Fic: Stranger at the Gate - 7b/11 (BBC Sherlock)
Stranger at the Gate, chapter 7 part one.
Drawing John requires no less than four breaks for gate duty. They call themselves fortunate for the timing all the same, mindful that the interruptions could have come earlier. They usually time themselves much better, Sherlock arriving closer to nightfall than mid-afternoon.
“There’s the afternoon rush gone,” John concludes after the fourth. “Don’t think there’s anyone off to Euston today. Probably no more interruptions, but we’ll have to mind the time.”
“Yes, yes, I’m crushingly aware.”
John flashes him a rueful flinch of a smile. “Right, sorry. Still a few hours of sunlight left, go on.”
Sherlock doesn’t want to rush this keepsake but neither does he wish to render John still and silent. The pencil shifts awkwardly between his fingers, too long unused. After half an hour’s scribbling on one side of the paper, the lines he draws approximate the lines he sees, and he turns it over to begin. He sketches the man first, then faint guidelines hinting at corners and furniture. The room can be filled in later, its details allowed to blur. For John, he is meticulous and exacting and immensely unsatisfied at his handiwork. The image is proportionally correct and artfully rendered in grey, but John is most present in his colour, in the tan of his face and the blend of his hair. He wishes for a bit of white chalk for the shine of his eyes and the smooth hilt of his knife. He could wish for many things, but this will have to do.
“Now will you let me see it?” John asks.
“It isn’t what it should be,” Sherlock warns, sliding it toward him.
John picks it up and turns it over. His eyes catch on the image and his mouth does something odd. He looks at the depiction of a soldier seated before a fireplace, before a shuttered window, a man of shadow and light and muted strength. John looks at this as if having never seen it before. Harry doesn’t own a mirror; perhaps John is unaware of his appearance. Certainly, John would never look at a mirror the way the man in Sherlock’s drawing looks, humour lurking behind the patience in his eyes. It is less John as he is today and more John as he was that first night, a near stranger in the near dark, one man offering shelter to another.
John closes his eyes. The shape of his mouth grows strange and his nostrils flare. He looks shaken. He is shaken.
Sherlock stands, not understanding what he’s done wrong. “John?”
John hands the drawing to him, eyes still closed.
Sherlock sets it on the table, already moving around the barrier. “John, it’s hardly that bad. I can do it over.” He reaches for John’s hand. He touches John’s face. Two hands, ten fingers, one body is too limited for holding John Watson. “There’s more paper, it isn’t an issue.”
John shakes his head and lifts his face. His eyes are bright and dark, noon sky and midnight blended. He pulls Sherlock close with a fist in his shirt. He kisses as if this is his last breath, his dying hour. John kisses his lips and cheeks and jaw. His kisses are quick, so very quick, so finite in number, and they make Sherlock slow and clumsy. Chasing John’s mouth, his lips stumble across stubble. Then the capture. Then the claiming.
They force their bodies together, twisting, twining, tethering. They stagger, hips striking table, pain now, bruises to follow, and it doesn’t matter, can’t matter, John, don’t let go, don’t ever let go.
“I won’t, I won’t, come here,” John answers, gasp to gasp, kiss to kiss. “I have you, come here.” He suckles at Sherlock’s neck, pulls of lips and teeth, and his fingers fumble lower, fighting at buttons.
“You’re marking me,” Sherlock gasps, drunk on the obvious. Surely this is intoxication. His hips stutter against John’s, his soft cock against a firebrand. “John, you’re marking me.”
“You’re mine,” John insists, as if the explanation is needed, as if Sherlock has somehow never realized blatant truth. His breath blazes over the damp ache of Sherlock’s neck.
“Don’t stop.” His hand clutches the back of John’s head, forces his mouth to skin. “Harder, John, I need-!” Sharp teeth, surprisingly sharp. Tooth marks, bite marks, they’re on his skin, in his skin, as unique as any signature. “John.”
“Gonna make you come,” John promises, voice a low growl against his bruising skin. “Don’t care how long it takes, I’ll make you come. God, your face. Need to see you come. God, I need to see that again.” His fingers pull at Sherlock’s belt, draw him to the wall crotch-first, and that is the limit of Sherlock’s comprehension. He recognizes the wall as right and good - they will never make it up the ladder - and he stares at the hand around his belt buckle, the guiding, proprietary grip.
He learns by example. He shoves and presses and John goes willingly, drawing Sherlock to him as he lies against the wall as if upon a feather mattress. John lifts his reddened mouth for kisses, his unmarked neck bared, and Sherlock’s mind collapses into fantasy. He lunges in, panting against vulnerable skin, licking a patch clean with his tongue. Here, here, he’ll bite John here.
Strong fingers thread through his hair. He groans and bucks, rutting against John’s other hand, the insistent temptation against his flaccid member. “John,” he praises, keeps praising. That neck, look at it. He tongues at the pulse, seeking a spot safe for a nip. Below, he fumbles with belt and buttons and there, feel that. John blazes in his palm, within the circle of his fingers. He strokes John, pumps him, and his other hand is already prepared with an item from his own pocket, a certain handkerchief.
John’s head hits the wall, but the subsequent groan is more desire than pain. John’s head lolls to the side, to the wrong side, Sherlock has to switch sides and start anew, the angles entirely wrong.
“Let me,” Sherlock pants. “John, please, let me, John.”
John catches his mouth, kisses him. His motions are deep and ardent and everything Sherlock could wish, did he not need something wholly else. He loses himself and finds himself, moment after moment, and strives for focus. He wants kisses, but he needs to bite, requires action. He tries to break away, to return his mouth to that tender spot, but John catches him, anticipates.
Sherlock groans into his mouth, frustrated, desperate, and John stiffens with a huff of breath, relaxes with a sigh. The scent of John’s seed saturates the air. Handkerchief well-used, Sherlock drops it to the floor. He eases John’s head to the side, nuzzling and proud. A pleasant torture, John continues to work at him through his trousers. His skin feels hot and tight, exactly as his smallclothes do not.
Infinitely close to relief, he presses his open mouth to John’s skin. Slowing from its racing pace, John’s pulse greets his lips.
In the final moment between intent and mistake, he remembers himself.
Teeth bared, he stops, panting. Everything in his nature cries out to pierce, to claim, to drink thick heat and spill across his lover in turn. He can smell human release, must taste human blood. His body seeks to reject his mind. His descended fangs refuse to retract. He is tense and tight, frozen not into indecision but inability.
John freezes with him. The fingers fisted in tawny hair force his head into an awkward angle. His position is obvious. His vulnerability and Sherlock’s intent are clear.
John’s breathing is steady. His hand on Sherlock’s front is likewise. Slowly, in instinctual caution against any dangerous animal, John gradually drops his hand. His grip on Sherlock’s back is likewise relinquished, hand deliberately lowered, touching nothing in its descent toward Sherlock’s hip and the sheathed knife which hangs there, hooked to his belt.
Sherlock’s body startles away, the necessity of flight understood at last. He covers his mouth and bolts for the door, the door he can’t open quickly at the best of times. Two metal bolts and the wooden bar, he fumbles with shaking, panicked hands. He can feel every line of his back, every exposed hair on the back of his neck, every defenceless inch of himself, and John behind him.
John behind him, John cursing, John’s hand on the bar, John holding it down and saying nothing. John trapping him and saying nothing, no touch of sharp metal against his back but what’s in his hand, don’t look, don’t look, don’t breathe, don’t move, don’t threaten, John, John please.
“Open the door, let me open the door and I’ll be gone. I won’t return, I’m leaving, you know I’m leaving,” his mouth runs on without him. His forehead presses against the door, his body crowds against it, tries to fall through it. “Open the door and this never happened. You don’t need to do this, I’m not a threat to you, I’m not a threat to anyone, I only want to go home-”
“Slow down, I can hardly understand you,” John instructs.
“Please let me go,” Sherlock enunciates, conscious of his language.
“You were about to bite me.” There is no emotion left in John’s voice, absolutely none.
“A lapse of self-control. Which I regained. Let me go. It’s the only option. Think it through.”
Behind him, John says nothing. There is the faint sound of cloth and buttons, followed by the fastening of a belt. The one-handed motions take time. John does not relinquish his grip on the wooden beam. The door remains bolted shut.
Not the sword, Sherlock analyzes. That weapon is designed to slash more than it is to stab and the reach is long. The gatehouse is too crammed. The knife instead. The family knife John wears at his hip.
“Draughtsmen have glamour,” John says slowly. “Their words take over your head.”
There is no reply to this. Sherlock remembers very well the pressure of John on his back, the blade at his throat. He knows not to speak.
A touch at his back and Sherlock flinches. His entire body tenses and trembles as John lays his hand over Sherlock’s spine. Controlled breathing is beyond his capabilities.
John’s hand doesn’t move, don’t press, merely holds without gripping. Beneath it, Sherlock fights for composure.
“If you can do that,” John continues, “then why are you frightened of me?”
Sherlock closes his eyes against the door.
“I’m not immune, am I? You’ve done it before. The first time I- That day you were rained in, I realized it and you changed my mind.”
“I lied,” Sherlock corrects. “Nothing more. You wanted to believe me.”
“I did,” John agrees, voice blank. “I suppose I want to go on believing it, but that would be a bit pointless now. Are you going to turn around?”
Sherlock dares a glance over his shoulder.
John has turned himself to stone, strong though crumbling. His eyes check Sherlock’s mouth the way they scan strangers for hidden knives.
Sherlock returns his forehead against the door. He can still undo this. Tell John to back away. Tell John to open the door. Tell John to sit and sleep and wake, and tell him he dozed off while Sherlock was drawing him, tell him he had a nightmare and kiss him goodbye.
“You made me think I was going mad again, Sherlock. My sister, my friends, they all think I’m relapsing!” John shouts. His subsequent silence is just as long in its demands for explanation and answer. “You- fuck, I let you into town! What the hell did you do in there?”
“I’m a courier,” Sherlock states evenly. He can feel his voice sliding towards ire. “Mrs. Chandler had a package from her nephew. I didn’t want to talk to you after the attempted murder fiasco, so I went into town instead.”
“And last week?” John demands.
“Your idea,” Sherlock reminds him.
Another loud, harsh silence resounds. John swallows. “And with Mike? You went to talk with Mike, what was that about?”
“What I told you,” Sherlock answers.
“Sherlock, you didn’t break through security designed to kill you to talk about your cock with a doctor.”
“It’s not very good security.”
“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed the you-shaped holes in it.” John’s hand presses harder on his back, almost a shove. “If anyone else notices, I’m dead, do you realize that?”
“Then let me go,” Sherlock answers. “I vanish, never to return, and it’s a non-issue.”
“Of course it’s an issue! I’ve no idea what you’ve done, and I can’t trust a thing you say.”
“Then kill me,” Sherlock counters. “It would take a particularly thorough autopsy to prove you hadn’t murdered a human, and even then, you would face the fallout for permitting me entrance, but you would likely be allowed to live.”
“Or,” John begins and cannot continue. That quick to notice the flaw in the third option.
“Go on.”
“Or I try to convince someone else of what you are,” John says in the voice of a man who knows a plan is doomed, “and they’ll believe you over me when you pass the holly test. Food and drink is no good when they already know you can’t handle it. If you vomit blood, that’s a result of cruelty, not proof. I’ve gone mad, you go free.” John is silent for a moment. “Damn you. Did you think of everything?”
“It came together well, but I didn’t plan it.”
They breathe in silence, barely moving.
“That feeling in my head,” John says. “The one pitching a fit about how bad a joke this is. Is that me or you?”
“It isn’t me.”
“I don’t....” John’s hand drops from his back. “You don’t fit. I don’t know what you are, but you’re something else. Not human, but.... The day I- The day you vomited, you told me about those people in the south. The land-sirens, the leeches. Is that what you are?”
Eyes closed, Sherlock tramples down relief before it can ruin him. “Yes.”
“Then you’re not a draughtsman.”
“Wrong. Same species, different culture.”
“But you’re not burning from the holly and you’re not cold - I mean, you are cold, your feet are freezing - but you’re not bloodless.”
Sherlock looks over his shoulder in confusion. “Why would I be bloodless?”
“Why drink blood if you already have it?” John asks, looking equally confused.
“Why would a nursing woman drink cow milk?” Sherlock counters.
John’s tongue catches between his lips. Slowly, it pulls back inside his mouth.
Very carefully, Sherlock fully turns around. He sets his back against the door.
“Okay,” John says. “That makes sense. What about sleeping?”
“What about it? ‘Oh, no, you snore, you must be human’?”
“You don’t snore,” John tells him. “But that’s not-” He looks away, turns his head to the side. “I mean, there’s a distinct lack of sleeping in coffins.”
Sherlock stares at him. “Why would anyone- John, we don’t even inhume our dead, we cremate.” When John blinks, Sherlock clarifies, “We burn the bodies instead of burying them.”
“You mean, they don’t turn to ash by themselves?”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“No. That was an honest question.”
“John, that was a stupid question. Do you think before you speak?”
John doesn’t reply immediately. His eyes are too busy in the strange way they fix on Sherlock’s face.
“Do you?” Sherlock demands, unnerved.
“Do you?” John counters. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Any idea at all? There isn’t a person you’ve spoken to who isn’t in danger. Me, Bill, my sister. If you’re found-”
“I’ll be killed,” Sherlock finishes for him. “On the theory that it would break any and all glamour I could have lain, I will be murdered on the spot and everyone else will be fine.”
“‘Murdered’,” John repeats.
“That’s typically what killing someone is called, particularly when they’ve done you no harm. There’s also ‘slaughtered’ and ‘butchered,’ though those have animal connotations. Those terms were coined by humans, if you weren’t aware.”
“What the hell are you here for?” John demands. “If you know how dangerous this is. You’re not an idiot.”
“There’s something here Angelo needs,” Sherlock explains, his words a rush of practicality. “I thought I could get it for him, I can’t, and now I’m going home.”
“Something in Bart’s?”
“No, in Bryant’s territory. It’s irrelevant now. I’ll find another way around it, it’s fine.”
“What is it? This thing you’re risking our lives for.”
“That’s a very long story,” Sherlock replies, “and there is very little daylight left. You can let me leave for Euston or you can throw my body into the river: choose.”
“No,” John says, his grip on the wooden bar unwavering. “I don’t have to. You’re not going anywhere. You owe me one hell of an explanation.”
“I thought you couldn’t trust anything I say.”
“I can doubt everything you say,” John tells him. “Which means you’re not making me believe you, so I still have my mind. You haven’t made me back off or fall asleep, even though you could leave then. You want to talk to me, not control me. Why?”
Sherlock can’t look at him. He closes his eyes, turns his face away. “Why are you asking that?”
“Think it’s a valid question, under the circumstances.”
“No,” Sherlock says. His voice doesn’t do him the disservice of shaking. “I mean,” he continues, his hands deliberate as they button his half-opened shirt at last, “why are you asking that?”
John’s eyes grow very wide.
Sherlock holds his ground. He tucks his shirt back into his trousers.
John gives him space. They stand facing each other, the line between their bodies parallel to the door.
“You’ve bitten me,” John says.
“Yes.”
“You used glamour to make me forget.”
“No.”
“Then why don’t I remember?” John asks. “I know it must have happened, but I can’t sort out when. While I was sleeping?”
“No. I set up a substitute experience.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Sherlock sighs impatiently. “I told you to describe what you wanted. You believed yourself.”
“You mean the blowjobs?”
“Yes.”
John’s eyes widen once more. Then narrow, sliding off to the side as he thinks. “Have I ever been in your mouth?”
“No.”
“That’s... bit of a relief, actually. Not that it wasn’t, um.” John pauses. “You’ve quite the teeth, I mean. But I can see it. When I think about it, I can remember what it looks like. Not the biting, the....”
“You’ve an exceptional imagination,” Sherlock allows.
The kind words turn John furious. “And you’re an exceptional liar,” he retorts. “Is that how you do it, then? Go around telling people you’re sleeping with them, then have a snack?”
“I never. I did sleep with you, John, but it’s more complicated than that.”
John laughs in his face.
“John.”
“You know, I remember thinking how lucky I was,” John tells him. There is nothing soft in him, his face hard and vicious. “You couldn’t get off without sucking my cock. That was all you wanted, sucking my cock, couldn’t get on your knees fast enough. I’d catch you, sometimes, staring at my crotch like you were hungry. Thought you were the best thing I’d ever seen. Remember hating myself for that, loving the way someone trained you to need it so badly. God, that’s a laugh now, isn’t it?”
“It’s biology,” Sherlock explains to his stupid, irrational lover. “You wanted to sleep with me, I wanted to sleep with you. That meant drinking.”
“That meant warping my mind and changing my memories! Very romantic, well done.”
“I stopped!” Sherlock yells. “It upset you, so I stopped!”
“I caught on and you stopped!” John accuses. His hand lands on Sherlock’s chest and shoves him back one staggering step. “I won’t thank you for that courtesy! What happens when we don’t? If we don’t notice we’re tired or that our legs have started hurting again, what then?”
“Why are you talking in a hypothetical first person plural?” His volume has dropped, low and dangerous, a tone he cannot afford and cannot prevent.
“What the fuck does that mean?” John demands.
“Why do you assume there are others? I’m not human, therefore I must be disloyal? I’ve not cheated on you, I never have.”
The declaration unsteadies John but does not stop him. “Before me, then. What about them? Did you even care what you were doing to them?”
“Before you, I was home,” Sherlock answers. “Where it does not matter.”
“How can that not matter? Biting people,” John disparages.
Sherlock points at his own neck, at where the marks of John’s lips and teeth must remain upon his skin.
“Drinking their blood.” Amending his words makes them no less of a challenge.
“Because we know what we are and we don’t kill each other for it,” Sherlock tells him. “It isn’t that difficult. There’s none of this beheading nonsense.”
“The last person you bit,” John demands. “What happened to him?”
“Her,” Sherlock corrects. “Dr. Molly Hooper. Beyond possessing an inordinate fondness for cats, I daresay she’s fine.”
“And she knew what she was in for?”
“Of course she knew, her father was my parents’ physician. The first words she said to me were ‘Can I play with your cat or will you drink him for lunch?’ We were four. Our parents decided she would be my bloodmate by the time we were seven.”
John stares at him, momentum undercut by confusion. “What does that even mean?”
“Social symbiosis. No one else is allowed to touch her, by blood or by glamour. It’s far from an unusual arrangement. The Lestrade family has been linked to mine for generations this way, eldest children together.”
“I thought you said her name was Hooper.”
“It is. Greg’s with my brother.” He doesn’t mention Erik, the political human minion. “They’ve been together for over seventeen years. No ill effects, John. Greg is a police inspector, one of the best we have. He’s far from a victim, whatever you’d like to believe. If anything, he’s a restraining influence.
“It’s fine in the south,” Sherlock continues. “I don’t know what to do when it isn’t fine. I worked around the issue to the best of my ability, but obviously that wasn’t enough.”
“‘Not enough’,” John echoes faintly. “Sherlock, you....” He rubs at his face. “God.”
“I realized that,” Sherlock admits. “Perhaps you’d consider it a belated realization, but it did occur to me.”
“People are killed here for that,” John tells him. “If you’re under glamour and the draughtsman can’t be found-”
“Can’t be killed.”
“-then they kill you instead,” John continues over him. “You put a death sentence on me for a shag and don’t tell me I asked for that.”
“I didn’t know,” Sherlock answers. “No one mentioned that until you told me.”
John frowns. “When did I tell you?”
“After our second night together. Too late to go back.”
“Early enough to stop.”
Sherlock simply looks at him.
For a long, silent moment, John matches his gaze. He is challenge and defiance. In the end, he clears his throat and looks away. “If I let you go and anyone ever finds out about you,” John says.
“I’m aware now,” Sherlock says quietly. “I can remove the glamour.”
“That won’t help.”
“All the same.”
John considers this, head tilted to the side so slightly. Unaware of his own unmarked neck. “Is the only glamour about the biting?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose I’ll have to take your word on that.”
“If I controlled your behaviour, what would be the point of interacting with you?” Sherlock asks. “You’d be boring.”
John considers this as well. He sighs. “The things in your head, Sherlock.”
“In my head?” Sherlock repeats.
“What you think is obvious,” John says. “Bloody strange.”
Sherlock finds himself smiling faintly. “You’ve never complained before.”
“I never knew how absolutely mental you were before.” John shakes his head. “Not now, then. Don’t remove the glamour yet, do it when you leave. Hard enough talking to you reasonably without remembering the rest of it.”
Sherlock nods, sobering. “John. Um. Unless your plan is to have me walk to Euston in the dark, I don’t....”
“You’re staying for the night,” John tells him.
“What, really?”
“It can hardly make anything worse at this point, can it?” John asks.
“No, but that wasn’t my question,” Sherlock replies. “You intend to sleep with me in this room?”
“Actually, I intend to lightly doze with me in a chair, you in the loft, and the ladder on the floor,” John answers. John is a light enough sleeper to hear Sherlock jump down onto the thresh: the gatekeeper won’t be caught unaware. “Provided you can explain yourself before dawn, that is.”
“It’s still approaching dusk.”
“I’m aware.”
Sherlock’s mouth twitches. “It won’t take so long.”
Judging from John’s expression, the human thoroughly doubts that. “What happened to your long story, then? This mysterious thing you’re after for your father.”
Sherlock’s mouth twitches in another way entirely. “That has nothing to do with you.”
“And there we have it,” John concludes. “Secrecy again, lovely.”
“It has nothing to do with you,” Sherlock repeats.
“Let me think about that: the reason why you’re on this side of the continent, risking both our lives. Seems to have something to do with me.”
“I don’t have to answer you.”
“I’m aware of that, thanks. From what I understand, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, ever,” John reasons. Erroneously, very, but it’s good to see him thinking. “This entire conversation is you indulging me, I’m aware of that.”
“Don’t edge around the catch, John,” Sherlock chastises.
“You want me to not hate you,” John tells him bluntly. “You’re not going to glamour me into it. That would be cheating, or boring, or whatever the hell your qualms are. If you’re going to talk your way out of this, well. Any chance of that happening means you answer my questions.”
“And if I don’t?” he demands. “What then, you stab me and throw me in the river?”
Standing before him, John sets his jaw. He looks at his hand on the bar, at the shadow they cast on the door. Their shapes are framed in the red-hued light from the west-facing window. Their shapes are very still.
John lifts his hand. He fists and unfurls his fingers, tendons obviously tensed past simple releasing. “We both know that’s not going to happen,” John says.
“Because you wouldn’t, or because I wouldn’t let you?”
“Whatever you want to tell yourself is fine. I can hardly stop you.”
“John-”
“I can’t,” John interrupts. “I don’t know what you’re so frightened of. I’m the one who’s helpless here.”
He doesn’t seem it. Even to Sherlock’s eyes, John appears anything but helpless. It’s more than the knife at his hip or the sword leaning against the wall, more than sturdy shoulders and an unwavering gaze. John hasn’t paused or slipped or stumbled. He hasn’t attacked or threatened. He rides his rage rather than grapple with it and that makes him powerful.
“Stay or go,” John tells him. “Your choice, not mine.”
Wrong.
Before Sherlock can tell him this, John moves. He walks away. He goes to the hearth, takes up the poker, and stirs the fire. Embers flare. His right hand buries itself deeply in his trouser pocket. The poker remains in his left, heavy iron handled as if it were a twig. John’s back is shadow. Light fades against his edges.
“You want me to leave,” Sherlock states.
John’s fingers tighten on the poker.
“You want to be left alone to process events and lick your wounds. Simultaneously, you want further information. Which would you prefer?”
John turns his head, forbidding him even a profile of his expression.
Sherlock waits.
John waits longer.
“Fine,” Sherlock snaps. “There you have it, a choice of your own at last.”
The poker is remarkably steady. The tip barely wavers.
He takes the first step from the door. When John fails to react, Sherlock crosses to his coat. He takes it from its customary peg. He pulls it on, then loops his scarf around his neck. He watches John adjust his stance, keeping his back to Sherlock. The tension in his shoulders indicates a readiness for action. His head is slightly tilted, indicating intent listening. If Sherlock approaches now, John will swing at him.
Sherlock’s satchel is still open on the table. The drawing is where they set it. The pencil has rolled onto the floor. That, Sherlock abandons. The drawing, he takes care of. Another piece of paper on top, then the pair gently eased into his satchel.
“What are you doing?”
He looks up.
John holds the poker between them in a low guarding position. Unconscious, possibly. His stance is far from defensive. His face is a stranger’s.
“Leaving,” Sherlock answers. He sorts the remaining contents of his satchel to prevent folding or crunching.
“No,” John says. “What are you doing with that?”
“Keeping it.” He closes the flap and ties it shut.
“Why?”
“Because I dislike the thought of you burning it.” He shoulders his burden. He turns toward the door. “Goodbye, John.”
The metal bolts first, then the wooden bar. Unrushed, the process is simple once more. He lifts the bar.
“Wait. Sherlock, stop.”
Sherlock turns.
“You, um.” John pauses, tongue between his lips. His eyes search the room, seeking the words he’d meant to say.
“Yes?”
“You said you’d lift the glamour.”
“Oh.” He sets down the bar, bolts the door. The motions are habit now, etched through memory and into muscle. “You’ll want to sit down.”
For the first time, John hesitates. He looks at the table, at their chairs, and visibly refuses. He sits on the chest below the window instead. The poker balances across his knees.
Sherlock crosses to him, moving John’s chair from the table and bringing it to face him. He sits as well, watching John’s hands on the iron. John does not lean back, but he sits very tall.
“Do you need to be that close for this?” John asks.
“It helps.” Though their feet are next to each other, he’s careful not to touch John’s knees with his. “You need to listen very closely.”
John’s spine straightens, his shoulders square. He doesn’t shy away, anything but. “I could hear you fine across the room.”
Sherlock shakes his head. “Words, yes. This, no. This will require focus and concentration.”
“Focus on what?”
“I’m about to make a noise. If you can’t pick up on it, this won’t work.”
“Oh good. No pressure, then. You can’t just, I don’t know, stop it?”
“An experience is not a belief,” Sherlock instructs. “An experience begins, occurs, concludes. I can’t stop what’s already finished. This will restore your memory and alert you to every glamour I’ve lain on you. We’ll go through, one by one. It shouldn’t take long.” Perhaps if he ran to Euston, he might make it before true dark and the town gates are closed. Perhaps not.
John’s eyes track his, weighing, dismissing, wondering. His tongue peeks, vanishes. “All right,” John says. “Sure, why not. Let’s get this over with. Make that sound of yours.”
Sherlock does.
John frowns. “I don’t....”
Sherlock holds a finger before his lips and begins to hum. The resonance of glamour mounts beneath the constant tone. Slowly, frowning, John leans toward him. When Sherlock drops the glamour from the hum, John startles backward.
“What-”
“Did you hear it?” Sherlock asks.
“No, but I felt it,” John accuses. “God, you can do that by humming?”
“It’s not on the hum, it’s underneath. Try again.”
They do, John swaying toward him and springing free with each attempt. At last, when Sherlock is silent, John nods. “You’re making the sound.”
Sherlock stops at once. “You hear it?”
“Not really, but I know I’m feeling it,” John replies.
“What does it feel like?” The only person who’s ever told him what his glamour feels like is Molly. There are obvious biases. Sherlock is not a purring kitten.
John shakes his head. “Just keep going.”
“Fine.” He resents the refusal and takes no pain to hide this. “Can you remember the sensation occurring before?”
“No.”
“Have you even tried?”
“I’m not the one who knows what he’s doing!” A glare rather than an apology follows this outburst. “Look, I told you, just keep going.”
“Can you hear this?” Sherlock asks, cheating and not caring.
John stares at his mouth abruptly. Uncertain, Sherlock lightly bites his lower lip simply to check and, no, his teeth are still retracted.
“Did you hear it?”
“Yes,” John says immediately. This time, he doesn’t lean back. He seems to have forgotten his grip on the poker across his thighs. “Your voice, it was.... I don’t know. More? It wasn’t just your voice.”
“It was my glamour,” Sherlock confirms.
“Can you, I don’t know. Do it again without speaking?”
Sherlock does, not quite silent. It is nothing close to a noise.
Slowly, a motion as slow as the moment before a fall, John reaches. His fingertips hang in the air before Sherlock’s lips. Blue eyes question beneath a furrowed brow. His fingers dip from mouth to neck and slip beneath his scarf, a careful touch seeking vibration. Sherlock keeps breathing, his hands carefully upon his own knees. Glamour is difficult to sustain on an inhale, but he manages it.
Biting his lip, John unwinds Sherlock’s scarf. He sets it aside with the poker and returns his touch to Sherlock’s neck. He seeks. The sustained emanation of glamour begins to strain low in the throat, high in the chest, and this is where John’s hands go, his curious gaze.
“There,” John says, smiling widely. “I found it.”
Sherlock stops.
Palm solid against Sherlock’s chest, the fingers of his other hand warm against Sherlock’s throat, John comes back to himself. He blinks once, then lowers his hands. He folds them in his lap. “I was concentrating,” John apologizes. His gaze rests on Sherlock’s clavicle and his tongue slowly licks his lips.
“No, it’s... fine.” Sherlock swallows, ignoring the fresh chill against his skin. “If you can identify it, then you can remember it.”
John visibly tries. “When, um. When did you begin? That first time.”
“I was about to go on my knees,” Sherlock prompts.
“Well, it’s, ah.” He looks to the side and coughs. “All a bit of a blur, after that.”
This will take much longer than he’d thought it would. Sherlock sighs and takes John’s head in his hands. He nearly has both wrists broken for his trouble.
“Sherlock-!”
“It’s fine,” Sherlock stresses. “This will help. Close your eyes.”
When John only stares at him, his back ramrod straight, Sherlock closes his eyes in demonstration. He can feel the moment John complies, an increase rather than a decrease of tension.
“You’re remembering. Before I knelt, I spoke. You heard me. What did I say?”
The change in John is instantaneous. He presses against Sherlock’s hands, seeking. “You....”
“That’s good, John. Think. You can find it.”
John’s eyes dart beneath closed lids. He mouths words, nearly, torn between his natural resilience and the temptation of complying.
“That’s it. Keep going, it’s all right.”
“You said,” John begins.
Sherlock waits for him, unmoving as John’s hands return to his chest and throat. John’s colour heightens.
“You said, ‘tell me exactly what you want. I’ll do it. Exactly what you want. Tell me what to do. Tell me exactly what you want to feel.’” John turns his head, mouth brushing Sherlock’s wrist before Sherlock can adjust. “And... ‘I want to hear you say it. Be exact.’”
“John, that’s excellent,” he praises. “You’re doing very well. What next?”
John presses closer. “You said you won’t bite.”
Sherlock frowns at the tense shift. “That was the past. What did I say?”
“You said you wouldn’t bite.”
Better. “Did I?”
“You said it.”
“Did I bite you?”
“You said you wouldn’t.” John’s voice lolls with his head, relaxing between Sherlock’s hands. He almost seems asleep, every inch of him warm and trusting.
“What were my actions?”
“Exactly what I wanted,” John praises. “You were perfect.”
“That is what you felt.”
“Mm....”
“While you felt that, what did I do? Where was my mouth?”
“On me. ‘s nice.”
“When I tell you to, I want you to point to where my mouth was. Where it was, not where you felt it. Do you understand?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d like you to point now.”
John does, his hand circling around his crotch and his right thigh. His fingers circle lower, lower, then touch at the top of his thigh.
“Is that where my mouth was?”
“Mmhm.” The little hum accompanies a little giggle.
Of all the things to take away. “Is that what you told me to do?”
John hesitates. He crowds closer. Leaning forward, sliding forward on the trunk, he reaches for Sherlock’s wrists and holds on as if for balance.
“If that was where my mouth was, was I doing exactly as you told me?”
“...No,” John says slowly. “You weren’t. You- fuck!” He jerks against Sherlock’s hands, body tensing in an instant. Despite his panic, John fails to open his eyes. “Stop it! You’re biting me, stop it!”
“Am I biting you now?” Sherlock interrupts, his grip on John fluid, firm. “If I am talking, can I be biting you?”
“N-no. You’re- you’re not.” John slumps, sighs. “Fuck, you’re not. That’s better.”
“What happened then? Between us two months ago.”
“We had each other,” John answers. He hums and then he grins a bit. “Thought you were a lovely prat.”
“That’s not what I-” Stop, start over. Ignore those words, ignore the smile, drunk and giddy. Ignore the thumbs on his wrists and their light circles. Everything that is John: ignore. “What happened after I bit you?”
The smile fades away, John’s mouth falling open. His smooth breaths slow, then catch.
“John, what happened?”
“This is very strange,” John murmurs. His chest rises and falls. Beneath their lids, his eyes flick side to side, seeking, searching. His breathing grows shallow. “Can’t move. I should, I should stop you, but it.... Can’t feel it. I’m just standing here. I can see you,” he adds, the last words oddly high. “Which way are you? There was one before but now there are two.”
“Which version bit you?” Sherlock prompts.
“That one,” John says. He doesn’t gesture or indicate, simply speaks. “I like the other one better. Can I have the other one back?” Here John reaches, hand on his coat.
Ignore. “You imagined the other one.”
John shakes his head between Sherlock’s hands. Tawny hair ruffles between pale fingers.
“Did I bite you, John?”
“Yes.”
“Did I do exactly what you wanted?”
“You said you would.”
“But did I?”
John attempts to pull away and worm closer at once. “I don’t like this. Sherlock, I don’t like this.”
“Answer the questions and it will stop.”
“Will it?”
“Yes. Did I do exactly what you wanted?”
“...No.”
“Was there ‘the other one’? Was there ever a human man here named Sherlock Holmes?”
John hesitates, barely breathing.
Sherlock waits, perched at the very edge of his chair.
“There is in my head,” John whispers. “I can see him, I can feel-”
“No you can’t.”
“Yes I bloody well can!” John bellows at him, eyes open and flashing. He drags Sherlock closer, onto him, leverage be damned. The coat becomes more handle than garment where enraged human strength seizes. Sherlock’s hands catch against the windowsill. John presses his head to Sherlock’s chest, presses his ear against the thrum of glamour, presses and presses until the force of him has rid Sherlock of air. “You don’t get to take that away, give him back.”
Seized by harsh arms, forced off-balance, Sherlock stops. He stops his thrum, he stops his instinctual response to struggle. He stops.
Soon after, panting heavily, John stops too.
“John?”
John lets him go.
Sherlock eases himself back. He sits. He watches, uncomprehending, as John wipes at his face. John dries his damp fingers on his trousers, looking away. His cheek shines in the firelight.
“John, I-”
“That’s enough,” John cuts him off. His voice is thick but not thick enough to keep from breaking. “I can remember enough, you can stop now.” Still short of breath, he sags back against cold wall and dark window. He’s very small. Not naturally, not from his own doing. Exhausted. Diminished.
“You should be able to pick apart the rest on your own now,” Sherlock promises him. He doesn’t know what else to say.
John lifts his hand, one finger raised. Be quiet, his tired eyes command.
Softly, Sherlock nods. He hesitates, then reaches for the poker and stands with it. He stirs the fire. Adds fuel. He takes the kettle to the water barrel and fills it carefully with the ladle. Sherlock returns the lid to the barrel, the ladle to its peg, and the kettle to the iron hook above the hearth. With the poker, he nudges it over the flame. This last is a clumsy effort.
He returns to his chair, John’s chair, and sits.
Face turned to the side, John watches the fire.
They sit apart in the flickering light, captor and captive, waiting for the kettle to scream.
next
Drawing John requires no less than four breaks for gate duty. They call themselves fortunate for the timing all the same, mindful that the interruptions could have come earlier. They usually time themselves much better, Sherlock arriving closer to nightfall than mid-afternoon.
“There’s the afternoon rush gone,” John concludes after the fourth. “Don’t think there’s anyone off to Euston today. Probably no more interruptions, but we’ll have to mind the time.”
“Yes, yes, I’m crushingly aware.”
John flashes him a rueful flinch of a smile. “Right, sorry. Still a few hours of sunlight left, go on.”
Sherlock doesn’t want to rush this keepsake but neither does he wish to render John still and silent. The pencil shifts awkwardly between his fingers, too long unused. After half an hour’s scribbling on one side of the paper, the lines he draws approximate the lines he sees, and he turns it over to begin. He sketches the man first, then faint guidelines hinting at corners and furniture. The room can be filled in later, its details allowed to blur. For John, he is meticulous and exacting and immensely unsatisfied at his handiwork. The image is proportionally correct and artfully rendered in grey, but John is most present in his colour, in the tan of his face and the blend of his hair. He wishes for a bit of white chalk for the shine of his eyes and the smooth hilt of his knife. He could wish for many things, but this will have to do.
“Now will you let me see it?” John asks.
“It isn’t what it should be,” Sherlock warns, sliding it toward him.
John picks it up and turns it over. His eyes catch on the image and his mouth does something odd. He looks at the depiction of a soldier seated before a fireplace, before a shuttered window, a man of shadow and light and muted strength. John looks at this as if having never seen it before. Harry doesn’t own a mirror; perhaps John is unaware of his appearance. Certainly, John would never look at a mirror the way the man in Sherlock’s drawing looks, humour lurking behind the patience in his eyes. It is less John as he is today and more John as he was that first night, a near stranger in the near dark, one man offering shelter to another.
John closes his eyes. The shape of his mouth grows strange and his nostrils flare. He looks shaken. He is shaken.
Sherlock stands, not understanding what he’s done wrong. “John?”
John hands the drawing to him, eyes still closed.
Sherlock sets it on the table, already moving around the barrier. “John, it’s hardly that bad. I can do it over.” He reaches for John’s hand. He touches John’s face. Two hands, ten fingers, one body is too limited for holding John Watson. “There’s more paper, it isn’t an issue.”
John shakes his head and lifts his face. His eyes are bright and dark, noon sky and midnight blended. He pulls Sherlock close with a fist in his shirt. He kisses as if this is his last breath, his dying hour. John kisses his lips and cheeks and jaw. His kisses are quick, so very quick, so finite in number, and they make Sherlock slow and clumsy. Chasing John’s mouth, his lips stumble across stubble. Then the capture. Then the claiming.
They force their bodies together, twisting, twining, tethering. They stagger, hips striking table, pain now, bruises to follow, and it doesn’t matter, can’t matter, John, don’t let go, don’t ever let go.
“I won’t, I won’t, come here,” John answers, gasp to gasp, kiss to kiss. “I have you, come here.” He suckles at Sherlock’s neck, pulls of lips and teeth, and his fingers fumble lower, fighting at buttons.
“You’re marking me,” Sherlock gasps, drunk on the obvious. Surely this is intoxication. His hips stutter against John’s, his soft cock against a firebrand. “John, you’re marking me.”
“You’re mine,” John insists, as if the explanation is needed, as if Sherlock has somehow never realized blatant truth. His breath blazes over the damp ache of Sherlock’s neck.
“Don’t stop.” His hand clutches the back of John’s head, forces his mouth to skin. “Harder, John, I need-!” Sharp teeth, surprisingly sharp. Tooth marks, bite marks, they’re on his skin, in his skin, as unique as any signature. “John.”
“Gonna make you come,” John promises, voice a low growl against his bruising skin. “Don’t care how long it takes, I’ll make you come. God, your face. Need to see you come. God, I need to see that again.” His fingers pull at Sherlock’s belt, draw him to the wall crotch-first, and that is the limit of Sherlock’s comprehension. He recognizes the wall as right and good - they will never make it up the ladder - and he stares at the hand around his belt buckle, the guiding, proprietary grip.
He learns by example. He shoves and presses and John goes willingly, drawing Sherlock to him as he lies against the wall as if upon a feather mattress. John lifts his reddened mouth for kisses, his unmarked neck bared, and Sherlock’s mind collapses into fantasy. He lunges in, panting against vulnerable skin, licking a patch clean with his tongue. Here, here, he’ll bite John here.
Strong fingers thread through his hair. He groans and bucks, rutting against John’s other hand, the insistent temptation against his flaccid member. “John,” he praises, keeps praising. That neck, look at it. He tongues at the pulse, seeking a spot safe for a nip. Below, he fumbles with belt and buttons and there, feel that. John blazes in his palm, within the circle of his fingers. He strokes John, pumps him, and his other hand is already prepared with an item from his own pocket, a certain handkerchief.
John’s head hits the wall, but the subsequent groan is more desire than pain. John’s head lolls to the side, to the wrong side, Sherlock has to switch sides and start anew, the angles entirely wrong.
“Let me,” Sherlock pants. “John, please, let me, John.”
John catches his mouth, kisses him. His motions are deep and ardent and everything Sherlock could wish, did he not need something wholly else. He loses himself and finds himself, moment after moment, and strives for focus. He wants kisses, but he needs to bite, requires action. He tries to break away, to return his mouth to that tender spot, but John catches him, anticipates.
Sherlock groans into his mouth, frustrated, desperate, and John stiffens with a huff of breath, relaxes with a sigh. The scent of John’s seed saturates the air. Handkerchief well-used, Sherlock drops it to the floor. He eases John’s head to the side, nuzzling and proud. A pleasant torture, John continues to work at him through his trousers. His skin feels hot and tight, exactly as his smallclothes do not.
Infinitely close to relief, he presses his open mouth to John’s skin. Slowing from its racing pace, John’s pulse greets his lips.
In the final moment between intent and mistake, he remembers himself.
Teeth bared, he stops, panting. Everything in his nature cries out to pierce, to claim, to drink thick heat and spill across his lover in turn. He can smell human release, must taste human blood. His body seeks to reject his mind. His descended fangs refuse to retract. He is tense and tight, frozen not into indecision but inability.
John freezes with him. The fingers fisted in tawny hair force his head into an awkward angle. His position is obvious. His vulnerability and Sherlock’s intent are clear.
John’s breathing is steady. His hand on Sherlock’s front is likewise. Slowly, in instinctual caution against any dangerous animal, John gradually drops his hand. His grip on Sherlock’s back is likewise relinquished, hand deliberately lowered, touching nothing in its descent toward Sherlock’s hip and the sheathed knife which hangs there, hooked to his belt.
Sherlock’s body startles away, the necessity of flight understood at last. He covers his mouth and bolts for the door, the door he can’t open quickly at the best of times. Two metal bolts and the wooden bar, he fumbles with shaking, panicked hands. He can feel every line of his back, every exposed hair on the back of his neck, every defenceless inch of himself, and John behind him.
John behind him, John cursing, John’s hand on the bar, John holding it down and saying nothing. John trapping him and saying nothing, no touch of sharp metal against his back but what’s in his hand, don’t look, don’t look, don’t breathe, don’t move, don’t threaten, John, John please.
“Open the door, let me open the door and I’ll be gone. I won’t return, I’m leaving, you know I’m leaving,” his mouth runs on without him. His forehead presses against the door, his body crowds against it, tries to fall through it. “Open the door and this never happened. You don’t need to do this, I’m not a threat to you, I’m not a threat to anyone, I only want to go home-”
“Slow down, I can hardly understand you,” John instructs.
“Please let me go,” Sherlock enunciates, conscious of his language.
“You were about to bite me.” There is no emotion left in John’s voice, absolutely none.
“A lapse of self-control. Which I regained. Let me go. It’s the only option. Think it through.”
Behind him, John says nothing. There is the faint sound of cloth and buttons, followed by the fastening of a belt. The one-handed motions take time. John does not relinquish his grip on the wooden beam. The door remains bolted shut.
Not the sword, Sherlock analyzes. That weapon is designed to slash more than it is to stab and the reach is long. The gatehouse is too crammed. The knife instead. The family knife John wears at his hip.
“Draughtsmen have glamour,” John says slowly. “Their words take over your head.”
There is no reply to this. Sherlock remembers very well the pressure of John on his back, the blade at his throat. He knows not to speak.
A touch at his back and Sherlock flinches. His entire body tenses and trembles as John lays his hand over Sherlock’s spine. Controlled breathing is beyond his capabilities.
John’s hand doesn’t move, don’t press, merely holds without gripping. Beneath it, Sherlock fights for composure.
“If you can do that,” John continues, “then why are you frightened of me?”
Sherlock closes his eyes against the door.
“I’m not immune, am I? You’ve done it before. The first time I- That day you were rained in, I realized it and you changed my mind.”
“I lied,” Sherlock corrects. “Nothing more. You wanted to believe me.”
“I did,” John agrees, voice blank. “I suppose I want to go on believing it, but that would be a bit pointless now. Are you going to turn around?”
Sherlock dares a glance over his shoulder.
John has turned himself to stone, strong though crumbling. His eyes check Sherlock’s mouth the way they scan strangers for hidden knives.
Sherlock returns his forehead against the door. He can still undo this. Tell John to back away. Tell John to open the door. Tell John to sit and sleep and wake, and tell him he dozed off while Sherlock was drawing him, tell him he had a nightmare and kiss him goodbye.
“You made me think I was going mad again, Sherlock. My sister, my friends, they all think I’m relapsing!” John shouts. His subsequent silence is just as long in its demands for explanation and answer. “You- fuck, I let you into town! What the hell did you do in there?”
“I’m a courier,” Sherlock states evenly. He can feel his voice sliding towards ire. “Mrs. Chandler had a package from her nephew. I didn’t want to talk to you after the attempted murder fiasco, so I went into town instead.”
“And last week?” John demands.
“Your idea,” Sherlock reminds him.
Another loud, harsh silence resounds. John swallows. “And with Mike? You went to talk with Mike, what was that about?”
“What I told you,” Sherlock answers.
“Sherlock, you didn’t break through security designed to kill you to talk about your cock with a doctor.”
“It’s not very good security.”
“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed the you-shaped holes in it.” John’s hand presses harder on his back, almost a shove. “If anyone else notices, I’m dead, do you realize that?”
“Then let me go,” Sherlock answers. “I vanish, never to return, and it’s a non-issue.”
“Of course it’s an issue! I’ve no idea what you’ve done, and I can’t trust a thing you say.”
“Then kill me,” Sherlock counters. “It would take a particularly thorough autopsy to prove you hadn’t murdered a human, and even then, you would face the fallout for permitting me entrance, but you would likely be allowed to live.”
“Or,” John begins and cannot continue. That quick to notice the flaw in the third option.
“Go on.”
“Or I try to convince someone else of what you are,” John says in the voice of a man who knows a plan is doomed, “and they’ll believe you over me when you pass the holly test. Food and drink is no good when they already know you can’t handle it. If you vomit blood, that’s a result of cruelty, not proof. I’ve gone mad, you go free.” John is silent for a moment. “Damn you. Did you think of everything?”
“It came together well, but I didn’t plan it.”
They breathe in silence, barely moving.
“That feeling in my head,” John says. “The one pitching a fit about how bad a joke this is. Is that me or you?”
“It isn’t me.”
“I don’t....” John’s hand drops from his back. “You don’t fit. I don’t know what you are, but you’re something else. Not human, but.... The day I- The day you vomited, you told me about those people in the south. The land-sirens, the leeches. Is that what you are?”
Eyes closed, Sherlock tramples down relief before it can ruin him. “Yes.”
“Then you’re not a draughtsman.”
“Wrong. Same species, different culture.”
“But you’re not burning from the holly and you’re not cold - I mean, you are cold, your feet are freezing - but you’re not bloodless.”
Sherlock looks over his shoulder in confusion. “Why would I be bloodless?”
“Why drink blood if you already have it?” John asks, looking equally confused.
“Why would a nursing woman drink cow milk?” Sherlock counters.
John’s tongue catches between his lips. Slowly, it pulls back inside his mouth.
Very carefully, Sherlock fully turns around. He sets his back against the door.
“Okay,” John says. “That makes sense. What about sleeping?”
“What about it? ‘Oh, no, you snore, you must be human’?”
“You don’t snore,” John tells him. “But that’s not-” He looks away, turns his head to the side. “I mean, there’s a distinct lack of sleeping in coffins.”
Sherlock stares at him. “Why would anyone- John, we don’t even inhume our dead, we cremate.” When John blinks, Sherlock clarifies, “We burn the bodies instead of burying them.”
“You mean, they don’t turn to ash by themselves?”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“No. That was an honest question.”
“John, that was a stupid question. Do you think before you speak?”
John doesn’t reply immediately. His eyes are too busy in the strange way they fix on Sherlock’s face.
“Do you?” Sherlock demands, unnerved.
“Do you?” John counters. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Any idea at all? There isn’t a person you’ve spoken to who isn’t in danger. Me, Bill, my sister. If you’re found-”
“I’ll be killed,” Sherlock finishes for him. “On the theory that it would break any and all glamour I could have lain, I will be murdered on the spot and everyone else will be fine.”
“‘Murdered’,” John repeats.
“That’s typically what killing someone is called, particularly when they’ve done you no harm. There’s also ‘slaughtered’ and ‘butchered,’ though those have animal connotations. Those terms were coined by humans, if you weren’t aware.”
“What the hell are you here for?” John demands. “If you know how dangerous this is. You’re not an idiot.”
“There’s something here Angelo needs,” Sherlock explains, his words a rush of practicality. “I thought I could get it for him, I can’t, and now I’m going home.”
“Something in Bart’s?”
“No, in Bryant’s territory. It’s irrelevant now. I’ll find another way around it, it’s fine.”
“What is it? This thing you’re risking our lives for.”
“That’s a very long story,” Sherlock replies, “and there is very little daylight left. You can let me leave for Euston or you can throw my body into the river: choose.”
“No,” John says, his grip on the wooden bar unwavering. “I don’t have to. You’re not going anywhere. You owe me one hell of an explanation.”
“I thought you couldn’t trust anything I say.”
“I can doubt everything you say,” John tells him. “Which means you’re not making me believe you, so I still have my mind. You haven’t made me back off or fall asleep, even though you could leave then. You want to talk to me, not control me. Why?”
Sherlock can’t look at him. He closes his eyes, turns his face away. “Why are you asking that?”
“Think it’s a valid question, under the circumstances.”
“No,” Sherlock says. His voice doesn’t do him the disservice of shaking. “I mean,” he continues, his hands deliberate as they button his half-opened shirt at last, “why are you asking that?”
John’s eyes grow very wide.
Sherlock holds his ground. He tucks his shirt back into his trousers.
John gives him space. They stand facing each other, the line between their bodies parallel to the door.
“You’ve bitten me,” John says.
“Yes.”
“You used glamour to make me forget.”
“No.”
“Then why don’t I remember?” John asks. “I know it must have happened, but I can’t sort out when. While I was sleeping?”
“No. I set up a substitute experience.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Sherlock sighs impatiently. “I told you to describe what you wanted. You believed yourself.”
“You mean the blowjobs?”
“Yes.”
John’s eyes widen once more. Then narrow, sliding off to the side as he thinks. “Have I ever been in your mouth?”
“No.”
“That’s... bit of a relief, actually. Not that it wasn’t, um.” John pauses. “You’ve quite the teeth, I mean. But I can see it. When I think about it, I can remember what it looks like. Not the biting, the....”
“You’ve an exceptional imagination,” Sherlock allows.
The kind words turn John furious. “And you’re an exceptional liar,” he retorts. “Is that how you do it, then? Go around telling people you’re sleeping with them, then have a snack?”
“I never. I did sleep with you, John, but it’s more complicated than that.”
John laughs in his face.
“John.”
“You know, I remember thinking how lucky I was,” John tells him. There is nothing soft in him, his face hard and vicious. “You couldn’t get off without sucking my cock. That was all you wanted, sucking my cock, couldn’t get on your knees fast enough. I’d catch you, sometimes, staring at my crotch like you were hungry. Thought you were the best thing I’d ever seen. Remember hating myself for that, loving the way someone trained you to need it so badly. God, that’s a laugh now, isn’t it?”
“It’s biology,” Sherlock explains to his stupid, irrational lover. “You wanted to sleep with me, I wanted to sleep with you. That meant drinking.”
“That meant warping my mind and changing my memories! Very romantic, well done.”
“I stopped!” Sherlock yells. “It upset you, so I stopped!”
“I caught on and you stopped!” John accuses. His hand lands on Sherlock’s chest and shoves him back one staggering step. “I won’t thank you for that courtesy! What happens when we don’t? If we don’t notice we’re tired or that our legs have started hurting again, what then?”
“Why are you talking in a hypothetical first person plural?” His volume has dropped, low and dangerous, a tone he cannot afford and cannot prevent.
“What the fuck does that mean?” John demands.
“Why do you assume there are others? I’m not human, therefore I must be disloyal? I’ve not cheated on you, I never have.”
The declaration unsteadies John but does not stop him. “Before me, then. What about them? Did you even care what you were doing to them?”
“Before you, I was home,” Sherlock answers. “Where it does not matter.”
“How can that not matter? Biting people,” John disparages.
Sherlock points at his own neck, at where the marks of John’s lips and teeth must remain upon his skin.
“Drinking their blood.” Amending his words makes them no less of a challenge.
“Because we know what we are and we don’t kill each other for it,” Sherlock tells him. “It isn’t that difficult. There’s none of this beheading nonsense.”
“The last person you bit,” John demands. “What happened to him?”
“Her,” Sherlock corrects. “Dr. Molly Hooper. Beyond possessing an inordinate fondness for cats, I daresay she’s fine.”
“And she knew what she was in for?”
“Of course she knew, her father was my parents’ physician. The first words she said to me were ‘Can I play with your cat or will you drink him for lunch?’ We were four. Our parents decided she would be my bloodmate by the time we were seven.”
John stares at him, momentum undercut by confusion. “What does that even mean?”
“Social symbiosis. No one else is allowed to touch her, by blood or by glamour. It’s far from an unusual arrangement. The Lestrade family has been linked to mine for generations this way, eldest children together.”
“I thought you said her name was Hooper.”
“It is. Greg’s with my brother.” He doesn’t mention Erik, the political human minion. “They’ve been together for over seventeen years. No ill effects, John. Greg is a police inspector, one of the best we have. He’s far from a victim, whatever you’d like to believe. If anything, he’s a restraining influence.
“It’s fine in the south,” Sherlock continues. “I don’t know what to do when it isn’t fine. I worked around the issue to the best of my ability, but obviously that wasn’t enough.”
“‘Not enough’,” John echoes faintly. “Sherlock, you....” He rubs at his face. “God.”
“I realized that,” Sherlock admits. “Perhaps you’d consider it a belated realization, but it did occur to me.”
“People are killed here for that,” John tells him. “If you’re under glamour and the draughtsman can’t be found-”
“Can’t be killed.”
“-then they kill you instead,” John continues over him. “You put a death sentence on me for a shag and don’t tell me I asked for that.”
“I didn’t know,” Sherlock answers. “No one mentioned that until you told me.”
John frowns. “When did I tell you?”
“After our second night together. Too late to go back.”
“Early enough to stop.”
Sherlock simply looks at him.
For a long, silent moment, John matches his gaze. He is challenge and defiance. In the end, he clears his throat and looks away. “If I let you go and anyone ever finds out about you,” John says.
“I’m aware now,” Sherlock says quietly. “I can remove the glamour.”
“That won’t help.”
“All the same.”
John considers this, head tilted to the side so slightly. Unaware of his own unmarked neck. “Is the only glamour about the biting?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose I’ll have to take your word on that.”
“If I controlled your behaviour, what would be the point of interacting with you?” Sherlock asks. “You’d be boring.”
John considers this as well. He sighs. “The things in your head, Sherlock.”
“In my head?” Sherlock repeats.
“What you think is obvious,” John says. “Bloody strange.”
Sherlock finds himself smiling faintly. “You’ve never complained before.”
“I never knew how absolutely mental you were before.” John shakes his head. “Not now, then. Don’t remove the glamour yet, do it when you leave. Hard enough talking to you reasonably without remembering the rest of it.”
Sherlock nods, sobering. “John. Um. Unless your plan is to have me walk to Euston in the dark, I don’t....”
“You’re staying for the night,” John tells him.
“What, really?”
“It can hardly make anything worse at this point, can it?” John asks.
“No, but that wasn’t my question,” Sherlock replies. “You intend to sleep with me in this room?”
“Actually, I intend to lightly doze with me in a chair, you in the loft, and the ladder on the floor,” John answers. John is a light enough sleeper to hear Sherlock jump down onto the thresh: the gatekeeper won’t be caught unaware. “Provided you can explain yourself before dawn, that is.”
“It’s still approaching dusk.”
“I’m aware.”
Sherlock’s mouth twitches. “It won’t take so long.”
Judging from John’s expression, the human thoroughly doubts that. “What happened to your long story, then? This mysterious thing you’re after for your father.”
Sherlock’s mouth twitches in another way entirely. “That has nothing to do with you.”
“And there we have it,” John concludes. “Secrecy again, lovely.”
“It has nothing to do with you,” Sherlock repeats.
“Let me think about that: the reason why you’re on this side of the continent, risking both our lives. Seems to have something to do with me.”
“I don’t have to answer you.”
“I’m aware of that, thanks. From what I understand, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, ever,” John reasons. Erroneously, very, but it’s good to see him thinking. “This entire conversation is you indulging me, I’m aware of that.”
“Don’t edge around the catch, John,” Sherlock chastises.
“You want me to not hate you,” John tells him bluntly. “You’re not going to glamour me into it. That would be cheating, or boring, or whatever the hell your qualms are. If you’re going to talk your way out of this, well. Any chance of that happening means you answer my questions.”
“And if I don’t?” he demands. “What then, you stab me and throw me in the river?”
Standing before him, John sets his jaw. He looks at his hand on the bar, at the shadow they cast on the door. Their shapes are framed in the red-hued light from the west-facing window. Their shapes are very still.
John lifts his hand. He fists and unfurls his fingers, tendons obviously tensed past simple releasing. “We both know that’s not going to happen,” John says.
“Because you wouldn’t, or because I wouldn’t let you?”
“Whatever you want to tell yourself is fine. I can hardly stop you.”
“John-”
“I can’t,” John interrupts. “I don’t know what you’re so frightened of. I’m the one who’s helpless here.”
He doesn’t seem it. Even to Sherlock’s eyes, John appears anything but helpless. It’s more than the knife at his hip or the sword leaning against the wall, more than sturdy shoulders and an unwavering gaze. John hasn’t paused or slipped or stumbled. He hasn’t attacked or threatened. He rides his rage rather than grapple with it and that makes him powerful.
“Stay or go,” John tells him. “Your choice, not mine.”
Wrong.
Before Sherlock can tell him this, John moves. He walks away. He goes to the hearth, takes up the poker, and stirs the fire. Embers flare. His right hand buries itself deeply in his trouser pocket. The poker remains in his left, heavy iron handled as if it were a twig. John’s back is shadow. Light fades against his edges.
“You want me to leave,” Sherlock states.
John’s fingers tighten on the poker.
“You want to be left alone to process events and lick your wounds. Simultaneously, you want further information. Which would you prefer?”
John turns his head, forbidding him even a profile of his expression.
Sherlock waits.
John waits longer.
“Fine,” Sherlock snaps. “There you have it, a choice of your own at last.”
The poker is remarkably steady. The tip barely wavers.
He takes the first step from the door. When John fails to react, Sherlock crosses to his coat. He takes it from its customary peg. He pulls it on, then loops his scarf around his neck. He watches John adjust his stance, keeping his back to Sherlock. The tension in his shoulders indicates a readiness for action. His head is slightly tilted, indicating intent listening. If Sherlock approaches now, John will swing at him.
Sherlock’s satchel is still open on the table. The drawing is where they set it. The pencil has rolled onto the floor. That, Sherlock abandons. The drawing, he takes care of. Another piece of paper on top, then the pair gently eased into his satchel.
“What are you doing?”
He looks up.
John holds the poker between them in a low guarding position. Unconscious, possibly. His stance is far from defensive. His face is a stranger’s.
“Leaving,” Sherlock answers. He sorts the remaining contents of his satchel to prevent folding or crunching.
“No,” John says. “What are you doing with that?”
“Keeping it.” He closes the flap and ties it shut.
“Why?”
“Because I dislike the thought of you burning it.” He shoulders his burden. He turns toward the door. “Goodbye, John.”
The metal bolts first, then the wooden bar. Unrushed, the process is simple once more. He lifts the bar.
“Wait. Sherlock, stop.”
Sherlock turns.
“You, um.” John pauses, tongue between his lips. His eyes search the room, seeking the words he’d meant to say.
“Yes?”
“You said you’d lift the glamour.”
“Oh.” He sets down the bar, bolts the door. The motions are habit now, etched through memory and into muscle. “You’ll want to sit down.”
For the first time, John hesitates. He looks at the table, at their chairs, and visibly refuses. He sits on the chest below the window instead. The poker balances across his knees.
Sherlock crosses to him, moving John’s chair from the table and bringing it to face him. He sits as well, watching John’s hands on the iron. John does not lean back, but he sits very tall.
“Do you need to be that close for this?” John asks.
“It helps.” Though their feet are next to each other, he’s careful not to touch John’s knees with his. “You need to listen very closely.”
John’s spine straightens, his shoulders square. He doesn’t shy away, anything but. “I could hear you fine across the room.”
Sherlock shakes his head. “Words, yes. This, no. This will require focus and concentration.”
“Focus on what?”
“I’m about to make a noise. If you can’t pick up on it, this won’t work.”
“Oh good. No pressure, then. You can’t just, I don’t know, stop it?”
“An experience is not a belief,” Sherlock instructs. “An experience begins, occurs, concludes. I can’t stop what’s already finished. This will restore your memory and alert you to every glamour I’ve lain on you. We’ll go through, one by one. It shouldn’t take long.” Perhaps if he ran to Euston, he might make it before true dark and the town gates are closed. Perhaps not.
John’s eyes track his, weighing, dismissing, wondering. His tongue peeks, vanishes. “All right,” John says. “Sure, why not. Let’s get this over with. Make that sound of yours.”
Sherlock does.
John frowns. “I don’t....”
Sherlock holds a finger before his lips and begins to hum. The resonance of glamour mounts beneath the constant tone. Slowly, frowning, John leans toward him. When Sherlock drops the glamour from the hum, John startles backward.
“What-”
“Did you hear it?” Sherlock asks.
“No, but I felt it,” John accuses. “God, you can do that by humming?”
“It’s not on the hum, it’s underneath. Try again.”
They do, John swaying toward him and springing free with each attempt. At last, when Sherlock is silent, John nods. “You’re making the sound.”
Sherlock stops at once. “You hear it?”
“Not really, but I know I’m feeling it,” John replies.
“What does it feel like?” The only person who’s ever told him what his glamour feels like is Molly. There are obvious biases. Sherlock is not a purring kitten.
John shakes his head. “Just keep going.”
“Fine.” He resents the refusal and takes no pain to hide this. “Can you remember the sensation occurring before?”
“No.”
“Have you even tried?”
“I’m not the one who knows what he’s doing!” A glare rather than an apology follows this outburst. “Look, I told you, just keep going.”
“Can you hear this?” Sherlock asks, cheating and not caring.
John stares at his mouth abruptly. Uncertain, Sherlock lightly bites his lower lip simply to check and, no, his teeth are still retracted.
“Did you hear it?”
“Yes,” John says immediately. This time, he doesn’t lean back. He seems to have forgotten his grip on the poker across his thighs. “Your voice, it was.... I don’t know. More? It wasn’t just your voice.”
“It was my glamour,” Sherlock confirms.
“Can you, I don’t know. Do it again without speaking?”
Sherlock does, not quite silent. It is nothing close to a noise.
Slowly, a motion as slow as the moment before a fall, John reaches. His fingertips hang in the air before Sherlock’s lips. Blue eyes question beneath a furrowed brow. His fingers dip from mouth to neck and slip beneath his scarf, a careful touch seeking vibration. Sherlock keeps breathing, his hands carefully upon his own knees. Glamour is difficult to sustain on an inhale, but he manages it.
Biting his lip, John unwinds Sherlock’s scarf. He sets it aside with the poker and returns his touch to Sherlock’s neck. He seeks. The sustained emanation of glamour begins to strain low in the throat, high in the chest, and this is where John’s hands go, his curious gaze.
“There,” John says, smiling widely. “I found it.”
Sherlock stops.
Palm solid against Sherlock’s chest, the fingers of his other hand warm against Sherlock’s throat, John comes back to himself. He blinks once, then lowers his hands. He folds them in his lap. “I was concentrating,” John apologizes. His gaze rests on Sherlock’s clavicle and his tongue slowly licks his lips.
“No, it’s... fine.” Sherlock swallows, ignoring the fresh chill against his skin. “If you can identify it, then you can remember it.”
John visibly tries. “When, um. When did you begin? That first time.”
“I was about to go on my knees,” Sherlock prompts.
“Well, it’s, ah.” He looks to the side and coughs. “All a bit of a blur, after that.”
This will take much longer than he’d thought it would. Sherlock sighs and takes John’s head in his hands. He nearly has both wrists broken for his trouble.
“Sherlock-!”
“It’s fine,” Sherlock stresses. “This will help. Close your eyes.”
When John only stares at him, his back ramrod straight, Sherlock closes his eyes in demonstration. He can feel the moment John complies, an increase rather than a decrease of tension.
“You’re remembering. Before I knelt, I spoke. You heard me. What did I say?”
The change in John is instantaneous. He presses against Sherlock’s hands, seeking. “You....”
“That’s good, John. Think. You can find it.”
John’s eyes dart beneath closed lids. He mouths words, nearly, torn between his natural resilience and the temptation of complying.
“That’s it. Keep going, it’s all right.”
“You said,” John begins.
Sherlock waits for him, unmoving as John’s hands return to his chest and throat. John’s colour heightens.
“You said, ‘tell me exactly what you want. I’ll do it. Exactly what you want. Tell me what to do. Tell me exactly what you want to feel.’” John turns his head, mouth brushing Sherlock’s wrist before Sherlock can adjust. “And... ‘I want to hear you say it. Be exact.’”
“John, that’s excellent,” he praises. “You’re doing very well. What next?”
John presses closer. “You said you won’t bite.”
Sherlock frowns at the tense shift. “That was the past. What did I say?”
“You said you wouldn’t bite.”
Better. “Did I?”
“You said it.”
“Did I bite you?”
“You said you wouldn’t.” John’s voice lolls with his head, relaxing between Sherlock’s hands. He almost seems asleep, every inch of him warm and trusting.
“What were my actions?”
“Exactly what I wanted,” John praises. “You were perfect.”
“That is what you felt.”
“Mm....”
“While you felt that, what did I do? Where was my mouth?”
“On me. ‘s nice.”
“When I tell you to, I want you to point to where my mouth was. Where it was, not where you felt it. Do you understand?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d like you to point now.”
John does, his hand circling around his crotch and his right thigh. His fingers circle lower, lower, then touch at the top of his thigh.
“Is that where my mouth was?”
“Mmhm.” The little hum accompanies a little giggle.
Of all the things to take away. “Is that what you told me to do?”
John hesitates. He crowds closer. Leaning forward, sliding forward on the trunk, he reaches for Sherlock’s wrists and holds on as if for balance.
“If that was where my mouth was, was I doing exactly as you told me?”
“...No,” John says slowly. “You weren’t. You- fuck!” He jerks against Sherlock’s hands, body tensing in an instant. Despite his panic, John fails to open his eyes. “Stop it! You’re biting me, stop it!”
“Am I biting you now?” Sherlock interrupts, his grip on John fluid, firm. “If I am talking, can I be biting you?”
“N-no. You’re- you’re not.” John slumps, sighs. “Fuck, you’re not. That’s better.”
“What happened then? Between us two months ago.”
“We had each other,” John answers. He hums and then he grins a bit. “Thought you were a lovely prat.”
“That’s not what I-” Stop, start over. Ignore those words, ignore the smile, drunk and giddy. Ignore the thumbs on his wrists and their light circles. Everything that is John: ignore. “What happened after I bit you?”
The smile fades away, John’s mouth falling open. His smooth breaths slow, then catch.
“John, what happened?”
“This is very strange,” John murmurs. His chest rises and falls. Beneath their lids, his eyes flick side to side, seeking, searching. His breathing grows shallow. “Can’t move. I should, I should stop you, but it.... Can’t feel it. I’m just standing here. I can see you,” he adds, the last words oddly high. “Which way are you? There was one before but now there are two.”
“Which version bit you?” Sherlock prompts.
“That one,” John says. He doesn’t gesture or indicate, simply speaks. “I like the other one better. Can I have the other one back?” Here John reaches, hand on his coat.
Ignore. “You imagined the other one.”
John shakes his head between Sherlock’s hands. Tawny hair ruffles between pale fingers.
“Did I bite you, John?”
“Yes.”
“Did I do exactly what you wanted?”
“You said you would.”
“But did I?”
John attempts to pull away and worm closer at once. “I don’t like this. Sherlock, I don’t like this.”
“Answer the questions and it will stop.”
“Will it?”
“Yes. Did I do exactly what you wanted?”
“...No.”
“Was there ‘the other one’? Was there ever a human man here named Sherlock Holmes?”
John hesitates, barely breathing.
Sherlock waits, perched at the very edge of his chair.
“There is in my head,” John whispers. “I can see him, I can feel-”
“No you can’t.”
“Yes I bloody well can!” John bellows at him, eyes open and flashing. He drags Sherlock closer, onto him, leverage be damned. The coat becomes more handle than garment where enraged human strength seizes. Sherlock’s hands catch against the windowsill. John presses his head to Sherlock’s chest, presses his ear against the thrum of glamour, presses and presses until the force of him has rid Sherlock of air. “You don’t get to take that away, give him back.”
Seized by harsh arms, forced off-balance, Sherlock stops. He stops his thrum, he stops his instinctual response to struggle. He stops.
Soon after, panting heavily, John stops too.
“John?”
John lets him go.
Sherlock eases himself back. He sits. He watches, uncomprehending, as John wipes at his face. John dries his damp fingers on his trousers, looking away. His cheek shines in the firelight.
“John, I-”
“That’s enough,” John cuts him off. His voice is thick but not thick enough to keep from breaking. “I can remember enough, you can stop now.” Still short of breath, he sags back against cold wall and dark window. He’s very small. Not naturally, not from his own doing. Exhausted. Diminished.
“You should be able to pick apart the rest on your own now,” Sherlock promises him. He doesn’t know what else to say.
John lifts his hand, one finger raised. Be quiet, his tired eyes command.
Softly, Sherlock nods. He hesitates, then reaches for the poker and stands with it. He stirs the fire. Adds fuel. He takes the kettle to the water barrel and fills it carefully with the ladle. Sherlock returns the lid to the barrel, the ladle to its peg, and the kettle to the iron hook above the hearth. With the poker, he nudges it over the flame. This last is a clumsy effort.
He returns to his chair, John’s chair, and sits.
Face turned to the side, John watches the fire.
They sit apart in the flickering light, captor and captive, waiting for the kettle to scream.
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