Monster (Sherlock/John)
Title: Monster
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: PG-13
Content: BDSM, mentions of violence
Word Count: 752
Summary: Sub!sadist!John meets dom!masochist!Sherlock.
There is a monster inside him.
It has been there for as long as he can remember, lurking in the dark spaces inside his mind and heart. He's known he was different since he was a child and he let himself be picked on in the schoolyard just for the sheer delight of hitting back, breaking noses, drawing blood. In those moments, he would stop thinking, stop worrying, and just simply let himself go. Afterward, his parents or schoolteachers would sit him down in hard plastic chairs and chastize him for fighting back, but John would always tune them out in favor of the contented hum of the beast living inside his chest.
John is not a psychopath. He knows it's wrong to want to make someone suffer.
But it doesn't stop him from wanting it.
Ironic, then, that he became a doctor. One who specialized in trauma medicine, a field in which victims are often in pain, already bleeding and broken, by the time they get to his operating table. In A&E, in Afghanistan, John had to amputate limbs and carve out chunks of flesh just to keep his patients alive. He had to hurt people in order to save them, and every time he left the operating theatre with a smile on his face, everyone else thought it was from relief.
Back in London, he doesn't have that luxury. Here he has to be good, so back into its confines the monster goes, wrapped up and buried under layers of what it means to be a good man. With nothing to feed it, the monster languishes. It turns grey and silent and curls up in a corner of his soul, listless as the rest of him. John goes through the motions of everyday life feeling like he's half-asleep, perfectly aware there's something missing but not knowing how he can possibly get it back.
When he meets Sherlock Holmes, that's when it all falls apart -- because Sherlock takes one look at him and knows what he really is, knows what he's keeping deep inside. There's a moment at St. Bart's where John is afraid that Sherlock will expose him for the monster that he is -- but instead of running away, like he should, Sherlock insists they move in together.
That night John shoots a cabbie in cold blood, and Sherlock smiles at him like it was perfectly all right.
It's not long before they start sleeping together -- there was a spark between them the moment they met, and it's impossible to ignore that kind of chemistry. When they're fucking, John feels alive for the first time in months. But still, he has to be careful. He can't wrap his hands around Sherlock's long white throat and squeeze. He can't write his name across Sherlock's back with carving knives. But if it's the compromise he has to make in order to feel this way, he can live with it.
Then one day before bed, Sherlock hands him the riding crop after stripping down to nothing, and says, "You know what to do."
John falters for a second, but even as he does so, the monster inside opens one eye, stirring quietly awake.
"No, Sherlock, you can't, you can't give this to me." John's hands start to shake just the tiniest bit, and he shoves the crop back into Sherlock's hands.
Sherlock just looks at him calmly and steadily. "I can and I will," he says. "And you will do as I say."
"No." John has to look away. "I'll hurt you -- you have no idea -- "
"On the contrary," says Sherlock, "I have every idea." He puts his hand under John's chin and forces him to meet his eyes. "I am fully aware of what you are capable of, what you'd like to do to me. I am ordering you to hurt me, Doctor John Watson." And then Sherlock kisses him roughly, leaning in close to wrap John's fingers around the handle of the crop.
John can already feel himself starting to surrender. He has permission to let it out, to stop hiding, to be as dark and violent and cruel as he wants to be. And it's all he's ever wanted.
"Don't let this be the first time you disappoint me," says Sherlock.
"It won't," says John. The monster inside him tightens John's grip, already imagining the marks they'll make together on Sherlock's perfect skin, and John looks up into Sherlock's sharp smile and smiles back.