”
Sherlock huffs and squirms onto his side, utterly failing to put distance between them. John’s thigh is a solid presence against the small of his back. “Go back to your stupid post.”
“In a minute,” John murmurs into his nape, gathering him closer still. “No one’s travelling today.”
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