Fic: Cooperative Principle - 6/8 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: Cooperative Principle
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 6.3k this part, 56k overall
Betas: vyctori and seijichan
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: As the newest instructor at St. Bart's, John has been explicitly warned to never do Sherlock Holmes any favours. Too bad the sex is so good.
Warnings: explicit sex, dubcon, PTSD, panic attacks
Chapter One -- Chapter Two -- Chapter Three -- Chapter Four -- Chapter Five -- Chapter Six -- Chapter Seven -- Chapter Eight
“Oh!” Mike gasps when John walks into his office. “Oh, that’s wonderful!”
John twitches a smile in reply, but Mike is already getting up from his desk. With his set-up aimed at the window in the side of the room, there’s no barrier in the room, and it sets John on alert automatically.
No attack here, not from Mike, though the hug is rather unexpected. Rather extremely.
“Whatever you did over holiday, it worked,” Mike needlessly tells him, beaming.
“Yeah,” John agrees.
“I want to offer you a seat, but at the same time, I really don’t. Oh, that’s wonderful.”
“Yeah, I’m chuffed.”
“How’d it happen?” Mike asks.
John’s face must do something without John’s permission, because Mike immediately backpedals.
“Or not,” Mike adds. “Sorry, you must be dropping by for a reason and I’m prattling on.”
“I... no, no reason. I just...” John bites his lip, head tilting to the side, eyes closed. Steady. Stay steady. He flexes his left hand. “It’s all anyone’s wanted to talk about all week. I’m sick of it, to be honest.”
“And it’s only Wednesday,” Mike says, just enough sympathy to count. There’s almost an edge to the words, but only almost. In his tone, there’s only a vague trace of what would be biting annoyance in Sherlock’s voice: irritation by proxy at multitudes unendingly stating the obvious. “I imagine you’d like to sit after all.”
They sit. They talk shop. Mike goes over the finer points of exam season with him, routine things John already knows and is soothed by. Mike talks about his own life a bit, and John tries to be interested in stories that Mike inevitably forgets the endings to. John tries and fails to add to the conversation. All he has is work and therapy and Sherlock, and all three of them are drawing to a close.
When the conversation well and truly dies of exhaustion, John is forced to ask or leave, and he doesn’t want to leave. Mike takes the question out of his hands with a simple, “How’s Sherlock?”
“I... I haven’t seen him since Friday, actually.” John hasn’t, but Molly has. John checked in with her yesterday morning. Sherlock has been to Bart’s. Sherlock has been to Bart’s at a time John was also at Bart’s, and Sherlock decided to sweet talk poor Molly around a pile of paperwork rather than stop by.
Maybe John should be jealous. No, he is jealous, so that’s wrong. He shouldn’t even be jealous. John should be angry, and not at Molly. The one bit of sanity present is that he’s not angry with Molly in the slightest. Instead, he wants to grab Molly by the shoulders and tell her that he understands, really, he does. All of the stupid favours she does and keeps doing, John understands. He wants to propose that they stand in a corner, stick their fingers in their ears, and hum loudly until the feelings lessen and the problem abates.
It would never work, but it’s the only plan he has at the moment.
“That’s not unusual, is it?” Mike asks.
“Sorry, what?”
“Sherlock drops off the face of the planet every so often,” Mike explains. “Less than a week is hardly unusual.”
John runs over his mental calendar of the past several months.
“It... is unusual?” Mike asks.
“We’ve, um.” It’s the longest they’ve been apart since John tried avoiding him, and that was before holiday. It’s not simply another month, it’s now another world. The geography there is strange and uncertain, and John’s not sure how he once walked it.
“It isn’t that man with the car and the phones again, is it?”
“What? No. No, it’s not that.”
“Was that ever resolved?” Mike asks.
“It was Sherlock’s brother,” John answers. “Works in the government. Not sure how he pulled it off, but Sherlock didn’t seem concerned about it.”
“So,” Mike says, “a simple case of ‘break his heart, I’ll break your bones’?”
“Yeah,” John lies. He’d had that thought before, if only as a vague hope. He knows better now. Get out while you still can is a difficult warning to misinterpret, but John had managed it all the same. To be fair, John’s not trapped. He’s on his way out and he knows it, just as he knows the way will be long and painful. Possibly, it might involve getting his DVDs back, but he’s almost tempted to give up on them. The associations are too strong between one deep voice and another. John clears his throat and adds, “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
John knows his poker face is improving when Mike responds with a grin. “That’s good to hear,” Mike says. “No, it is, really. He’s always had a bit of an odd man out feeling to him. Confident, mind you.”
“He is that,” John agrees. Dryly, not wistfully. Not wistfully at all. Subject change, now. Something. Anything. Nothing. He can’t focus.
“You all right, mate?”
“Yeah, I’m, I’m fine. Sorry, got a little distracted there.” John sits up straighter. “You were saying?”
“About Sherlock? Oh, right. Well, you’d see him about, but he’d always be detached. Not distracted, per se, just...”
“Like he’s watching from a higher vantage point,” John finishes for him.
Mike points at him. “Just like that. That’s a good way of putting it. Bit removed, sees everything.”
“So you’ve never known him to, I don’t know. Connect with someone?”
Mike gives him a grin. “Not like with you, no. I’ve known him, oh, two years? I’m not sure he’s ever spoken about himself.”
“He doesn’t, as a rule. I think it bores him. You wouldn’t think it, a man that vain.”
Mike laughs and there’s a knock at the door. “Yes, hello?”
The door opens. Sherlock’s eyes fix on Mike and only Mike. “I’ll come back later,” he says, and the door shuts again.
Twisted in his chair, John stares at the door.
“Must be in a hurry,” Mike muses. “You’re right: it is a higher vantage point he’s working from.” Mike continues a bit longer, mercifully oblivious of the sudden stab wound through John’s gut.
“I,” John says. He stands. “I need to. Go. I think I should go.”
“Oh, right, sorry,” Mike says, as if John’s muddled sentences make perfect sense.
“See you.”
“Bye!”
John closes the door, looking up and down the hall, but Mike’s office is near a stairwell on one side and near an intersection on the other. The stairs are closer and he checks them first, listening rather than climbing. No sign.
He doubles back quick as he can, strides to the end of the hall, and looks right and left in time to catch a glimpse of the coat. Left, it is.
John walks quickly, but Sherlock and his impossibly long legs do as well. John wants to shout his name, workspace be damned, but he can’t trust what his voice might put into the word. “You know I’m behind you,” he calls instead.
Walking on, Sherlock doesn’t respond.
John quickens his pace. He quickens it and quickens it again. He catches Sherlock by the arm, Sherlock glares at him, and John crashes their mouths together. He sinks his fingers into lush curls, hands fastened to either side of Sherlock’s head. The kiss itself is terrible, all pressure, no technique, two pairs of lips bruising between two sets of teeth. Such a terrible kiss and off-centre besides, but John is touching him, John has him, John might be able to keep him.
The hallway, they’re in a hallway, that’s good. Sherlock’s exhibitionist kink, maybe John could, no, no getting sacked. Experimenting? Propose they test his leg. Or the begging. If John means to beg, if he does it on purpose, if he does it for Sherlock’s benefit and not his own, there’s no humiliation in that. It’s just a game. Just another experiment.
“Take me home with you,” he gasps the instant their mouths part. “Right now. Let’s go outside, find a cab, and fuck ourselves hoarse in your flat. Yes or no?” A bargain, not an entreaty, but John still kisses him again before he can reply. He works at Sherlock’s mouth with his own until he wants to shout at the man to respond, to touch him back, to slam John into the wall before John shoves him there first. John has no idea what Sherlock wants or doesn’t want, and he has to keep his hands in Sherlock’s hair to keep from grabbing at his crotch to check. “Say yes or I stop.”
Sherlock groans into John’s mouth, a low noise that might be anything.
John breaks away entirely, breathing hard around the stone in his throat.
Eyes closed, lips bruised red, Sherlock staggers forward. He reaches. He reaches and grasps, each hand fisted in John’s cardigan. John has never seen him look so confused, so indecisive, but that’s fine, that’s enough. It’s John’s turn to be a bastard.
He pulls Sherlock back in, one hand curling at his nape, the other slipping beneath the long coat and into a very tight back pocket. Sherlock’s mouth seeks his blindly, but John drags him off-course and puts his lips to Sherlock’s ear.
“Anyone could see us right now,” he whispers. “Long hallway and us in plain sight.”
“John.”
Yes. God yes. “Anyone could turn the corner. Catch me half-under your coat.” It’s no exaggeration, not in the slightest. His entire right side is beneath it. “I used to be fucking mortified as a kid. Couldn’t even hold a boy’s hand. Thought everyone would go after me the way they did Harry. Sod that. I don’t care anymore. I want you to take me home with you, I want to hear you say yes, and if anyone else hears, I want to rub it in their fucking face.
“Because you, you are, you’re a prize. You’re an absolute prize, and I know that. You’re the most brilliant man I’ve ever met. Fucking hell, Sherlock.”
There is so much more to be said and none of it fit for saying. He has Sherlock clutching at him and hard against his stomach. He’s sent Sherlock’s breathing out of control, shallow panting. He wants more. He kisses Sherlock’s neck, again and again and again until he can think of something tempting.
“Let’s find a cab,” John proposes, low and quiet. “I’ll take the fold-down seat behind the driver, you take the normal one, and I’ll let you use your foot on me.” He pulls back to adore the blatant want in grey eyes turned lust green. “But I refuse to come until I’m in your bed.”
“Refuse?” Sherlock challenges. He tugs John’s hips against his and works a slow, obscene grind. “Your office is much too close. You won’t refuse.”
John’s forehead drops onto his shoulder. “Cab. Now.”
“You’ve forgotten your coat.”
“No,” John says. “I’ve left my coat. Unless you don’t think you can keep me warm enough.”
“Prepare to overheat.” Sherlock seizes his hand and drags John after him. Their progress is hindered by arousal, but equally so. They take the nearest way out and pass a pair of janitors and a few people John might be able to put a name to if he were even vaguely in his right mind. Sherlock has his coat buttoned and John keeps close behind him.
With impossible speed, Sherlock summons them a cab. They climb in and sit as John had specified, and Sherlock, the git, gives the cabbie John’s address rather than his own.
“No, two-two-one Baker Street, actually!” John corrects over the radio.
“Why not your flat?” Sherlock demands.
“Because my keys are in my coat,” John says as the cab pulls away from the kerb.
Sherlock’s mouth opens, a plump pink circle of surprise. His hair is ridiculous, his cheeks flushed. John has seen him look more well-fucked than this, but never before the actual fucking.
Sherlock swallows and his throat is a thing of beauty. “Are they.”
“Yes.” Not by design, entirely by accident, but John knows when to take credit for being a sexual mastermind. Right now. Right now and for as long as he can. He needs to keep pushing and sidestepping and challenging. When John can no longer hold Sherlock’s interest, John will let him go without begging or tears, but until then, John will fight for every inch of warm skin, every moment of watching Sherlock’s eyes widen until they’re blue.
When that moment is nearly past, John brings it back in full. He plants his feet wide in the cab and spreads his knees.
Elbow at the base of the window, Sherlock bites the side of his index finger, looking steadfastly outside, refusing to meet John’s insistent gaze.
John spreads his legs wider still, leaving his hand on his thigh.
Sherlock looks. He doesn’t do anything, but he looks.
“Change of plans?” John asks.
Sherlock’s eyes flick from John’s crotch to his own foot, then back.
“Are we still on?”
Again, the glance. This time, Sherlock shifts one foot forward, just enough for John to see that Sherlock’s legs are patently too long for a footjob in the cab.
John feels his own face fall.
Sherlock looks as if he may pass out from arousal.
There must be another way to indulge Sherlock’s exhibitionist, voyeuristic kinks, and John stumbles into the first way by accident. He has to adjust himself in his trousers, nothing more, but doing so while staring into Sherlock’s already glazed eyes turns the motion into intentional seduction. He strokes his thigh with his fingertips, and Sherlock’s gaze fastens to his hand.
John risks as much as he can, too close to the point of no return to put his hand too much on himself. He lets Sherlock see it, makes him see how much John wants this, wants him, wants to take him apart until even Sherlock’s mind can no longer think.
Sherlock bites his index finger, his hand now fisted. The radio masks the sound of his shallow breathing. It might mask a bit more.
Before he can think better of it, John toes off his shoe.
Sherlock’s lips move around his finger, but no whisper or mutter reaches John’s ears. Sherlock drags his gaze away from John and stares steadfastly out the window, face turned.
John waits.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock glances back to him.
John lifts his eyebrows.
Sherlock stares at him, unreadable, indescribable, before sliding down in his seat. He adjusts his coat over his lap. He looks out the window, then nods.
John peels off his sock and tucks it in his pocket. Easy enough. Reaching out is more difficult, particularly with the right leg when he has the door for support only on his left.
He starts with his toes, his foot a gentle wedge between Sherlock’s knees. Sherlock presses his thighs together tightly, stalling John’s progress. John stops, confused, until Sherlock sinks down a bit farther, pressing John’s foot a little higher. The message is clear: work for it.
The distance between Sherlock’s knees to his crotch is absurd, an impossible penetration between clenched thighs. John wriggles his foot deeper and deeper, watching Sherlock’s face contort. No matter what John does, Sherlock never makes a sound. The only risk is the cabbie catching sight of Sherlock in the rear view mirror, which must be why Sherlock again turns his face toward the window.
John pulls back his foot before pushing forward, a drag of skin-warmed cloth between them. He works farther in and in, and Sherlock’s ear turns red. John presses down with the ball of his foot, detached from the sensation, enthralled by the sight. Sherlock readjusts his coat over his lap and John’s leg, then grips John hard by the shin. His crotch is entirely out of sight.
John taps his toes against Sherlock’s stomach, insistent. Sherlock risks a glance at him, twitches under John’s foot, and squeezes his eyes shut. John eases off as much as Sherlock will let him. He waits until Sherlock looks at him and nods, then mouths unzip.
Sherlock frowns, more disbelief than disapproval. He glances down. He looks at John. John nods and mimes it himself, unclenching his fists to do so.
Sherlock stares at him.
John moves his foot a bit.
Sherlock squeezes his shin, looks out the window, and casually slips a hand under his blanketing coat.
The first touch is a bit odd and the strangeness never does decrease. It’s clumsy and paranoid and fumbling, too much pressing and sliding in the attempt to truly stroke. Sherlock clearly does not mind. Fingers clutching at John’s trousers, he jerks his hips forward, tiny thrusts from little more than flexing his legs against the seat.
Every time they reach a stoplight, Sherlock times a thrust as inertia carries him forward. Every time the light turns green, Sherlock secures John’s leg as inertia nudges John further toward the edge of his seat. Sherlock’s other hand dedicates itself to keeping his lap covered.
When the cab turns onto Baker Street, Sherlock mouths a curse. John pulls away and shoves his foot back into his shoe. Sherlock merely adjusts his coat. The cloth is heavy and the bulge blends into its natural folds.
John climbs out first, paying the cabbie. He doesn’t trust Sherlock to speak at this point. He can barely manage it himself, putting on a bit of a cough when his voice sticks its way through a lower octave than expected.
Before he can cope with what he’s just done in a cab, Sherlock gets his front door open. John bounds after him, up the stairs and through the door to be snagged, an arm tight around his waist.
Sherlock slams the door shut behind them. “On your knees, now,” Sherlock rasps.
John looks over his shoulder, an involuntary check toward 221A, but Sherlock catches his cheek, forces John’s eyes to his, and repeats, “Now.”
It ought to be quick. They might manage. “Lean against the door,” John counters.
With a great swish of coat, Sherlock complies. He unbuttons and there he is, exposed for John’s mouth.
John kneels. He tugs a bit more of Sherlock’s briefs through his zip, some protection from the metal teeth, and then wastes no more time. A few slicking licks, his hand steadying the base, and John takes him deep. His hand and mouth work in time and he presses Sherlock against the door, his forearm a bar across a concave stomach. A long sweep of fabric tries to envelop him.
Sherlock’s hands flutter at his face, his hair, his shoulders. All of the noise absent from the cab spills out now, one desperate groan after another as Sherlock struggles toward John’s mouth. Sherlock bucks forward hard, much too hard, and John gags. He pulls off, coughs, and gives himself time to breathe by tugging down Sherlock’s trousers and easing down his pants. With Sherlock cursing and on display before him, John relocates to safer ground. If Sherlock’s cock was heavy in John’s mouth, his bollocks are even more so.
“Look up,” Sherlock pants. “Look up, look up.”
John shakes his head, tugging one of Sherlock’s balls this way and that with his lips.
Sherlock grips him by the hair, a hard hold that hurts almost as much as a tug, and the pain goes straight to John’s already aching cock.
John growls a bit and switches sides.
“John.” A sharp pull now.
John glares up at him, and Sherlock’s tense body trembles under his hands. John swears and gets his mouth there in time, closed about the head. It’s more than he can hold. He lets his mouth overflow and remembers his sock in his pocket.
The grip on his hair turns soft and shaking. John spits onto his sock, and Sherlock slides down the door. His eyes are wide, glassy, his mouth slack. Sitting in a pool of dark fabric, he’s more out of breath than John is. Wet and shining, his cock lies softening outside his unzipped trousers.
“Upstairs,” John instructs, voice consciously soft. “Before your landlady pops round for a chat.”
“She’s, ah.” Sherlock shakes his head, or perhaps his head simply lolls. “Not in.”
“You arse.” John bites at his mouth before climbing to his feet, his legs framing Sherlock’s hips, his shoes on top of folds of coat. Sherlock’s hands immediately rise to John’s bum, tugging him closer. “You fucking arse.”
John presses his hips forward, presses his aching crotch against Sherlock’s mouth and cheek. Sherlock groans, turning his face into the pressure. He tries to mouth John through the fabric, through his zip. John cards his hands through sweaty curls and gives into the urge to fuck Sherlock’s mouth a little. He can’t much, can barely at all, but when Sherlock breathes hot all over him, when long fingers dig into his arse, it’s still much too much.
“Stop,” John gasps. “Bed.” He’d wanted it. Naked.
“Here.” Sherlock’s fingers hook into his trousers. He looks up at John, drunk on orgasm. His flush is even darker in John’s shadow. “Can’t move. Let me...”
“Let you suck me?”
“Yes.”
“Let you suck me against your front door?”
“Yes,” Sherlock rasps.
“Let me do the work,” John tells him. “I won’t choke you.”
Sherlock unfastens John’s zip. John hisses before he groans, the transition from confinement to wet heat quick and endless. Sherlock wraps a loose hand around him, a guideline, and John fucks his mouth. Forearm against the door, brow pressed to the back of his wrist, John pants as he thrusts, this far, this far, this far, don’t go too far. “Okay?” John gasps. His other hand shields Sherlock’s head from the door.
One hand riding John’s hip, Sherlock groans around him. Not one of his usual blowjob sounds, no mocking hum or aggressive encouragement, but the sound of a man having too much sex to keep track of. John’s balls slap against the side of Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock squeezes, Sherlock hums and swallows, and John comes until his knees threaten to fold.
Sherlock pulls off and swallows and coughs, and John sinks down on top of him, kneeling over the man’s thighs. Sherlock’s head meets the door with a soft thump. His mouth is wide and pink and gasping. His chest is caught between a heave and a flutter, his breathing deep and rapid and slightly worrying. A damp sheen lingers at the corners of Sherlock’s closed eyes. John wipes it away with his thumbs, spreading twin trails of saline over Sherlock’s temples.
“Sorry.” He brushes kisses over Sherlock’s sweat-damp forehead.
“Hm? Oh.” Sherlock hooks two fingers in the buttoned V of John’s collar. “Forgiven.”
“I’ll try not to, next time.”
Sherlock’s reply is to lean his forehead against John’s as his breathing slows. John sits across his lap, waiting for confirmation. There has to be a next time. The only question is how far John can keep pushing until they’re arrested for public indecency.
“We should go out sometime,” John suggests. “Before it’s too warm for your coat, I mean. Before summer.” He pets the impossible lines of Sherlock’s face, feels returning tension fall away beneath fingertips. “Start close to home in case we need to run back, so Regent’s Park. We can stand at a bridge and play at looking out, having a cuddle. You wear the coat, I’ll have a t-shirt under my jumper, and you can put your cock up under the t-shirt.”
Sherlock groans and drops his head into the crook of John’s neck.
“You wouldn’t be able to move too much, but the coat should cover everything. Tucking you away would be the tricky part. Might be best if I did it, less obvious. You can sort out the logistics.”
“John, I need you to stop talking.”
John bites his lip. He tries to pull back but Sherlock secures him in place, arms looped around John’s back. John’s knees begin to hurt. Sherlock’s coat provides very little padding between his legs and the floor. Unsure of where to put his hands, John settles for tucking himself away and laying his hands carefully on Sherlock’s sides, slipped beneath his coat.
When Sherlock continues to not move and not speak, John edges further into a cuddle. Sherlock seems content to go limp on him, as soft as he ever gets. After an absurd length of time, John feels the movement of eyelashes against his neck, a blink, and Sherlock lifts his face from John’s skin. “You were saying,” Sherlock prompts.
“You all right?” John asks.
“I’m fine. I was... sorting.”
“Into what, wizarding houses?”
The reference makes a nearly audible thunk against the door as it flies over Sherlock’s head. “It’s a memory technique.”
“You were memorizing that? Us? You’ve never done that before.”
“Not immediately after, no. This warranted it.”
“Oh,” John says. “That’s, that’s good. Did I make top five?”
“That’s no new achievement, John.”
“Oh.” He kisses Sherlock rather than say something incredibly stupid. He climbs to his feet, pulling Sherlock along with him, and the snog needs no interruption at all. They each taste of the other. There’s a quick break to retrieve the soiled sock and then a fumble upstairs. Sherlock tosses the sock on the kitchen floor, and that’s when John’s giggles make an abrupt reappearance. He laughs and can’t stop laughing, because, honestly, a footjob in a taxi? Jesus Christ.
“That was completely ridiculous. I don’t, I cannot believe how ridiculous that was.”
“Ridiculous?” Sherlock repeats, more than vaguely offended.
The bottom of John’s stomach drops out. “Unless you fancy another go,” he amends. “I, um.” He swallows. “We could do that again.”
“Even though it’s ridiculous.”
“Sex is always ridiculous.”
Sherlock’s gaze drills into John’s skull before Sherlock concedes the point.
“I can’t say I’ve ever thought of myself as a bloke who plays with cocks in taxis,” John adds.
“I’ve told you before,” Sherlock replies. “You have a skewed self-image.”
“No, that one was self-discovery.”
“Ah. Not at all a bid for my attention, then.”
John’s stomach drops to previously unknown depths. “Just an offer.”
Sherlock smirks. “Just that?”
“Just that.”
“It seemed much more like a demand at the time.”
“Sherlock, you haven’t seen demanding yet.”
“And yet here you are. Without your keys.”
“Then I might as well stay until morning,” John muses.
“I’m working on an experiment.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’m not having dinner.”
“Also fine.”
“I won’t be going to bed tonight.”
“I don’t mind sleeping alone.”
“I won’t be in the mood tomorrow morning.”
“Good, I’ll be on time for work.”
Grey eyes pierce his face. There are flecks of yellow in them today.
“Is that all?” John asks, lifting his chin, feet planted.
“If I address the matter of your leg, will you respond civilly?”
John’s mouth twitches into a polite shape.
“I suppose that counts as civil,” Sherlock states.
“What are we addressing?” John asks.
“You’re standing unaided.”
“Have been since Friday,” John confirms.
“Continuously.”
“Would have been, yeah, but then I went and sat down in a cab.”
“Continuously,” Sherlock prompts a second time.
“Yes.”
“Five days without pain or loss of mobility,” Sherlock summarizes. His gaze goes distant, travelling somewhere John can’t hope to follow, doesn’t want to follow. “I should have taken you to a stake-out months ago.”
Somehow, John keeps breathing. He doesn’t look Sherlock in the eyes. Neither does he vomit. The urge is there, the sick twisting of bile, but it sits inside of him, patient and almost numb, an expected guest.
“If I touch you now, will you have an adverse reaction?”
Eyes locked on a point along Sherlock’s collar, John doesn’t answer.
“Yes,” Sherlock answers himself. He leaves John in the hall and shuts the door to the kitchen between them.
John stands in the hall.
When the urge to vomit worsens, he stands in the loo.
When the urge passes, he retreats to the sitting room and perches on the edge of the sofa.
Occasionally, Sherlock comes out to look at him for a long ten seconds, but he always returns to the kitchen.
John lies down and wonders if it isn’t too late to go back to Bart’s for his keys. He’s sure the cleaning staff must have locked his office door by now, but surely someone would let him back in.
He falls asleep. He wakes to Mrs. Hudson’s voice.
“...can’t keep leaving him on your sofa, Sherlock.”
“He’s there of his own volition.”
“He doesn’t look very comfortable.”
“Acknowledging weakness aggravates his PTSD,” Sherlock replies. “Acknowledging former weakness aggravates his PTSD.”
“Oh, poor dear.”
“Yes, just like that. Don’t do it.”
Mrs. Hudson sighs. “You haven’t left the poor man to starve on the sofa, have you?”
“John can feed himself. He’s a grown man.”
“Sherlock, dear, so are you.”
“Dinner would be lovely, Mrs. Hudson!” John calls out.
Mrs. Hudson laughs, Sherlock’s silence broadcasts his annoyance, and John slips away after dinner. It’s a cold walk to the tube station and then again to Bart’s, but he retrieves his coat and keys without difficulty.
His mobile rings at three in the morning. He grabs it blindly. “This had better be an emergency.”
“Where are you?” Sherlock demands.
“Home, you arse. Sleeping.”
“Oh. Good,” Sherlock says and hangs up.
John swears in the dark but isn’t annoyed enough to call him back.
Sherlock opens his office door without knocking. John knows it’s him without looking up from his desk.
“You can’t be that angry I woke you.”
“Bad day,” John answers.
“You want me to leave.”
John nods.
The door closes, and when John looks up, he’s alone.
For the second day in a row, Sherlock doesn’t knock. This time, he closes the door behind him.
“Any attempt to discuss your panic attacks and thereby reduce their effect only prompts another panic attack,” Sherlock informs him.
“I do have a shrink for that. She’s licensed and everything.”
“You’re seeing her this weekend.”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow,” Sherlock guesses. It must be a guess. “And the physical therapist on Sunday.” He sighs as if personally inconvenienced. “You’ll want to be alone the entire weekend.”
John nods.
“I see.”
John refuses to feel guilty.
“When you change your mind,” Sherlock says and sets something down on John’s desk with a clink. It’s a pair of keys.
“No,” John says. “No, take those back.”
“Why?”
“I’m breaking up with you.”
“Now?” Sherlock asks.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes,” John insists. “You can’t just veto it.”
“I can when you’re not making rational decisions.”
“Gaslight me again, and I’ll throw your keys at your head,” John warns.
Sherlock slides the keys out of John’s immediate reach. “John, two days ago, you were plotting acts of public indecency involving my coat and park bridges.”
“Fine,” John says. “That was an irrational decision.”
Sherlock sets both hands on John’s desk, gaze insistent, mouth pained. “I mishandled your panic attack. I thought you wanted to be left alone. I knew not to touch you, and I was fairly certain you didn’t want me looking at you. In the future, I will remain in the room. I will not touch you, but I will speak to you. I will not leave you alone.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me.”
“No,” Sherlock agrees, “but you wouldn’t be this angry if you didn’t want me to.”
“Fuck you.”
Sherlock doesn’t so much as blink.
“No, really,” John says. “Fuck you.”
“I’ve struck a nerve.”
“Get out.”
“You chased me down the hallway two days ago,” Sherlock reminds him. “You demanded I take you home with me.”
“You left me to have a panic attack. You closed the fucking door in my face.”
“And when I realised you weren’t with Mrs. Hudson, I called you to be sure you were safe,” Sherlock continues. “You wanted space yesterday and I gave it to you. This isn’t beyond me, John.”
John rubs at his temples. “Can we not do this right now?”
“Obviously not. The only time to persuade you not to leave me is before you do. To do otherwise would be to persuade you to come back.”
“I can’t do this right now.”
“Take your time,” Sherlock tells him, his voice infuriatingly level. “Think about it for longer than two days.”
“Sherlock, please.”
“No,” Sherlock says simply. “Not until you have a consistent course of action. That’s perfectly reasonable.”
John presses back in his chair and turns his face away.
“You’re shutting down. When emotionally uncertain, you retreat. You’d rather be out of sight than overtly emotional.”
“Shut up,” John grits out. “Just, just shut up. For once.”
“Tell me why you want to leave me and I will.”
John gropes toward words he no longer has.
“Was it because of the panic attack on Wednesday? I explained my reasoning. I’ve revised my protocol. It won’t be a problem again.”
“You’re too much,” John says, and there is a defeat in this.
“I give you space. By Mrs. Hudson’s standards, I neglect you.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what?” Sherlock demands, an abrupt show of temper. He lifts his hands from the desk, sets them back down. He takes a breath. “You enjoy challenges. You have no difficulties contradicting or denying me. You’ve never minded the gap between our intellects before. If we were arguing about anything else, you wouldn’t respond this way.”
“It’s mucking with my head, and I need it to stop.”
“‘It’,” Sherlock echoes.
“This.”
“Us?”
John hesitates.
“Me?” Sherlock narrows his eyes, then nods. “You mean me. Why would you mean me? How am I mucking with your head?”
John gapes at him.
“What?” Sherlock demands. “John, when have I ever done that?”
“All the bloody time!” John shouts.
“When?” Sherlock looms over his desk, hands planted on either side of John’s laptop. “Give me a concrete example.”
John refuses to lean away. “My leg. All of that.”
“What about it?”
“You were experimenting on me.” Unflinching, he meets Sherlock’s gaze. “You’d take my cane. I’ve called you on it before and you never played dumb.”
“It helped you.”
“You were experimenting on me.”
“Yes, and it helped you,” Sherlock insists.
“You don’t see the problem.”
“I’m looking for one.” His eyes search John’s face. It’s not the usual inspecting gaze, the eye-to-eye check of mere mortals. No, this is Sherlock Holmes, and that involves staring at John’s forehead and the left corner of his mouth.
“You don’t see it, do you?”
“Perhaps you could explain it to me,” Sherlock replies.
“That you don’t see it is worrying enough, actually.”
“John, I am going to repeat myself,” Sherlock tells him, the condescending bastard. “I am emphasising this because you missed the significance the first time. Are you ready?”
“Yes, what?”
“I need you to explain it to me. This mess in your head, John. Because it’s not rational. I can’t follow it. I can’t respond to it, but I can’t dismiss it, because then you would have actual grounds for leaving me. That is unacceptable.”
“‘Grounds for--’ Sherlock, this isn’t a divorce. We’re not-We’re not that.”
“Ignore the semantics, John,” Sherlock instructs. “Instead, do something useful and tell me the problem.”
“I did,” John says. “I have.”
“You’ve complained that I assisted your recovery,” Sherlock replies. “Why would that upset you after the fact?”
“I was upset during the fact.”
“Your response to personal failure is anger.”
“How is you experimenting on me my personal failure?” John demands. He bites his lip at his own volume. “Look, we can’t do this here.”
“I’m staying until you explain.”
“I have work.”
“I’ll wait in the hall,” Sherlock says.
“Don’t.”
“If I leave, you’ll begin a painful and unnecessary attempt to avoid me. It will fail. Nothing will change. We are trapped in this argument until you talk to me. It’s common sense, John. Even you must see that.”
“Right, of course. Insulting me helps loads.”
Sherlock groans, ruffling his hair with both hands as if to tear it out. “Depression operates as a filter on perception. As does PTSD. I am not insulting your intelligence this time.”
“No, you’re just saying I need you to tell me what’s real and what’s not,” John shoots back. “I don’t.”
“You’re misinterpreting,” Sherlock tells him. “It’s possible you’re trying to recognize a pattern that isn’t present.”
“I’m not.”
Sherlock stares at him hard and long. He presses his hands together and worries at his lower lip with the sides of his fingers. “If I could prove that, that this, that whatever you think is a problem is instead a nonissue, would that fix this?”
John frowns. “Fix what?”
“Would you want to stay with me,” Sherlock clarifies.
The “yes” is in John’s eyes before an answer can be found for his throat.
“You would,” Sherlock says immediately. “You’ll stay if I can prove it.”
There’s a trembling beneath John’s scalp, an odd form of dizziness. “You can’t even see the problem.”
“Not yet, but I will,” Sherlock promises. “Come home with me once you’re finished here. You’ll explain, I’ll fix it, and we’ll move on.”
“I don’t...”
“Please.”
The trembling worsens, a breathless sensation where there can be no breath. John’s mind fumbles around something it can’t quite touch. He sees the tense lines of Sherlock’s body, the pained insistence of his eyes. He is either the personification of sincerity, or a caricature of it.
“You don’t want me to leave you,” John realises, or perhaps he hopes.
Sherlock stares at him as he would at the worst idiot in the world, which is no answer at all.
“Do you?” John asks. His voice does not break.
The stare turns from condescension to disbelief. As John waits, the expression falters further. His sharp face turns soft. So gently, as if John has become something impossibly, unexpectedly fragile, Sherlock says to him, “Stay.”
previous | next
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 6.3k this part, 56k overall
Betas: vyctori and seijichan
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: As the newest instructor at St. Bart's, John has been explicitly warned to never do Sherlock Holmes any favours. Too bad the sex is so good.
Warnings: explicit sex, dubcon, PTSD, panic attacks
Chapter One -- Chapter Two -- Chapter Three -- Chapter Four -- Chapter Five -- Chapter Six -- Chapter Seven -- Chapter Eight
“Oh!” Mike gasps when John walks into his office. “Oh, that’s wonderful!”
John twitches a smile in reply, but Mike is already getting up from his desk. With his set-up aimed at the window in the side of the room, there’s no barrier in the room, and it sets John on alert automatically.
No attack here, not from Mike, though the hug is rather unexpected. Rather extremely.
“Whatever you did over holiday, it worked,” Mike needlessly tells him, beaming.
“Yeah,” John agrees.
“I want to offer you a seat, but at the same time, I really don’t. Oh, that’s wonderful.”
“Yeah, I’m chuffed.”
“How’d it happen?” Mike asks.
John’s face must do something without John’s permission, because Mike immediately backpedals.
“Or not,” Mike adds. “Sorry, you must be dropping by for a reason and I’m prattling on.”
“I... no, no reason. I just...” John bites his lip, head tilting to the side, eyes closed. Steady. Stay steady. He flexes his left hand. “It’s all anyone’s wanted to talk about all week. I’m sick of it, to be honest.”
“And it’s only Wednesday,” Mike says, just enough sympathy to count. There’s almost an edge to the words, but only almost. In his tone, there’s only a vague trace of what would be biting annoyance in Sherlock’s voice: irritation by proxy at multitudes unendingly stating the obvious. “I imagine you’d like to sit after all.”
They sit. They talk shop. Mike goes over the finer points of exam season with him, routine things John already knows and is soothed by. Mike talks about his own life a bit, and John tries to be interested in stories that Mike inevitably forgets the endings to. John tries and fails to add to the conversation. All he has is work and therapy and Sherlock, and all three of them are drawing to a close.
When the conversation well and truly dies of exhaustion, John is forced to ask or leave, and he doesn’t want to leave. Mike takes the question out of his hands with a simple, “How’s Sherlock?”
“I... I haven’t seen him since Friday, actually.” John hasn’t, but Molly has. John checked in with her yesterday morning. Sherlock has been to Bart’s. Sherlock has been to Bart’s at a time John was also at Bart’s, and Sherlock decided to sweet talk poor Molly around a pile of paperwork rather than stop by.
Maybe John should be jealous. No, he is jealous, so that’s wrong. He shouldn’t even be jealous. John should be angry, and not at Molly. The one bit of sanity present is that he’s not angry with Molly in the slightest. Instead, he wants to grab Molly by the shoulders and tell her that he understands, really, he does. All of the stupid favours she does and keeps doing, John understands. He wants to propose that they stand in a corner, stick their fingers in their ears, and hum loudly until the feelings lessen and the problem abates.
It would never work, but it’s the only plan he has at the moment.
“That’s not unusual, is it?” Mike asks.
“Sorry, what?”
“Sherlock drops off the face of the planet every so often,” Mike explains. “Less than a week is hardly unusual.”
John runs over his mental calendar of the past several months.
“It... is unusual?” Mike asks.
“We’ve, um.” It’s the longest they’ve been apart since John tried avoiding him, and that was before holiday. It’s not simply another month, it’s now another world. The geography there is strange and uncertain, and John’s not sure how he once walked it.
“It isn’t that man with the car and the phones again, is it?”
“What? No. No, it’s not that.”
“Was that ever resolved?” Mike asks.
“It was Sherlock’s brother,” John answers. “Works in the government. Not sure how he pulled it off, but Sherlock didn’t seem concerned about it.”
“So,” Mike says, “a simple case of ‘break his heart, I’ll break your bones’?”
“Yeah,” John lies. He’d had that thought before, if only as a vague hope. He knows better now. Get out while you still can is a difficult warning to misinterpret, but John had managed it all the same. To be fair, John’s not trapped. He’s on his way out and he knows it, just as he knows the way will be long and painful. Possibly, it might involve getting his DVDs back, but he’s almost tempted to give up on them. The associations are too strong between one deep voice and another. John clears his throat and adds, “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
John knows his poker face is improving when Mike responds with a grin. “That’s good to hear,” Mike says. “No, it is, really. He’s always had a bit of an odd man out feeling to him. Confident, mind you.”
“He is that,” John agrees. Dryly, not wistfully. Not wistfully at all. Subject change, now. Something. Anything. Nothing. He can’t focus.
“You all right, mate?”
“Yeah, I’m, I’m fine. Sorry, got a little distracted there.” John sits up straighter. “You were saying?”
“About Sherlock? Oh, right. Well, you’d see him about, but he’d always be detached. Not distracted, per se, just...”
“Like he’s watching from a higher vantage point,” John finishes for him.
Mike points at him. “Just like that. That’s a good way of putting it. Bit removed, sees everything.”
“So you’ve never known him to, I don’t know. Connect with someone?”
Mike gives him a grin. “Not like with you, no. I’ve known him, oh, two years? I’m not sure he’s ever spoken about himself.”
“He doesn’t, as a rule. I think it bores him. You wouldn’t think it, a man that vain.”
Mike laughs and there’s a knock at the door. “Yes, hello?”
The door opens. Sherlock’s eyes fix on Mike and only Mike. “I’ll come back later,” he says, and the door shuts again.
Twisted in his chair, John stares at the door.
“Must be in a hurry,” Mike muses. “You’re right: it is a higher vantage point he’s working from.” Mike continues a bit longer, mercifully oblivious of the sudden stab wound through John’s gut.
“I,” John says. He stands. “I need to. Go. I think I should go.”
“Oh, right, sorry,” Mike says, as if John’s muddled sentences make perfect sense.
“See you.”
“Bye!”
John closes the door, looking up and down the hall, but Mike’s office is near a stairwell on one side and near an intersection on the other. The stairs are closer and he checks them first, listening rather than climbing. No sign.
He doubles back quick as he can, strides to the end of the hall, and looks right and left in time to catch a glimpse of the coat. Left, it is.
John walks quickly, but Sherlock and his impossibly long legs do as well. John wants to shout his name, workspace be damned, but he can’t trust what his voice might put into the word. “You know I’m behind you,” he calls instead.
Walking on, Sherlock doesn’t respond.
John quickens his pace. He quickens it and quickens it again. He catches Sherlock by the arm, Sherlock glares at him, and John crashes their mouths together. He sinks his fingers into lush curls, hands fastened to either side of Sherlock’s head. The kiss itself is terrible, all pressure, no technique, two pairs of lips bruising between two sets of teeth. Such a terrible kiss and off-centre besides, but John is touching him, John has him, John might be able to keep him.
The hallway, they’re in a hallway, that’s good. Sherlock’s exhibitionist kink, maybe John could, no, no getting sacked. Experimenting? Propose they test his leg. Or the begging. If John means to beg, if he does it on purpose, if he does it for Sherlock’s benefit and not his own, there’s no humiliation in that. It’s just a game. Just another experiment.
“Take me home with you,” he gasps the instant their mouths part. “Right now. Let’s go outside, find a cab, and fuck ourselves hoarse in your flat. Yes or no?” A bargain, not an entreaty, but John still kisses him again before he can reply. He works at Sherlock’s mouth with his own until he wants to shout at the man to respond, to touch him back, to slam John into the wall before John shoves him there first. John has no idea what Sherlock wants or doesn’t want, and he has to keep his hands in Sherlock’s hair to keep from grabbing at his crotch to check. “Say yes or I stop.”
Sherlock groans into John’s mouth, a low noise that might be anything.
John breaks away entirely, breathing hard around the stone in his throat.
Eyes closed, lips bruised red, Sherlock staggers forward. He reaches. He reaches and grasps, each hand fisted in John’s cardigan. John has never seen him look so confused, so indecisive, but that’s fine, that’s enough. It’s John’s turn to be a bastard.
He pulls Sherlock back in, one hand curling at his nape, the other slipping beneath the long coat and into a very tight back pocket. Sherlock’s mouth seeks his blindly, but John drags him off-course and puts his lips to Sherlock’s ear.
“Anyone could see us right now,” he whispers. “Long hallway and us in plain sight.”
“John.”
Yes. God yes. “Anyone could turn the corner. Catch me half-under your coat.” It’s no exaggeration, not in the slightest. His entire right side is beneath it. “I used to be fucking mortified as a kid. Couldn’t even hold a boy’s hand. Thought everyone would go after me the way they did Harry. Sod that. I don’t care anymore. I want you to take me home with you, I want to hear you say yes, and if anyone else hears, I want to rub it in their fucking face.
“Because you, you are, you’re a prize. You’re an absolute prize, and I know that. You’re the most brilliant man I’ve ever met. Fucking hell, Sherlock.”
There is so much more to be said and none of it fit for saying. He has Sherlock clutching at him and hard against his stomach. He’s sent Sherlock’s breathing out of control, shallow panting. He wants more. He kisses Sherlock’s neck, again and again and again until he can think of something tempting.
“Let’s find a cab,” John proposes, low and quiet. “I’ll take the fold-down seat behind the driver, you take the normal one, and I’ll let you use your foot on me.” He pulls back to adore the blatant want in grey eyes turned lust green. “But I refuse to come until I’m in your bed.”
“Refuse?” Sherlock challenges. He tugs John’s hips against his and works a slow, obscene grind. “Your office is much too close. You won’t refuse.”
John’s forehead drops onto his shoulder. “Cab. Now.”
“You’ve forgotten your coat.”
“No,” John says. “I’ve left my coat. Unless you don’t think you can keep me warm enough.”
“Prepare to overheat.” Sherlock seizes his hand and drags John after him. Their progress is hindered by arousal, but equally so. They take the nearest way out and pass a pair of janitors and a few people John might be able to put a name to if he were even vaguely in his right mind. Sherlock has his coat buttoned and John keeps close behind him.
With impossible speed, Sherlock summons them a cab. They climb in and sit as John had specified, and Sherlock, the git, gives the cabbie John’s address rather than his own.
“No, two-two-one Baker Street, actually!” John corrects over the radio.
“Why not your flat?” Sherlock demands.
“Because my keys are in my coat,” John says as the cab pulls away from the kerb.
Sherlock’s mouth opens, a plump pink circle of surprise. His hair is ridiculous, his cheeks flushed. John has seen him look more well-fucked than this, but never before the actual fucking.
Sherlock swallows and his throat is a thing of beauty. “Are they.”
“Yes.” Not by design, entirely by accident, but John knows when to take credit for being a sexual mastermind. Right now. Right now and for as long as he can. He needs to keep pushing and sidestepping and challenging. When John can no longer hold Sherlock’s interest, John will let him go without begging or tears, but until then, John will fight for every inch of warm skin, every moment of watching Sherlock’s eyes widen until they’re blue.
When that moment is nearly past, John brings it back in full. He plants his feet wide in the cab and spreads his knees.
Elbow at the base of the window, Sherlock bites the side of his index finger, looking steadfastly outside, refusing to meet John’s insistent gaze.
John spreads his legs wider still, leaving his hand on his thigh.
Sherlock looks. He doesn’t do anything, but he looks.
“Change of plans?” John asks.
Sherlock’s eyes flick from John’s crotch to his own foot, then back.
“Are we still on?”
Again, the glance. This time, Sherlock shifts one foot forward, just enough for John to see that Sherlock’s legs are patently too long for a footjob in the cab.
John feels his own face fall.
Sherlock looks as if he may pass out from arousal.
There must be another way to indulge Sherlock’s exhibitionist, voyeuristic kinks, and John stumbles into the first way by accident. He has to adjust himself in his trousers, nothing more, but doing so while staring into Sherlock’s already glazed eyes turns the motion into intentional seduction. He strokes his thigh with his fingertips, and Sherlock’s gaze fastens to his hand.
John risks as much as he can, too close to the point of no return to put his hand too much on himself. He lets Sherlock see it, makes him see how much John wants this, wants him, wants to take him apart until even Sherlock’s mind can no longer think.
Sherlock bites his index finger, his hand now fisted. The radio masks the sound of his shallow breathing. It might mask a bit more.
Before he can think better of it, John toes off his shoe.
Sherlock’s lips move around his finger, but no whisper or mutter reaches John’s ears. Sherlock drags his gaze away from John and stares steadfastly out the window, face turned.
John waits.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock glances back to him.
John lifts his eyebrows.
Sherlock stares at him, unreadable, indescribable, before sliding down in his seat. He adjusts his coat over his lap. He looks out the window, then nods.
John peels off his sock and tucks it in his pocket. Easy enough. Reaching out is more difficult, particularly with the right leg when he has the door for support only on his left.
He starts with his toes, his foot a gentle wedge between Sherlock’s knees. Sherlock presses his thighs together tightly, stalling John’s progress. John stops, confused, until Sherlock sinks down a bit farther, pressing John’s foot a little higher. The message is clear: work for it.
The distance between Sherlock’s knees to his crotch is absurd, an impossible penetration between clenched thighs. John wriggles his foot deeper and deeper, watching Sherlock’s face contort. No matter what John does, Sherlock never makes a sound. The only risk is the cabbie catching sight of Sherlock in the rear view mirror, which must be why Sherlock again turns his face toward the window.
John pulls back his foot before pushing forward, a drag of skin-warmed cloth between them. He works farther in and in, and Sherlock’s ear turns red. John presses down with the ball of his foot, detached from the sensation, enthralled by the sight. Sherlock readjusts his coat over his lap and John’s leg, then grips John hard by the shin. His crotch is entirely out of sight.
John taps his toes against Sherlock’s stomach, insistent. Sherlock risks a glance at him, twitches under John’s foot, and squeezes his eyes shut. John eases off as much as Sherlock will let him. He waits until Sherlock looks at him and nods, then mouths unzip.
Sherlock frowns, more disbelief than disapproval. He glances down. He looks at John. John nods and mimes it himself, unclenching his fists to do so.
Sherlock stares at him.
John moves his foot a bit.
Sherlock squeezes his shin, looks out the window, and casually slips a hand under his blanketing coat.
The first touch is a bit odd and the strangeness never does decrease. It’s clumsy and paranoid and fumbling, too much pressing and sliding in the attempt to truly stroke. Sherlock clearly does not mind. Fingers clutching at John’s trousers, he jerks his hips forward, tiny thrusts from little more than flexing his legs against the seat.
Every time they reach a stoplight, Sherlock times a thrust as inertia carries him forward. Every time the light turns green, Sherlock secures John’s leg as inertia nudges John further toward the edge of his seat. Sherlock’s other hand dedicates itself to keeping his lap covered.
When the cab turns onto Baker Street, Sherlock mouths a curse. John pulls away and shoves his foot back into his shoe. Sherlock merely adjusts his coat. The cloth is heavy and the bulge blends into its natural folds.
John climbs out first, paying the cabbie. He doesn’t trust Sherlock to speak at this point. He can barely manage it himself, putting on a bit of a cough when his voice sticks its way through a lower octave than expected.
Before he can cope with what he’s just done in a cab, Sherlock gets his front door open. John bounds after him, up the stairs and through the door to be snagged, an arm tight around his waist.
Sherlock slams the door shut behind them. “On your knees, now,” Sherlock rasps.
John looks over his shoulder, an involuntary check toward 221A, but Sherlock catches his cheek, forces John’s eyes to his, and repeats, “Now.”
It ought to be quick. They might manage. “Lean against the door,” John counters.
With a great swish of coat, Sherlock complies. He unbuttons and there he is, exposed for John’s mouth.
John kneels. He tugs a bit more of Sherlock’s briefs through his zip, some protection from the metal teeth, and then wastes no more time. A few slicking licks, his hand steadying the base, and John takes him deep. His hand and mouth work in time and he presses Sherlock against the door, his forearm a bar across a concave stomach. A long sweep of fabric tries to envelop him.
Sherlock’s hands flutter at his face, his hair, his shoulders. All of the noise absent from the cab spills out now, one desperate groan after another as Sherlock struggles toward John’s mouth. Sherlock bucks forward hard, much too hard, and John gags. He pulls off, coughs, and gives himself time to breathe by tugging down Sherlock’s trousers and easing down his pants. With Sherlock cursing and on display before him, John relocates to safer ground. If Sherlock’s cock was heavy in John’s mouth, his bollocks are even more so.
“Look up,” Sherlock pants. “Look up, look up.”
John shakes his head, tugging one of Sherlock’s balls this way and that with his lips.
Sherlock grips him by the hair, a hard hold that hurts almost as much as a tug, and the pain goes straight to John’s already aching cock.
John growls a bit and switches sides.
“John.” A sharp pull now.
John glares up at him, and Sherlock’s tense body trembles under his hands. John swears and gets his mouth there in time, closed about the head. It’s more than he can hold. He lets his mouth overflow and remembers his sock in his pocket.
The grip on his hair turns soft and shaking. John spits onto his sock, and Sherlock slides down the door. His eyes are wide, glassy, his mouth slack. Sitting in a pool of dark fabric, he’s more out of breath than John is. Wet and shining, his cock lies softening outside his unzipped trousers.
“Upstairs,” John instructs, voice consciously soft. “Before your landlady pops round for a chat.”
“She’s, ah.” Sherlock shakes his head, or perhaps his head simply lolls. “Not in.”
“You arse.” John bites at his mouth before climbing to his feet, his legs framing Sherlock’s hips, his shoes on top of folds of coat. Sherlock’s hands immediately rise to John’s bum, tugging him closer. “You fucking arse.”
John presses his hips forward, presses his aching crotch against Sherlock’s mouth and cheek. Sherlock groans, turning his face into the pressure. He tries to mouth John through the fabric, through his zip. John cards his hands through sweaty curls and gives into the urge to fuck Sherlock’s mouth a little. He can’t much, can barely at all, but when Sherlock breathes hot all over him, when long fingers dig into his arse, it’s still much too much.
“Stop,” John gasps. “Bed.” He’d wanted it. Naked.
“Here.” Sherlock’s fingers hook into his trousers. He looks up at John, drunk on orgasm. His flush is even darker in John’s shadow. “Can’t move. Let me...”
“Let you suck me?”
“Yes.”
“Let you suck me against your front door?”
“Yes,” Sherlock rasps.
“Let me do the work,” John tells him. “I won’t choke you.”
Sherlock unfastens John’s zip. John hisses before he groans, the transition from confinement to wet heat quick and endless. Sherlock wraps a loose hand around him, a guideline, and John fucks his mouth. Forearm against the door, brow pressed to the back of his wrist, John pants as he thrusts, this far, this far, this far, don’t go too far. “Okay?” John gasps. His other hand shields Sherlock’s head from the door.
One hand riding John’s hip, Sherlock groans around him. Not one of his usual blowjob sounds, no mocking hum or aggressive encouragement, but the sound of a man having too much sex to keep track of. John’s balls slap against the side of Sherlock’s hand, and Sherlock squeezes, Sherlock hums and swallows, and John comes until his knees threaten to fold.
Sherlock pulls off and swallows and coughs, and John sinks down on top of him, kneeling over the man’s thighs. Sherlock’s head meets the door with a soft thump. His mouth is wide and pink and gasping. His chest is caught between a heave and a flutter, his breathing deep and rapid and slightly worrying. A damp sheen lingers at the corners of Sherlock’s closed eyes. John wipes it away with his thumbs, spreading twin trails of saline over Sherlock’s temples.
“Sorry.” He brushes kisses over Sherlock’s sweat-damp forehead.
“Hm? Oh.” Sherlock hooks two fingers in the buttoned V of John’s collar. “Forgiven.”
“I’ll try not to, next time.”
Sherlock’s reply is to lean his forehead against John’s as his breathing slows. John sits across his lap, waiting for confirmation. There has to be a next time. The only question is how far John can keep pushing until they’re arrested for public indecency.
“We should go out sometime,” John suggests. “Before it’s too warm for your coat, I mean. Before summer.” He pets the impossible lines of Sherlock’s face, feels returning tension fall away beneath fingertips. “Start close to home in case we need to run back, so Regent’s Park. We can stand at a bridge and play at looking out, having a cuddle. You wear the coat, I’ll have a t-shirt under my jumper, and you can put your cock up under the t-shirt.”
Sherlock groans and drops his head into the crook of John’s neck.
“You wouldn’t be able to move too much, but the coat should cover everything. Tucking you away would be the tricky part. Might be best if I did it, less obvious. You can sort out the logistics.”
“John, I need you to stop talking.”
John bites his lip. He tries to pull back but Sherlock secures him in place, arms looped around John’s back. John’s knees begin to hurt. Sherlock’s coat provides very little padding between his legs and the floor. Unsure of where to put his hands, John settles for tucking himself away and laying his hands carefully on Sherlock’s sides, slipped beneath his coat.
When Sherlock continues to not move and not speak, John edges further into a cuddle. Sherlock seems content to go limp on him, as soft as he ever gets. After an absurd length of time, John feels the movement of eyelashes against his neck, a blink, and Sherlock lifts his face from John’s skin. “You were saying,” Sherlock prompts.
“You all right?” John asks.
“I’m fine. I was... sorting.”
“Into what, wizarding houses?”
The reference makes a nearly audible thunk against the door as it flies over Sherlock’s head. “It’s a memory technique.”
“You were memorizing that? Us? You’ve never done that before.”
“Not immediately after, no. This warranted it.”
“Oh,” John says. “That’s, that’s good. Did I make top five?”
“That’s no new achievement, John.”
“Oh.” He kisses Sherlock rather than say something incredibly stupid. He climbs to his feet, pulling Sherlock along with him, and the snog needs no interruption at all. They each taste of the other. There’s a quick break to retrieve the soiled sock and then a fumble upstairs. Sherlock tosses the sock on the kitchen floor, and that’s when John’s giggles make an abrupt reappearance. He laughs and can’t stop laughing, because, honestly, a footjob in a taxi? Jesus Christ.
“That was completely ridiculous. I don’t, I cannot believe how ridiculous that was.”
“Ridiculous?” Sherlock repeats, more than vaguely offended.
The bottom of John’s stomach drops out. “Unless you fancy another go,” he amends. “I, um.” He swallows. “We could do that again.”
“Even though it’s ridiculous.”
“Sex is always ridiculous.”
Sherlock’s gaze drills into John’s skull before Sherlock concedes the point.
“I can’t say I’ve ever thought of myself as a bloke who plays with cocks in taxis,” John adds.
“I’ve told you before,” Sherlock replies. “You have a skewed self-image.”
“No, that one was self-discovery.”
“Ah. Not at all a bid for my attention, then.”
John’s stomach drops to previously unknown depths. “Just an offer.”
Sherlock smirks. “Just that?”
“Just that.”
“It seemed much more like a demand at the time.”
“Sherlock, you haven’t seen demanding yet.”
“And yet here you are. Without your keys.”
“Then I might as well stay until morning,” John muses.
“I’m working on an experiment.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’m not having dinner.”
“Also fine.”
“I won’t be going to bed tonight.”
“I don’t mind sleeping alone.”
“I won’t be in the mood tomorrow morning.”
“Good, I’ll be on time for work.”
Grey eyes pierce his face. There are flecks of yellow in them today.
“Is that all?” John asks, lifting his chin, feet planted.
“If I address the matter of your leg, will you respond civilly?”
John’s mouth twitches into a polite shape.
“I suppose that counts as civil,” Sherlock states.
“What are we addressing?” John asks.
“You’re standing unaided.”
“Have been since Friday,” John confirms.
“Continuously.”
“Would have been, yeah, but then I went and sat down in a cab.”
“Continuously,” Sherlock prompts a second time.
“Yes.”
“Five days without pain or loss of mobility,” Sherlock summarizes. His gaze goes distant, travelling somewhere John can’t hope to follow, doesn’t want to follow. “I should have taken you to a stake-out months ago.”
Somehow, John keeps breathing. He doesn’t look Sherlock in the eyes. Neither does he vomit. The urge is there, the sick twisting of bile, but it sits inside of him, patient and almost numb, an expected guest.
“If I touch you now, will you have an adverse reaction?”
Eyes locked on a point along Sherlock’s collar, John doesn’t answer.
“Yes,” Sherlock answers himself. He leaves John in the hall and shuts the door to the kitchen between them.
John stands in the hall.
When the urge to vomit worsens, he stands in the loo.
When the urge passes, he retreats to the sitting room and perches on the edge of the sofa.
Occasionally, Sherlock comes out to look at him for a long ten seconds, but he always returns to the kitchen.
John lies down and wonders if it isn’t too late to go back to Bart’s for his keys. He’s sure the cleaning staff must have locked his office door by now, but surely someone would let him back in.
He falls asleep. He wakes to Mrs. Hudson’s voice.
“...can’t keep leaving him on your sofa, Sherlock.”
“He’s there of his own volition.”
“He doesn’t look very comfortable.”
“Acknowledging weakness aggravates his PTSD,” Sherlock replies. “Acknowledging former weakness aggravates his PTSD.”
“Oh, poor dear.”
“Yes, just like that. Don’t do it.”
Mrs. Hudson sighs. “You haven’t left the poor man to starve on the sofa, have you?”
“John can feed himself. He’s a grown man.”
“Sherlock, dear, so are you.”
“Dinner would be lovely, Mrs. Hudson!” John calls out.
Mrs. Hudson laughs, Sherlock’s silence broadcasts his annoyance, and John slips away after dinner. It’s a cold walk to the tube station and then again to Bart’s, but he retrieves his coat and keys without difficulty.
His mobile rings at three in the morning. He grabs it blindly. “This had better be an emergency.”
“Where are you?” Sherlock demands.
“Home, you arse. Sleeping.”
“Oh. Good,” Sherlock says and hangs up.
John swears in the dark but isn’t annoyed enough to call him back.
Sherlock opens his office door without knocking. John knows it’s him without looking up from his desk.
“You can’t be that angry I woke you.”
“Bad day,” John answers.
“You want me to leave.”
John nods.
The door closes, and when John looks up, he’s alone.
For the second day in a row, Sherlock doesn’t knock. This time, he closes the door behind him.
“Any attempt to discuss your panic attacks and thereby reduce their effect only prompts another panic attack,” Sherlock informs him.
“I do have a shrink for that. She’s licensed and everything.”
“You’re seeing her this weekend.”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow,” Sherlock guesses. It must be a guess. “And the physical therapist on Sunday.” He sighs as if personally inconvenienced. “You’ll want to be alone the entire weekend.”
John nods.
“I see.”
John refuses to feel guilty.
“When you change your mind,” Sherlock says and sets something down on John’s desk with a clink. It’s a pair of keys.
“No,” John says. “No, take those back.”
“Why?”
“I’m breaking up with you.”
“Now?” Sherlock asks.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes,” John insists. “You can’t just veto it.”
“I can when you’re not making rational decisions.”
“Gaslight me again, and I’ll throw your keys at your head,” John warns.
Sherlock slides the keys out of John’s immediate reach. “John, two days ago, you were plotting acts of public indecency involving my coat and park bridges.”
“Fine,” John says. “That was an irrational decision.”
Sherlock sets both hands on John’s desk, gaze insistent, mouth pained. “I mishandled your panic attack. I thought you wanted to be left alone. I knew not to touch you, and I was fairly certain you didn’t want me looking at you. In the future, I will remain in the room. I will not touch you, but I will speak to you. I will not leave you alone.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me.”
“No,” Sherlock agrees, “but you wouldn’t be this angry if you didn’t want me to.”
“Fuck you.”
Sherlock doesn’t so much as blink.
“No, really,” John says. “Fuck you.”
“I’ve struck a nerve.”
“Get out.”
“You chased me down the hallway two days ago,” Sherlock reminds him. “You demanded I take you home with me.”
“You left me to have a panic attack. You closed the fucking door in my face.”
“And when I realised you weren’t with Mrs. Hudson, I called you to be sure you were safe,” Sherlock continues. “You wanted space yesterday and I gave it to you. This isn’t beyond me, John.”
John rubs at his temples. “Can we not do this right now?”
“Obviously not. The only time to persuade you not to leave me is before you do. To do otherwise would be to persuade you to come back.”
“I can’t do this right now.”
“Take your time,” Sherlock tells him, his voice infuriatingly level. “Think about it for longer than two days.”
“Sherlock, please.”
“No,” Sherlock says simply. “Not until you have a consistent course of action. That’s perfectly reasonable.”
John presses back in his chair and turns his face away.
“You’re shutting down. When emotionally uncertain, you retreat. You’d rather be out of sight than overtly emotional.”
“Shut up,” John grits out. “Just, just shut up. For once.”
“Tell me why you want to leave me and I will.”
John gropes toward words he no longer has.
“Was it because of the panic attack on Wednesday? I explained my reasoning. I’ve revised my protocol. It won’t be a problem again.”
“You’re too much,” John says, and there is a defeat in this.
“I give you space. By Mrs. Hudson’s standards, I neglect you.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what?” Sherlock demands, an abrupt show of temper. He lifts his hands from the desk, sets them back down. He takes a breath. “You enjoy challenges. You have no difficulties contradicting or denying me. You’ve never minded the gap between our intellects before. If we were arguing about anything else, you wouldn’t respond this way.”
“It’s mucking with my head, and I need it to stop.”
“‘It’,” Sherlock echoes.
“This.”
“Us?”
John hesitates.
“Me?” Sherlock narrows his eyes, then nods. “You mean me. Why would you mean me? How am I mucking with your head?”
John gapes at him.
“What?” Sherlock demands. “John, when have I ever done that?”
“All the bloody time!” John shouts.
“When?” Sherlock looms over his desk, hands planted on either side of John’s laptop. “Give me a concrete example.”
John refuses to lean away. “My leg. All of that.”
“What about it?”
“You were experimenting on me.” Unflinching, he meets Sherlock’s gaze. “You’d take my cane. I’ve called you on it before and you never played dumb.”
“It helped you.”
“You were experimenting on me.”
“Yes, and it helped you,” Sherlock insists.
“You don’t see the problem.”
“I’m looking for one.” His eyes search John’s face. It’s not the usual inspecting gaze, the eye-to-eye check of mere mortals. No, this is Sherlock Holmes, and that involves staring at John’s forehead and the left corner of his mouth.
“You don’t see it, do you?”
“Perhaps you could explain it to me,” Sherlock replies.
“That you don’t see it is worrying enough, actually.”
“John, I am going to repeat myself,” Sherlock tells him, the condescending bastard. “I am emphasising this because you missed the significance the first time. Are you ready?”
“Yes, what?”
“I need you to explain it to me. This mess in your head, John. Because it’s not rational. I can’t follow it. I can’t respond to it, but I can’t dismiss it, because then you would have actual grounds for leaving me. That is unacceptable.”
“‘Grounds for--’ Sherlock, this isn’t a divorce. We’re not-We’re not that.”
“Ignore the semantics, John,” Sherlock instructs. “Instead, do something useful and tell me the problem.”
“I did,” John says. “I have.”
“You’ve complained that I assisted your recovery,” Sherlock replies. “Why would that upset you after the fact?”
“I was upset during the fact.”
“Your response to personal failure is anger.”
“How is you experimenting on me my personal failure?” John demands. He bites his lip at his own volume. “Look, we can’t do this here.”
“I’m staying until you explain.”
“I have work.”
“I’ll wait in the hall,” Sherlock says.
“Don’t.”
“If I leave, you’ll begin a painful and unnecessary attempt to avoid me. It will fail. Nothing will change. We are trapped in this argument until you talk to me. It’s common sense, John. Even you must see that.”
“Right, of course. Insulting me helps loads.”
Sherlock groans, ruffling his hair with both hands as if to tear it out. “Depression operates as a filter on perception. As does PTSD. I am not insulting your intelligence this time.”
“No, you’re just saying I need you to tell me what’s real and what’s not,” John shoots back. “I don’t.”
“You’re misinterpreting,” Sherlock tells him. “It’s possible you’re trying to recognize a pattern that isn’t present.”
“I’m not.”
Sherlock stares at him hard and long. He presses his hands together and worries at his lower lip with the sides of his fingers. “If I could prove that, that this, that whatever you think is a problem is instead a nonissue, would that fix this?”
John frowns. “Fix what?”
“Would you want to stay with me,” Sherlock clarifies.
The “yes” is in John’s eyes before an answer can be found for his throat.
“You would,” Sherlock says immediately. “You’ll stay if I can prove it.”
There’s a trembling beneath John’s scalp, an odd form of dizziness. “You can’t even see the problem.”
“Not yet, but I will,” Sherlock promises. “Come home with me once you’re finished here. You’ll explain, I’ll fix it, and we’ll move on.”
“I don’t...”
“Please.”
The trembling worsens, a breathless sensation where there can be no breath. John’s mind fumbles around something it can’t quite touch. He sees the tense lines of Sherlock’s body, the pained insistence of his eyes. He is either the personification of sincerity, or a caricature of it.
“You don’t want me to leave you,” John realises, or perhaps he hopes.
Sherlock stares at him as he would at the worst idiot in the world, which is no answer at all.
“Do you?” John asks. His voice does not break.
The stare turns from condescension to disbelief. As John waits, the expression falters further. His sharp face turns soft. So gently, as if John has become something impossibly, unexpectedly fragile, Sherlock says to him, “Stay.”
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