Fic: Stranger at the Gate - 9/11 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: Stranger at the Gate
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 6.8k this part, 81k overall
Beta: seijichan and arcsupport
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: As far as initiation rites go, kidnapping a human doctor from a defended town ought to seem extreme. When James Moriarty offers him the challenge, Sherlock never considers saying no. (Fantasy vampire AU)
Warnings: Vampires, blood, explicit sex, glamour (as in mind control/hypnotism), dubcon.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven
He’s never been to Waterloo before. It’s a fair-sized port town. He imagines John might call it a city. It calls itself a city, which is more than Sherlock will ever say for it.
He walks through its streets, avoids its alleys, and sleeps only lightly in its inns. Over the past months, he’d avoided robbery with such skill and dexterity that the attempts had begun to make him laugh. That confidence falls away in Waterloo. The scents of humanity overwhelm, sweat and perfume mingling over rot and faeces. The worn faces of statues stare down on whores and merchants alike from high stone walls, streaked with the shit of countless pigeons. As waterproof as his siren-given coat is, the spray of the river city’s docks freezes his hands and face. His aching face gives him an unwelcome splash of the local colour, but even so, he could never be thought to belong. Though he practices, he can’t quite achieve the correct accent.
His nose useless, mind cluttered, he’s dependent upon sight and sound alone for defence. It terrifies. He nearly has his throat cut, once, twice, and the deed would have been quickly done had he merely a voice behind his words. Each time, he parts from his new friends before they realize they share no friendship at all. One, almost apologetic behind vicious blue eyes, reminds him fiercely of John.
In truth, everything reminds him of John and will continue to remind him of John. Though Sherlock’s mind cannot submit to glamour, only his body, he almost wishes it were otherwise. He can’t focus here. His skin feels tight to the point of splitting open. He craves to the point of shaking. Desperate, he smiles at a man in a bar, enjoying rough human skin as fingertips graze his upturned palm. When rough fingers lead to rough hands, a few whispers in his admirer’s ear have the man spilling in his trousers and retreating from the bar in humiliation. When he tries elsewhere, he discovers that the whores, men and women alike, mask their scents with musk and perfume. Though he spies a glimmer of intellect, he can smell nothing he wants and no one he would risk drinking. He doesn’t try again.
It takes days of prowling, searching, approaching strangers in pubs and sailors on docks, verbal haranguing to find a ship set for King’s Crossing. A week on board from Waterloo, hiding his nature as they hug the northern coast, and then he can make his way from King’s to Belgravia on a ship that will at least tolerate his kind. The main challenge is to find a boat transporting livestock. Then the main challenge is timing, then payment. His coin in this land is running low, but he has a few precautionary trinkets hidden in his satchel. It’s hardly something he can reveal here, not without having his throat cut regardless of glamour, but it is something.
In a week and a half, it’s decided. They sail for King’s Crossing in eleven days. No coin is exchanged for now, but half will be expected upon boarding, half upon landing. And it had best be fully present upon landing. Sherlock confirms his understanding and turns back toward Bart’s.
His feet are strange creatures to him after these months of walking, unreasonably sturdy, yet not sturdy enough. They bear him on all the same.
In the end, he dawdles. He frets and he hesitates and he hates it. His life is bent toward John, warped around the man, and this is worth resenting. He has learned pleasure only to know agony. It’s not what adulthood was meant to be.
At last, he leaves Euston. He walks slowly, turning down a freely offered ride. When the cart is out of view and the road empty behind him, he ducks into the woods to feed. He stays there longer than necessary, a young buck sluggishly butting at his hip. He pets the once-wary creature that now believes it adores him, strokes its neck and scratches its ears. The deer believes itself happy. When Sherlock leaves it, it begins to follow. When Sherlock takes a step toward it, it startles and vanishes into the brush.
He laughs without meaning to, then continues to walk.
The final approach to Bart’s is a wary business. All it would take is one quick crossbow quarrel to solve John’s problems, and Sherlock can’t permit himself not to consider this possibility. John will have thought of it. If John has confided in his sister, Harry might perform the task on his behalf.
“It’s me,” he says quickly, lifting his voice and knocking. He hears stillness from within and knows John is the gatekeeper inside, not Bill.
John opens the door, eyes alert on Sherlock’s face. He has the look of a guard dog on the edge of giving in to glamour, a hair’s breadth away from a snap and a howl, a moment’s wait to perked ears and wagging tail.
“Better yet?” Sherlock asks.
John opens his mouth and closes it. What he says is, “Will you come inside?”
Not better, then. “Will you let me out this time?”
“Yes,” John says.
Sherlock follows him inside and permits the door to be secured behind him.
John’s sword is in the usual spot, leaning sheathed against the wall. John’s knife is in the usual spot, hanging at his hip. Even John is in the usual spot, moving to sit at the table.
Sherlock follows here as well.
“Have you got a ship?” John asks.
He nods.
“When’s it leaving?”
“I have enough time,” he replies, folding his hands and leaning on the table. “How long do you believe this will take?”
“I don’t know,” John lies, eyes slipping to the side.
“No, you have some idea. You simply dislike it.”
John doesn’t reply. He turns his face to the side. His eyes flick back to Sherlock. Sherlock is right.
“John, I have just walked two and a half days over some of the worst roads I’ve ever seen and will shortly have to do it again. Don’t tell me you’ve wasted my time.”
Now he has John’s attention.
“I can’t make you do anything,” John reminds him. His voice is cold and mild, a mist that freezes from within the lungs. “You’re here because you chose to be - stop complaining.”
“Then you start,” Sherlock demands. “You asked for privacy, something is obviously wrong.”
Once again, John’s mouth stoppers up.
Fine. Sherlock can play this game. “Are you still remembering both versions of events?”
Eyes on the table, John nods.
“Is it-” not distressing, John would never admit to that “-distracting? In your daily life.”
Hesitation, then the nod.
“I can take that away,” Sherlock promises. “If you can be sure we won’t be interrupted-”
“No.”
“The noon rush, I understand-”
“No,” John repeats. He lifts his gaze to Sherlock’s face. “You don’t have to- We don’t have to go through that again.”
“You can have it out, or you can have it fester,” Sherlock responds. “That is the complete list of your options. Pick one.”
“Fester.” Eyes clear, no hesitation. John is resolute.
Sherlock is flummoxed.
After a blinking moment of unresponsiveness, he asks, “Why?”
John merely looks at him. There’s something important in that gaze. If Sherlock stares back long enough, hard enough, he’ll know what it is.
Before he succeeds - and he would have succeeded, he would have - John sighs and looks away.
“You’re very tired,” Sherlock begins, because he can at least see that. “Not from nightmares, but an inability to fall asleep. You’re on edge in a way that makes you feel defenceless, which is likely the cause of your sudden insomnia. The way you keep glancing to the door, I’d almost think you were waiting for someone, but that’s not an expression of expectation. No, recollection.”
“Can you not do that please?”
“Something involving the door that makes you feel helpless. Presumably involving me. Just last week, then? Our... fight.”
“I don’t want my memories taken,” John tells him in a rush. He slows as he adds, “They’re mine. I’ll keep them.”
“You don’t have to.”
John shakes his head. “Do you still have that drawing?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” John says. “Then I don’t need to explain.”
Sentiment swallows him, then falls away with his first clear thought: “You want to remember me as human.”
“And you want to remember me as what?” John asks. “Some bloke whose life you didn’t put at risk?”
“I remember everything that’s happened to me since I was a toddler on a staircase.” Unless deliberately forgotten. Unless forced to be forgotten. “While my decision process was very vague at the time, I do possess excellent hindsight.”
“So you regret it,” John says. “Is that the closest you’ll get to an apology?”
“John, that wasn’t even near an apology.”
“I’d noticed.”
“Excellent hindsight,” Sherlock stresses. “Regret would imply a different set of consequences were possible. As I’ve proven chronically incapable of making rational decisions involving you, that seems highly unlikely.”
“That’s no excuse, Sherlock. I’m not that good of a shag.”
“Of course not, you’re a terrible shag.”
The reflexive insult fires and John kicks him beneath the table just as quickly. Sherlock attempts a counterattack but is almost immediately outmatched. His ankle caught between John’s legs, those sturdy shins like a vice, he tugs to no avail. Ultimately, he unleashes his best glare.
John laughs.
Sherlock glares all the harder, John laughs on, and giggles take them both.
“Stop it,” John gasps. “I’m still- I’m still furious. Oh, god, my stomach.”
But Sherlock’s laughing, still tugging for his foot back, they’re both still laughing, and the pain of it is good. Strain of the body rather than the mind.
When the laughter runs out, John is tired and flushed, eyelids heavy and face relaxed. His legs keep Sherlock’s foot trapped beneath his chair.
After so long without, even the slightest contact is enough to silence Sherlock’s thoughts. Impossible and true, this new reality ought to frighten, should frighten, yet all he can feel is a vague, humming satisfaction and a fierce, gnawing hunger. He wants and needs and cannot do.
“Liar,” John murmurs. He hasn’t the breath for more. This is why his voice is so soft. There isn’t breath for more.
“Oh, what now?”
“That’s not how you look at a terrible shag.”
“Of course it is,” Sherlock counters, mouth dry. “It’s how I look at you and you’re the worst I’ve ever had.”
“Two months of lying, how did you manage? You’re rubbish at it.” John looks, John looks almost fond, which is wrong. Which is Sherlock seeing things incorrectly. He’s missing something, must be missing something, but he looks and looks and keeps on looking. John is pained and John is irked and John is saddened, but John is also very fond. Which is wrong, this is wrong, how is this happening?
He feels dizzy.
“John,” he warns.
“Sherlock,” John counters. Beneath the table, his legs are very warm.
Scent directs memory. The familiar odours of the gatehouse attempt to redirect his mind, an effect only worsened by the touch. Confrontation and amusement shouldn’t be paired on John’s face. Together, they turn his name into a flirt, and Sherlock is surprised by how thoroughly it devastates.
He extracts his foot. “If you’re fine, there’s no reason for me to stay-”
“I’ve a question. About Angelo. An idea, actually.”
Sherlock stops. “Yes?”
“Do you know what he sees when he looks at you?” John asks. “I mean, does he actually see a child?”
“He thinks he sees a child.”
“Have you ever asked him to draw you?”
“Once,” Sherlock replies. “He began noticing discrepancies and took to it poorly.”
“Bit not good, then?”
“Bit not good.”
“What if he doesn’t, I don’t know.” There it is, the unconscious display of tongue. Sherlock has missed it. “If he doesn’t recognize you from behind, does he see a man?”
“Yes,” he confirms. “It panics him.”
“Because you’re older?”
“Because I’ve vanished.”
John’s mouth opens, a circle of surprise. “That’s... complicated. Have you ever spoken to him as someone else? Disguised yourself?”
“Yes.” Undisguised and unintentionally, the first time. “It solves nothing.”
“But he’d believe you have glamour then,” John points out.
“And thoroughly resist whatever this strange man was trying to do to him,” Sherlock adds. “It doesn’t work.” Not with Sherlock’s current skill set.
“Oh,” John says.
“Is that all?”
“Ye- No.” John shakes his head. “No. I mean.”
“What?”
“It’s, well. It’s something I want cleared up.”
“John, you want everything explained to you.”
“And?” John prompts. “You’ve never complained before.”
True, but irrelevant. The last thing he needs is for John to be attentive and thoughtful. “Last question, then I leave.”
“Oh,” John says, and says nothing more.
“What?” he demands. “Out with it.”
John will not have out with it. He turns his face away as if slapped, his eyes closed and jaw set. Beneath the table, his legs pull away, are tucked beneath his chair.
“John?”
John shakes his head. Still without looking at Sherlock, he says, “Never mind. Forget it, it’s not important.”
His chair scraping against the floor, Sherlock stands. “Then why bring it up in the first place? Are you trying to waste my time?”
“Yes.”
John’s shoulders are hunched, hands folded and clenched about each other. For all he appears small, he is visibly defiant. He visibly teeters on the edge of speech.
“And why,” Sherlock slowly questions, “would you try to do that?” If John wanted to lay an ambush, there were simpler, quicker ways. He could have watched for Sherlock’s approach from the ladder behind the gate, crossbow in hand.
“Because once I stop, you’ll leave.”
John spits the words and immediately winces at their sound.
“I should be telling you to go,” the soldier continues. “God, I should be shouting it. I should be shoving you out the fucking door, but I can’t and I hate it.” He squeezes shut his eyes, a man holding tight to his own desperation, warring to keep it contained. “I need to stop talking, I can’t stop talking.”
“It’s- It’s fine,” Sherlock replies. Syllables turn unsteady. “I can see myself out.”
“Don’t,” John orders. The word breaks under its wielder’s strain. “I shouldn’t ask you to- I don’t- Sherlock, please.” He reaches. His upturned palm supplicates.
Sherlock navigates the table, taking that hand. Again the scrape of chair on floorboards and John, still seated, perched, pulling Sherlock into his arms, hiding his face in the folds of Sherlock’s coat. Standing between his legs, Sherlock clutches him closer still. As if physical contact were a convincing argument, Sherlock secures him with grasping hands and a reciprocal lean.
Barely a mumble: “I need to stop talking.”
“You don’t.”
“I really do.”
Neither moves.
They hold until it hurts. Longer.
“Are you forgiving me?” Sherlock asks.
John laughs something low and broken. “God, no. Not hating you doesn’t mean I haven’t tried.”
With no attempt at subtlety, Sherlock slips his fingers into John’s hair.
“You’re an arse,” John tells him. “I need to invent new insults for you.”
“Difficult. I’ve already heard most of them.”
Another laugh, very small and yet infinitely improved. John shifts his face. His arms encircle Sherlock’s waist like a tangle of climbing vines too precious to tear. “I’d like to hate you,” John remarks, conversational though muffled. “That would be so simple.”
“Simple is boring.” Complicated is standing between the legs of a man honour-bound to kill him, simply standing there and stroking blond strands. Complicated is a thirst for skin as well as blood, is an unending fog of need. “I like a challenge.”
“Is that why? Go for the gatekeeper, that seems difficult?”
It was raining. Even so, he could have waited. Was it more than the rain? He looks at the top of John’s head, pressed hard against him. “I wanted to be near you.”
“That’s a shit reason.”
He knows.
John pulls back. He pulls back and rubs at his eyes. Sherlock’s hand trails out of his hair, hovers between them.
“John?”
“I’m not crying, I’m just tired.” As he says this, he bristles, then sags a bit. “Keep dreaming about....” He shakes his head, but it doesn’t matter. This close, Sherlock can smell him. He recognizes the scent immediately. For anyone else, it would be nothing close to fear. For John, it is fear’s sweeter cousin. Heavy rather than sharp, a musk rather than a stink.
“About me,” Sherlock finishes, voice low. The scent spikes.
“You’re vain.”
“I’m right.”
“Never said you couldn’t be both,” John replies.
Sherlock touches his face, fingertips across stubble.
John closes his eyes. “I should tell you to go,” he reminds them both.
“Should you.”
John nods, his warm cheek scratching Sherlock’s skin. “It’s not safe here.”
Sherlock bends down, contorting himself, and takes a kiss.
John freezes. Exhales.
Breath between lips. Their noses brush.
Sherlock eases back.
John presses close.
The scent of him.
Delicate touches. The slow winding of arms about necks. John’s tongue, ever tempting. Light grows hard, shallow turns deep, and Sherlock jerks away, covering his mouth with his hand. He leans heavily against the table.
Without blanching, without flinching, John watches. “You can’t help it, can you?” he asks. So calm, his soldier.
Retracting his teeth requires a moment of struggle, but he manages it all the same. “I can help it just fine, thank you. Thirty-six days in is simply not a good time.” Over a month without release: he’s been told that’s a long time. It certainly feels it.
John blinks up at him, eyes dark. “I mean,” John says, “you need it.”
“Want isn’t need,” he corrects. “I don’t-”
“You can do it.”
“-have to- What did you say?”
A swallow: nervous motion turned unknowingly seductive. John holds his gaze all the same. “I said, you can do it.”
Why, he nearly asks. What could change any mind so quickly? How far beyond mere tolerance will this be taken?
What he asks instead is, “Yes, but do you want it?”
John flushes.
Sherlock stares.
“I’ve thought about it,” John admits. “The biting.”
“Have you.”
“Yes.”
First is numb disbelief.
Second is everything else.
They’re kissing in an instant. No, Sherlock is kissing in an instant and John in a moment. Surprise, not hesitation, therefore irrelevant. Pulling at him, John stands, a surge of motion into his arms, against his chest. Sherlock longs to kneel, to fall to his knees and take, but John forces his head back, a hard, steady tug at his hair. It’s John who bites, the first graze of teeth better than any kiss.
Sherlock twists in his grip, a feigned struggle. John shoves him against the table, onto the table, shoves hips between thighs. John presses. Tongue against pulse. Cock to the joining of thighs.
Sherlock swears, words borrowed from a soldier. His legs lock around John, seize him. His body knows what to do, how to hold, how to beg and demand without a single, breathless word. He’s gasping, flushed, tortured. John is hot and hard, and Sherlock needs to drink him down.
Each time he tries, John yanks back his head and mouths at his throat.
“Tactician,” Sherlock curses. He tries.
John’s pleased hum rumbles against his jugular.
Sherlock needs a rebuttal. Can’t find one. Can barely breathe.
When John stops, he stops entirely. He freezes, body tense and alert. His hand keeps Sherlock in check.
A moment later, there’s a knock at the door.
Sherlock is undeterred.
“No,” John whispers, sounding for all the world as if he’s chastising a young dog. “I have to take this.”
“Thirty-six days, John.”
“I know,” he replies. A press of lips to jaw. “You’ll want to wait for me in the loft, then.”
Sherlock closes his eyes very tightly, which does nothing to help with his sudden dizziness.
John presses at his knee, bidding legs to release as the knocking resumes.
“Oi!” John yells. “Can’t a bloke take a piss? Hold on!” He looks pointedly at Sherlock, then shoves him a bit, then glares at the bulge in his own trousers.
Somehow, they manage it. Relocated off to a corner, out of sight of the small window, Sherlock dumbly watches as John reverts into a polite and efficient guard. Whoever it is outside is well-known, which makes it quick. When John heads to the door to the bridge, he locks eyes with Sherlock and nods at the ladder.
John exits, and Sherlock is left inside alone.
He climbs the ladder. He sits beside the mattress. It smells more like Bill than John.
He removes his boots.
He fumbles around the edges of his mind, searching for coherent thought.
Time fails to pass.
Then the door, and John.
John alone. There’s a fear assuaged.
John hurried. There’s another.
Footfalls on the floor below, rapid to the ladder, then stopped, then reversed. Gone to the window. The chest, opened, closed. An item retrieved but not searched for. Footsteps to the ladder, faster than before.
Feet on the ladder and the click of a jar set on wood, John setting it onto the boards before hauling himself up. His crawl toward Sherlock is nothing close to clumsy. John knows how to be on his hands and knees. “We’ll have to time this,” he warns.
“Yes, yes, I know, I’m not stupid.” He reaches and John thwarts him, a steady push of a palm on his chest. In the slowest collapse he’s ever known, he falls onto his back.
John rises above him and presses him onto the mattress. His hands are familiar guests, and welcome. “That’s not the last interruption. And it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? You’ll be tight.”
“I am.” The pressure beneath his skin, the need forcing him taut, that’s normal? “I’m tight, John, I’m positively aching.”
The burst of John’s arousal spills through the air, a scent thick enough to coat the tongue. “You need me inside you that much.” John’s eyes are dark, shadowed in the depth of his voice.
“Yes.” Confirmation, not begging. Let him drink. Stop fussing with Sherlock’s buttons and belt and see to his own. Even through cloth, his touches torture. Sherlock catches at his wrists. “I’ll do it myself. I’m faster. Take off your trousers.”
John smirks in the dim light of the loft but does as told. He sits on the mattress in his smallclothes and shirt, but Sherlock’s eyes are on his leg, on the faint marks on his right thigh.
“God, those teeth.” John stares without recoiling. He must be staring. Sherlock doesn’t look to see, too focused on his return to John’s femoral.
He leans in and John lets him. He mouths at warm flesh and John lets him. He hums a low glamour and John tugs at his hair.
“No,” John tells him. “Let me feel it.”
“It will hurt,” Sherlock articulates. He’s done this once before, only the once, twelve and without glamour: two children believing themselves older, Molly believing herself invulnerable and Sherlock believing himself ready. Her response to the pain had been so immediate. This time, he knows the mistake for what it is. Even so, teeth descended, body curled over John’s legs, he can’t stop for more than that moment.
John seizes his hand and forces it over tented smallclothes. “Bite,” John orders.
His teeth pierce tense flesh. The push and the give, fine hairs and elasticity. Blood welling up, leaking around the stoppers of his teeth. John’s cock jerks in his hand, within their hands, as Sherlock begins to suck and lick. Through the bliss of scent and taste, Sherlock braces for the panic, for the pain of a blow to his head and his teeth ripped from flesh.
“Oh fuck,” John says as if from a distance. “Oh fuck,” he says again, coming closer.
Sherlock retracts, so gently, and thick liquid begins its spill into his mouth. He swallows and swallows, the sound of it obscene. Blood begins to escape his mouth, pulsing out from John’s skin, across John’s skin, and he traps it with his cupped hand.
“Your fault,” John gasps. “Kept wanking off to this, god, your fault. Don’t know if I’m bleeding or fucking anymore. Both in my head, fuck, look at you.” John’s hand is warm and heavy, riding the back of his head. “Still sounds like you’re sucking my cock.”
Sherlock can feel it, inside. So quickly now, from his mouth to his cock, his body nearly trained. He grows heavy, then hard, so very painfully hard. He groans into John’s skin, licking the puncture clean, licking it closed. He needs nothing more, nothing more than this and his own hand.
He touches himself. Fruitless nights and wasted effort: gone. Erased. Nothing but this. Sobbing, shattering relief.
He shakes and twitches in the aftermath. Blood, arousal, spilt seed, John. All heady scents. His mouth is against bloodied skin. He licks. Slow. Languid. John’s hand eases through his hair.
“Don’t stop.” Sherlock doesn’t mean to murmur. He doesn’t mean anything at all. He has no priorities, none. His body sprawled over John’s legs. His seed on the floorboards. Warm blood indulgent in his cock. There can be nothing more than this.
“Clean it up,” John instructs. His fingers stroke. “If I’m going to bleed, make it count.”
He hums his compliance, tonguing his way over John’s thigh. His hand leaves his cock, half-hard, half-spent, and returns to John’s flagging erection. His other hand, he licks clean.
“Are you done?”
“Mmhm.”
John rolls him off, puts him in a loose-limbed sprawl on his back. Sherlock hears himself giggle. He gazes up at John, serious John with his shirt and his pitying eyes. John touches his face, so careful to touch his blood-smeared cheek.
“You’re usually cleaner,” John says, his voice matching his furrowed brow.
“Usually have to be.” He feels himself smile, lips curling over hidden teeth. “That was lovely.”
John stares down at him. His touch does not waver. He looks very sad.
Naked and yet so very warm, Sherlock closes his eyes and basks in the thrumming of his senses. Thoughts resurface, seek to categorize. This too is fine.
“It’s really the same to you, isn’t it?” John asks. His fingers follow bone structure, cheekbone, nose, and jaw.
“Hm?”
“Eating and release.”
“Mm.” His body presses up, seeking John’s wandering palm. “Drinking. I don’t chew.”
“Yeah, well.” John’s fingers circle across his skin, drawing closer to what must be pleasure. His body has no other reason to squirm into the touch. “It’s not what I thought. Glad to be wrong. Don’t much fancy myself as prey.”
Sherlock laughs. He smiles up at John and at last remembers that he too has hands for reaching, for touching and holding. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
John licks his own thumb, then smudges the blood away from Sherlock’s mouth. “That’s really disturbing.” This is presumably the reason why no kisses follow. “Not actually the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s up there.”
“Then why are you still half hard?”
“Because,” John replies, “I am not a very sane man and you’ve made me worse.”
“Have I?”
“Yes. Now you stay here while I check if anyone’s on their way.” John touches his bitten thigh where saliva has clotted the bleeding, giving it an odd look as he goes for his trousers. “Don’t want to be interrupted for the next bit.”
Whatever the “next bit” is, Sherlock waits for it beneath familiar blankets. John’s right about the timing. Gate duty takes him far too long. Sherlock nearly dozes before John is finished.
“Think that’s it.” John climbs back into the loft, onto the mattress, snagging that jar on his way. “Should be a few more later in the afternoon, but that’s plenty of time. Roll over, love, on your front.”
If only to hide his smile, Sherlock complies. The coarse fabric feels decadent against his skin. Everything feels decadent.
John peels away the blankets, mouthing at the back of his neck. His hands stray down Sherlock’s spine, stray lower still, and Sherlock groans. John’s hands on his arse. How did he forget how much he adores this? That bit they did before, John’s cock between his thighs, hot and sliding, colliding with his sac; can they do that again?
The scent of arousal begins to fill up his head once more. John. John squeezing, teasing. John John John. “Whatever you’re thinking, yes,” Sherlock attempts to say. His voice is a low, half-broken croak.
John’s circling thumb presses against his hole.
Sherlock stops breathing.
Oh.
He nods into the pillow, nods and nods and nods, frantic for what he hadn’t known he wanted. John inside him in every way.
The loss of warm hands. He cries out. John curses, praises. A cold, slick touch, so startling. He cries out a second time, protest into desperation. He’s heard of this, of course he’s heard of this. Without John’s touch, the concept always seemed ridiculous and undignified. With John, there is nothing he does not want. John won’t let it hurt.
“God, you’re tight.” Fingertip between his clenching cheeks, solid body draped awkwardly across his longer form. The cool touch warms. “Are you going to cooperate or not?”
“Tell me,” Sherlock urges.
John chuckles against his shoulder. “Oh, so you do like to be told. It wasn’t just for the glamour, then? You need my voice before I fuck you.” With that, he begins to speak. Commanding and filthy, more demand and sweet threat than instruction. “With me. With me now.”
The first breach.
No breath. None.
Burns.
Stasis breaks. Pushes.
Warmth and pressure. In his arse, not his crotch. No, crotch as well. Both. Can barely think of his prick, heavy against the mattress. John inside him. Burning. Flesh within his body. Feels wrong. In a good way, he assures himself. He’ll like this. In a moment, he’ll like this.
“Up,” John orders. John shifts behind him, focuses there. “On your knees. Let’s have you do the work.”
He rises. Struggles. He can’t. John’s finger, hand, held there. He pushes back, hands and knees, the stretch terrible, exquisite. Skewered.
“First knuckle,” John reports. “You can do better than that.”
He tries. He does his best, his very best, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He keens when John begins to twist, begins to work the digit. He feels the hot drag where nothing moves, where nothing is meant to move, John has filled him, John is filling him. Sherlock twitches and twitches around him. Endless.
More from the jar, cool against the burn, coolness pressed slick inside. The wet sounds of his own arse and John’s low, predatory words. John’s cock, rocking against his hip.
“Open for me, Sherlock. Open before I fuck you open.”
John’s cock against his hip yet it happens all the same, fucked open, forced open, too much, please more, it hurts not enough. Pressure through his arse, thicker than before, what is, is that, yes, John, two fingers.
“Breathe. I have you.”
Sherlock breathes. John has him.
There’s a difference here, a depth where Sherlock’s body understands John as John, knows to clutch and clench and draw him deeper still. John peppers the small of his back with pretty curses. His soldier moves, reaches for something. Sherlock’s belt lands near his hanging head.
“Bite that if you’re going to scream.”
With that, John moves his fingers. Opposite directions.
Sherlock bites.
Screaming is not the word.
Moaning is not the word. Nor shouting. Nor begging.
There is no word.
John doesn’t stop.
John.
Don’t stop.
Cock against his flank. Rubbing, leaking. He can smell it. So hot. Then removed, then gone, then cold, then John’s mouth on him, John’s teeth, John biting so sharp shining.
Nothing else. Not ever.
His arms give out. Face against the mattress, hot air between mouth and tooth-marked leather. Everything trembles.
John’s fingers twist, movement, intrusion. They drag against his pull. They leave. Empty - normalcy turned foreign, turned strange and unwanted.
Sherlock sobs before he gasps.
Thick, thick at his hole.
He sobs again, nodding at John’s voice.
Slow, slow. Burning tight. Hand on his hip. Fingertips into flesh.
There’s no more. There’s no space left inside. Not an inch, not a breath. Slick heat stretches. Pulse pounding inside him, human heartbeat. Hot breath on his back, on cooling sweat. Slow.
Movement.
Oh.
Head on folded arms. Fingers fisted into mattress.
John across him, against him, over him, inside. Mouth at the trembling curve of his spine. Hips a slow press into his arse. More space left. How? Too much of them both, not enough, John, more. Cold air fails against his skin. John blazes through them both. Sherlock’s cock jumps against his stomach.
His hand on John’s, his hand pleading John’s, begging a touch to his ache.
“God, that’s lovely,” John praises. “Are you going to fuck my hand? You are. You’re going to fuck my hand while I fuck your arse. How does that sound?”
He bites the belt and whimpers.
“Gorgeous.” John’s teeth scrape his skin. “When I pull your hair, come for me.”
His hole clenches. Seizes.
His soldier swears. His hand slaps down, open and percussive. Tight flesh burns bright. John squeezes pain into agony and it splinters into sharp, biting shards.
He’s sucking air through his nose, body shaking. He clenches and clenches, straining, squirming backward, a clumsy impaling, and John hits him again, harder. He spits out his belt before he bites through it.
“Don’t come yet,” John orders. “Not. Yet.”
“Then fuck me,” he gasps.
John does.
Hard, painful slaps, harder than his hand, better. Again. Again. Harsh hand turned gentle, loose around his cock. Not enough, not enough, not even the dragging burn, not the extraordinary press of too much. The gasping void between each thrust. Knees between his feet. He crumples in half. A stranger’s voice sobs for John.
Fingers fist, in hair, around cock. Hands pull. John grows bigger, how is he, no, Sherlock clenches, he’s clenching, he shatters and shakes, gasping into damp cloth. John’s hips stutter stutter press. John’s cock jerks inside him, pulses wet warm. John’s hand moves, stroking sensitive until the end.
After, when there is an after, they huddle beneath blankets. John curls behind him, flaccid against the small of his back. Fingers rough in texture but smooth in touch, they trace him, set him twitching with hitching sighs. He hurts. Nearly all of him. He aches so empty.
“Run away with me,” he whispers.
John kisses the back of his neck. “No.”
“Please.” He rolls over, his body protesting every inch. Their foreheads together, their breath mingling, their legs instantly entwined. His fingertips trace the scrape of John’s cheek. Their heat and combined scent fills the loft. This is how they fit. Surely John must see that. “You could come, I have the means.”
John gazes back, quiet and steady. “No.”
“If I were human,” he begins.
John kisses shut his mouth. He kisses it shut as if to seal it. “If you were,” John replies, “you would be a very different man.”
Sherlock closes his eyes.
“You could make me.” John’s hand curls around his nape. “Or you could make me keep you here. Bugger you every day until you couldn’t walk away. But that would take a different man, too, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees, and hopes he’s not lying. He can’t stand the thought of letting go, can only hope not to think.
“Yes,” John echoes. “I’d like to keep you, though. I doubt I’d take much convincing. Barely any.”
Sherlock kisses him quiet. “Stop tempting me.”
“I wouldn’t, though,” John insists and proves it, bundling Sherlock in the circle of his arms. “Stay until morning? I know it’s barely afternoon, but- Stay until morning?”
He nods, sheltered in human warmth. The peace of it nearly lasts. Given slow moments to think, to want for something more than John’s steady breath upon his temple, Sherlock sulks against John’s chest. His petulance isn’t enough to stand against reality, but he can try. Until John stops petting the ache of his back, he can try.
“Are you certain you won’t come with me?”
“Sherlock, the only way I could go is west. You’d be killed.” John forestalls argument with a firm massage to the scalp. Only once Sherlock is thoroughly beyond speech does John pull away with a sigh. “I need to put my clothes back on. You know now’s a bad time of day.”
“I hate your job.”
John twitches his mouth away from amusement, already pulling on his shirt. “That’s fair, considering. Go on, button me up.”
Sherlock does. This is a slow, tactile goodbye. They have far too many of these.
“You too,” John urges. “Can’t have you shitting my seed into the pot stark naked.” He pauses, obviously considering it. “Unless you’d rather do that. You could, I wouldn’t stop you.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes.
“You might want to dress, though.” He kisses the corner of Sherlock’s mouth and disappears down the ladder.
Given time for light dozing and a great deal of pained hissing, Sherlock follows. On the ground, the pain is far less endearing. As are his expulsions into the chamber pot. The numbing cold of water from the barrel helps only somewhat.
John watches him with a troubled, guilty expression. He helps with the water and damp cloth. He touches Sherlock as if he’s become fragile in the short time since their lovemaking. It only worsens as Sherlock’s muscles stiffen, as he tries to sit and gasps into pain.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” John says. By now, he’s given up his attempts to air out the room. Their combined scent remains heavy around them.
“Don’t,” Sherlock snaps. “You don’t get to take that back.”
John shakes his head. “I just meant, you’ll have a hard time walking to Euston.”
Sherlock is far from mollified but is interrupted by the sound of horses from outside. Two, by the sound of it. Rare for the area. “Go mind your precious gate.”
John slides their palms together, links their fingers. “And if it’s another draughtsman?” Soothing circles from a thumb, urging him calm. Sherlock refuses. John simply slips in closer, brushing their noses together. Sherlock can taste his grin as he says, “I mean it. It could happen out here. I’m the first line of defence, not the last. What if a different man puts me under glamour?” The playful edge to John’s tone soon wears thin. It fails to flirt, not like him at all.
Outside, a door opens, closes. A carriage?
“John, I told you a week ago. Why-”
“Tell me again,” John interrupts. His grip on Sherlock’s fingers turns tight, close to grinding his bones. His gaze is even harder. “You said if another draughtsman took me, you’d stab him. You said that.”
Footsteps outside. Someone whistling a cheerful tune.
“Swear this time,” John adds. “Right now, swear it.”
The whistling trills to a finish directly outside the door.
“Sherlock, please.”
A complicated knock on the wood, a rapid rhythm.
John drops his hand. “Oh,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “I should get that.”
“John, I swear,” Sherlock tells him. Too late, too late.
“You swear what?” John asks, already pulling away. “Look, you don’t have to hide, but I have to get that.”
“Don’t.” He follows with limping steps. “Don’t open the door. You need to go across the bridge - you need to stay there. John, stop.”
John doesn’t stop.
“John, come here, I need you,” Sherlock urges. He catches John’s arm and tugs.
John turns and shoves him, hard, his palm striking just below the sternum. Sherlock doubles over, winded, his lungs as empty as John’s eyes.
He hears the rasp of naked steel. Crouched at the side of the table, straining for air, he looks up at the casual weight of a sword in John’s hand, the glint of it as John unbolts the door.
“He’s still here, sir,” John reports to the figure outside, drawing open the barrier one-handed. He steps back, stands aside, and points to Sherlock with the tip of his blade. “Didn’t take much to stall him. What now?”
Jim Moriarty steps into the gatehouse with a wide smile. He claps his hands together, gleeful as John shuts the door behind him. “Stand down, Johnny,” he answers, flashing Sherlock a grin. “It’s time your plaything and I had a talk about Michael Stamford.”
next
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 6.8k this part, 81k overall
Beta: seijichan and arcsupport
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: As far as initiation rites go, kidnapping a human doctor from a defended town ought to seem extreme. When James Moriarty offers him the challenge, Sherlock never considers saying no. (Fantasy vampire AU)
Warnings: Vampires, blood, explicit sex, glamour (as in mind control/hypnotism), dubcon.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven
He’s never been to Waterloo before. It’s a fair-sized port town. He imagines John might call it a city. It calls itself a city, which is more than Sherlock will ever say for it.
He walks through its streets, avoids its alleys, and sleeps only lightly in its inns. Over the past months, he’d avoided robbery with such skill and dexterity that the attempts had begun to make him laugh. That confidence falls away in Waterloo. The scents of humanity overwhelm, sweat and perfume mingling over rot and faeces. The worn faces of statues stare down on whores and merchants alike from high stone walls, streaked with the shit of countless pigeons. As waterproof as his siren-given coat is, the spray of the river city’s docks freezes his hands and face. His aching face gives him an unwelcome splash of the local colour, but even so, he could never be thought to belong. Though he practices, he can’t quite achieve the correct accent.
His nose useless, mind cluttered, he’s dependent upon sight and sound alone for defence. It terrifies. He nearly has his throat cut, once, twice, and the deed would have been quickly done had he merely a voice behind his words. Each time, he parts from his new friends before they realize they share no friendship at all. One, almost apologetic behind vicious blue eyes, reminds him fiercely of John.
In truth, everything reminds him of John and will continue to remind him of John. Though Sherlock’s mind cannot submit to glamour, only his body, he almost wishes it were otherwise. He can’t focus here. His skin feels tight to the point of splitting open. He craves to the point of shaking. Desperate, he smiles at a man in a bar, enjoying rough human skin as fingertips graze his upturned palm. When rough fingers lead to rough hands, a few whispers in his admirer’s ear have the man spilling in his trousers and retreating from the bar in humiliation. When he tries elsewhere, he discovers that the whores, men and women alike, mask their scents with musk and perfume. Though he spies a glimmer of intellect, he can smell nothing he wants and no one he would risk drinking. He doesn’t try again.
It takes days of prowling, searching, approaching strangers in pubs and sailors on docks, verbal haranguing to find a ship set for King’s Crossing. A week on board from Waterloo, hiding his nature as they hug the northern coast, and then he can make his way from King’s to Belgravia on a ship that will at least tolerate his kind. The main challenge is to find a boat transporting livestock. Then the main challenge is timing, then payment. His coin in this land is running low, but he has a few precautionary trinkets hidden in his satchel. It’s hardly something he can reveal here, not without having his throat cut regardless of glamour, but it is something.
In a week and a half, it’s decided. They sail for King’s Crossing in eleven days. No coin is exchanged for now, but half will be expected upon boarding, half upon landing. And it had best be fully present upon landing. Sherlock confirms his understanding and turns back toward Bart’s.
His feet are strange creatures to him after these months of walking, unreasonably sturdy, yet not sturdy enough. They bear him on all the same.
In the end, he dawdles. He frets and he hesitates and he hates it. His life is bent toward John, warped around the man, and this is worth resenting. He has learned pleasure only to know agony. It’s not what adulthood was meant to be.
At last, he leaves Euston. He walks slowly, turning down a freely offered ride. When the cart is out of view and the road empty behind him, he ducks into the woods to feed. He stays there longer than necessary, a young buck sluggishly butting at his hip. He pets the once-wary creature that now believes it adores him, strokes its neck and scratches its ears. The deer believes itself happy. When Sherlock leaves it, it begins to follow. When Sherlock takes a step toward it, it startles and vanishes into the brush.
He laughs without meaning to, then continues to walk.
The final approach to Bart’s is a wary business. All it would take is one quick crossbow quarrel to solve John’s problems, and Sherlock can’t permit himself not to consider this possibility. John will have thought of it. If John has confided in his sister, Harry might perform the task on his behalf.
“It’s me,” he says quickly, lifting his voice and knocking. He hears stillness from within and knows John is the gatekeeper inside, not Bill.
John opens the door, eyes alert on Sherlock’s face. He has the look of a guard dog on the edge of giving in to glamour, a hair’s breadth away from a snap and a howl, a moment’s wait to perked ears and wagging tail.
“Better yet?” Sherlock asks.
John opens his mouth and closes it. What he says is, “Will you come inside?”
Not better, then. “Will you let me out this time?”
“Yes,” John says.
Sherlock follows him inside and permits the door to be secured behind him.
John’s sword is in the usual spot, leaning sheathed against the wall. John’s knife is in the usual spot, hanging at his hip. Even John is in the usual spot, moving to sit at the table.
Sherlock follows here as well.
“Have you got a ship?” John asks.
He nods.
“When’s it leaving?”
“I have enough time,” he replies, folding his hands and leaning on the table. “How long do you believe this will take?”
“I don’t know,” John lies, eyes slipping to the side.
“No, you have some idea. You simply dislike it.”
John doesn’t reply. He turns his face to the side. His eyes flick back to Sherlock. Sherlock is right.
“John, I have just walked two and a half days over some of the worst roads I’ve ever seen and will shortly have to do it again. Don’t tell me you’ve wasted my time.”
Now he has John’s attention.
“I can’t make you do anything,” John reminds him. His voice is cold and mild, a mist that freezes from within the lungs. “You’re here because you chose to be - stop complaining.”
“Then you start,” Sherlock demands. “You asked for privacy, something is obviously wrong.”
Once again, John’s mouth stoppers up.
Fine. Sherlock can play this game. “Are you still remembering both versions of events?”
Eyes on the table, John nods.
“Is it-” not distressing, John would never admit to that “-distracting? In your daily life.”
Hesitation, then the nod.
“I can take that away,” Sherlock promises. “If you can be sure we won’t be interrupted-”
“No.”
“The noon rush, I understand-”
“No,” John repeats. He lifts his gaze to Sherlock’s face. “You don’t have to- We don’t have to go through that again.”
“You can have it out, or you can have it fester,” Sherlock responds. “That is the complete list of your options. Pick one.”
“Fester.” Eyes clear, no hesitation. John is resolute.
Sherlock is flummoxed.
After a blinking moment of unresponsiveness, he asks, “Why?”
John merely looks at him. There’s something important in that gaze. If Sherlock stares back long enough, hard enough, he’ll know what it is.
Before he succeeds - and he would have succeeded, he would have - John sighs and looks away.
“You’re very tired,” Sherlock begins, because he can at least see that. “Not from nightmares, but an inability to fall asleep. You’re on edge in a way that makes you feel defenceless, which is likely the cause of your sudden insomnia. The way you keep glancing to the door, I’d almost think you were waiting for someone, but that’s not an expression of expectation. No, recollection.”
“Can you not do that please?”
“Something involving the door that makes you feel helpless. Presumably involving me. Just last week, then? Our... fight.”
“I don’t want my memories taken,” John tells him in a rush. He slows as he adds, “They’re mine. I’ll keep them.”
“You don’t have to.”
John shakes his head. “Do you still have that drawing?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” John says. “Then I don’t need to explain.”
Sentiment swallows him, then falls away with his first clear thought: “You want to remember me as human.”
“And you want to remember me as what?” John asks. “Some bloke whose life you didn’t put at risk?”
“I remember everything that’s happened to me since I was a toddler on a staircase.” Unless deliberately forgotten. Unless forced to be forgotten. “While my decision process was very vague at the time, I do possess excellent hindsight.”
“So you regret it,” John says. “Is that the closest you’ll get to an apology?”
“John, that wasn’t even near an apology.”
“I’d noticed.”
“Excellent hindsight,” Sherlock stresses. “Regret would imply a different set of consequences were possible. As I’ve proven chronically incapable of making rational decisions involving you, that seems highly unlikely.”
“That’s no excuse, Sherlock. I’m not that good of a shag.”
“Of course not, you’re a terrible shag.”
The reflexive insult fires and John kicks him beneath the table just as quickly. Sherlock attempts a counterattack but is almost immediately outmatched. His ankle caught between John’s legs, those sturdy shins like a vice, he tugs to no avail. Ultimately, he unleashes his best glare.
John laughs.
Sherlock glares all the harder, John laughs on, and giggles take them both.
“Stop it,” John gasps. “I’m still- I’m still furious. Oh, god, my stomach.”
But Sherlock’s laughing, still tugging for his foot back, they’re both still laughing, and the pain of it is good. Strain of the body rather than the mind.
When the laughter runs out, John is tired and flushed, eyelids heavy and face relaxed. His legs keep Sherlock’s foot trapped beneath his chair.
After so long without, even the slightest contact is enough to silence Sherlock’s thoughts. Impossible and true, this new reality ought to frighten, should frighten, yet all he can feel is a vague, humming satisfaction and a fierce, gnawing hunger. He wants and needs and cannot do.
“Liar,” John murmurs. He hasn’t the breath for more. This is why his voice is so soft. There isn’t breath for more.
“Oh, what now?”
“That’s not how you look at a terrible shag.”
“Of course it is,” Sherlock counters, mouth dry. “It’s how I look at you and you’re the worst I’ve ever had.”
“Two months of lying, how did you manage? You’re rubbish at it.” John looks, John looks almost fond, which is wrong. Which is Sherlock seeing things incorrectly. He’s missing something, must be missing something, but he looks and looks and keeps on looking. John is pained and John is irked and John is saddened, but John is also very fond. Which is wrong, this is wrong, how is this happening?
He feels dizzy.
“John,” he warns.
“Sherlock,” John counters. Beneath the table, his legs are very warm.
Scent directs memory. The familiar odours of the gatehouse attempt to redirect his mind, an effect only worsened by the touch. Confrontation and amusement shouldn’t be paired on John’s face. Together, they turn his name into a flirt, and Sherlock is surprised by how thoroughly it devastates.
He extracts his foot. “If you’re fine, there’s no reason for me to stay-”
“I’ve a question. About Angelo. An idea, actually.”
Sherlock stops. “Yes?”
“Do you know what he sees when he looks at you?” John asks. “I mean, does he actually see a child?”
“He thinks he sees a child.”
“Have you ever asked him to draw you?”
“Once,” Sherlock replies. “He began noticing discrepancies and took to it poorly.”
“Bit not good, then?”
“Bit not good.”
“What if he doesn’t, I don’t know.” There it is, the unconscious display of tongue. Sherlock has missed it. “If he doesn’t recognize you from behind, does he see a man?”
“Yes,” he confirms. “It panics him.”
“Because you’re older?”
“Because I’ve vanished.”
John’s mouth opens, a circle of surprise. “That’s... complicated. Have you ever spoken to him as someone else? Disguised yourself?”
“Yes.” Undisguised and unintentionally, the first time. “It solves nothing.”
“But he’d believe you have glamour then,” John points out.
“And thoroughly resist whatever this strange man was trying to do to him,” Sherlock adds. “It doesn’t work.” Not with Sherlock’s current skill set.
“Oh,” John says.
“Is that all?”
“Ye- No.” John shakes his head. “No. I mean.”
“What?”
“It’s, well. It’s something I want cleared up.”
“John, you want everything explained to you.”
“And?” John prompts. “You’ve never complained before.”
True, but irrelevant. The last thing he needs is for John to be attentive and thoughtful. “Last question, then I leave.”
“Oh,” John says, and says nothing more.
“What?” he demands. “Out with it.”
John will not have out with it. He turns his face away as if slapped, his eyes closed and jaw set. Beneath the table, his legs pull away, are tucked beneath his chair.
“John?”
John shakes his head. Still without looking at Sherlock, he says, “Never mind. Forget it, it’s not important.”
His chair scraping against the floor, Sherlock stands. “Then why bring it up in the first place? Are you trying to waste my time?”
“Yes.”
John’s shoulders are hunched, hands folded and clenched about each other. For all he appears small, he is visibly defiant. He visibly teeters on the edge of speech.
“And why,” Sherlock slowly questions, “would you try to do that?” If John wanted to lay an ambush, there were simpler, quicker ways. He could have watched for Sherlock’s approach from the ladder behind the gate, crossbow in hand.
“Because once I stop, you’ll leave.”
John spits the words and immediately winces at their sound.
“I should be telling you to go,” the soldier continues. “God, I should be shouting it. I should be shoving you out the fucking door, but I can’t and I hate it.” He squeezes shut his eyes, a man holding tight to his own desperation, warring to keep it contained. “I need to stop talking, I can’t stop talking.”
“It’s- It’s fine,” Sherlock replies. Syllables turn unsteady. “I can see myself out.”
“Don’t,” John orders. The word breaks under its wielder’s strain. “I shouldn’t ask you to- I don’t- Sherlock, please.” He reaches. His upturned palm supplicates.
Sherlock navigates the table, taking that hand. Again the scrape of chair on floorboards and John, still seated, perched, pulling Sherlock into his arms, hiding his face in the folds of Sherlock’s coat. Standing between his legs, Sherlock clutches him closer still. As if physical contact were a convincing argument, Sherlock secures him with grasping hands and a reciprocal lean.
Barely a mumble: “I need to stop talking.”
“You don’t.”
“I really do.”
Neither moves.
They hold until it hurts. Longer.
“Are you forgiving me?” Sherlock asks.
John laughs something low and broken. “God, no. Not hating you doesn’t mean I haven’t tried.”
With no attempt at subtlety, Sherlock slips his fingers into John’s hair.
“You’re an arse,” John tells him. “I need to invent new insults for you.”
“Difficult. I’ve already heard most of them.”
Another laugh, very small and yet infinitely improved. John shifts his face. His arms encircle Sherlock’s waist like a tangle of climbing vines too precious to tear. “I’d like to hate you,” John remarks, conversational though muffled. “That would be so simple.”
“Simple is boring.” Complicated is standing between the legs of a man honour-bound to kill him, simply standing there and stroking blond strands. Complicated is a thirst for skin as well as blood, is an unending fog of need. “I like a challenge.”
“Is that why? Go for the gatekeeper, that seems difficult?”
It was raining. Even so, he could have waited. Was it more than the rain? He looks at the top of John’s head, pressed hard against him. “I wanted to be near you.”
“That’s a shit reason.”
He knows.
John pulls back. He pulls back and rubs at his eyes. Sherlock’s hand trails out of his hair, hovers between them.
“John?”
“I’m not crying, I’m just tired.” As he says this, he bristles, then sags a bit. “Keep dreaming about....” He shakes his head, but it doesn’t matter. This close, Sherlock can smell him. He recognizes the scent immediately. For anyone else, it would be nothing close to fear. For John, it is fear’s sweeter cousin. Heavy rather than sharp, a musk rather than a stink.
“About me,” Sherlock finishes, voice low. The scent spikes.
“You’re vain.”
“I’m right.”
“Never said you couldn’t be both,” John replies.
Sherlock touches his face, fingertips across stubble.
John closes his eyes. “I should tell you to go,” he reminds them both.
“Should you.”
John nods, his warm cheek scratching Sherlock’s skin. “It’s not safe here.”
Sherlock bends down, contorting himself, and takes a kiss.
John freezes. Exhales.
Breath between lips. Their noses brush.
Sherlock eases back.
John presses close.
The scent of him.
Delicate touches. The slow winding of arms about necks. John’s tongue, ever tempting. Light grows hard, shallow turns deep, and Sherlock jerks away, covering his mouth with his hand. He leans heavily against the table.
Without blanching, without flinching, John watches. “You can’t help it, can you?” he asks. So calm, his soldier.
Retracting his teeth requires a moment of struggle, but he manages it all the same. “I can help it just fine, thank you. Thirty-six days in is simply not a good time.” Over a month without release: he’s been told that’s a long time. It certainly feels it.
John blinks up at him, eyes dark. “I mean,” John says, “you need it.”
“Want isn’t need,” he corrects. “I don’t-”
“You can do it.”
“-have to- What did you say?”
A swallow: nervous motion turned unknowingly seductive. John holds his gaze all the same. “I said, you can do it.”
Why, he nearly asks. What could change any mind so quickly? How far beyond mere tolerance will this be taken?
What he asks instead is, “Yes, but do you want it?”
John flushes.
Sherlock stares.
“I’ve thought about it,” John admits. “The biting.”
“Have you.”
“Yes.”
First is numb disbelief.
Second is everything else.
They’re kissing in an instant. No, Sherlock is kissing in an instant and John in a moment. Surprise, not hesitation, therefore irrelevant. Pulling at him, John stands, a surge of motion into his arms, against his chest. Sherlock longs to kneel, to fall to his knees and take, but John forces his head back, a hard, steady tug at his hair. It’s John who bites, the first graze of teeth better than any kiss.
Sherlock twists in his grip, a feigned struggle. John shoves him against the table, onto the table, shoves hips between thighs. John presses. Tongue against pulse. Cock to the joining of thighs.
Sherlock swears, words borrowed from a soldier. His legs lock around John, seize him. His body knows what to do, how to hold, how to beg and demand without a single, breathless word. He’s gasping, flushed, tortured. John is hot and hard, and Sherlock needs to drink him down.
Each time he tries, John yanks back his head and mouths at his throat.
“Tactician,” Sherlock curses. He tries.
John’s pleased hum rumbles against his jugular.
Sherlock needs a rebuttal. Can’t find one. Can barely breathe.
When John stops, he stops entirely. He freezes, body tense and alert. His hand keeps Sherlock in check.
A moment later, there’s a knock at the door.
Sherlock is undeterred.
“No,” John whispers, sounding for all the world as if he’s chastising a young dog. “I have to take this.”
“Thirty-six days, John.”
“I know,” he replies. A press of lips to jaw. “You’ll want to wait for me in the loft, then.”
Sherlock closes his eyes very tightly, which does nothing to help with his sudden dizziness.
John presses at his knee, bidding legs to release as the knocking resumes.
“Oi!” John yells. “Can’t a bloke take a piss? Hold on!” He looks pointedly at Sherlock, then shoves him a bit, then glares at the bulge in his own trousers.
Somehow, they manage it. Relocated off to a corner, out of sight of the small window, Sherlock dumbly watches as John reverts into a polite and efficient guard. Whoever it is outside is well-known, which makes it quick. When John heads to the door to the bridge, he locks eyes with Sherlock and nods at the ladder.
John exits, and Sherlock is left inside alone.
He climbs the ladder. He sits beside the mattress. It smells more like Bill than John.
He removes his boots.
He fumbles around the edges of his mind, searching for coherent thought.
Time fails to pass.
Then the door, and John.
John alone. There’s a fear assuaged.
John hurried. There’s another.
Footfalls on the floor below, rapid to the ladder, then stopped, then reversed. Gone to the window. The chest, opened, closed. An item retrieved but not searched for. Footsteps to the ladder, faster than before.
Feet on the ladder and the click of a jar set on wood, John setting it onto the boards before hauling himself up. His crawl toward Sherlock is nothing close to clumsy. John knows how to be on his hands and knees. “We’ll have to time this,” he warns.
“Yes, yes, I know, I’m not stupid.” He reaches and John thwarts him, a steady push of a palm on his chest. In the slowest collapse he’s ever known, he falls onto his back.
John rises above him and presses him onto the mattress. His hands are familiar guests, and welcome. “That’s not the last interruption. And it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? You’ll be tight.”
“I am.” The pressure beneath his skin, the need forcing him taut, that’s normal? “I’m tight, John, I’m positively aching.”
The burst of John’s arousal spills through the air, a scent thick enough to coat the tongue. “You need me inside you that much.” John’s eyes are dark, shadowed in the depth of his voice.
“Yes.” Confirmation, not begging. Let him drink. Stop fussing with Sherlock’s buttons and belt and see to his own. Even through cloth, his touches torture. Sherlock catches at his wrists. “I’ll do it myself. I’m faster. Take off your trousers.”
John smirks in the dim light of the loft but does as told. He sits on the mattress in his smallclothes and shirt, but Sherlock’s eyes are on his leg, on the faint marks on his right thigh.
“God, those teeth.” John stares without recoiling. He must be staring. Sherlock doesn’t look to see, too focused on his return to John’s femoral.
He leans in and John lets him. He mouths at warm flesh and John lets him. He hums a low glamour and John tugs at his hair.
“No,” John tells him. “Let me feel it.”
“It will hurt,” Sherlock articulates. He’s done this once before, only the once, twelve and without glamour: two children believing themselves older, Molly believing herself invulnerable and Sherlock believing himself ready. Her response to the pain had been so immediate. This time, he knows the mistake for what it is. Even so, teeth descended, body curled over John’s legs, he can’t stop for more than that moment.
John seizes his hand and forces it over tented smallclothes. “Bite,” John orders.
His teeth pierce tense flesh. The push and the give, fine hairs and elasticity. Blood welling up, leaking around the stoppers of his teeth. John’s cock jerks in his hand, within their hands, as Sherlock begins to suck and lick. Through the bliss of scent and taste, Sherlock braces for the panic, for the pain of a blow to his head and his teeth ripped from flesh.
“Oh fuck,” John says as if from a distance. “Oh fuck,” he says again, coming closer.
Sherlock retracts, so gently, and thick liquid begins its spill into his mouth. He swallows and swallows, the sound of it obscene. Blood begins to escape his mouth, pulsing out from John’s skin, across John’s skin, and he traps it with his cupped hand.
“Your fault,” John gasps. “Kept wanking off to this, god, your fault. Don’t know if I’m bleeding or fucking anymore. Both in my head, fuck, look at you.” John’s hand is warm and heavy, riding the back of his head. “Still sounds like you’re sucking my cock.”
Sherlock can feel it, inside. So quickly now, from his mouth to his cock, his body nearly trained. He grows heavy, then hard, so very painfully hard. He groans into John’s skin, licking the puncture clean, licking it closed. He needs nothing more, nothing more than this and his own hand.
He touches himself. Fruitless nights and wasted effort: gone. Erased. Nothing but this. Sobbing, shattering relief.
He shakes and twitches in the aftermath. Blood, arousal, spilt seed, John. All heady scents. His mouth is against bloodied skin. He licks. Slow. Languid. John’s hand eases through his hair.
“Don’t stop.” Sherlock doesn’t mean to murmur. He doesn’t mean anything at all. He has no priorities, none. His body sprawled over John’s legs. His seed on the floorboards. Warm blood indulgent in his cock. There can be nothing more than this.
“Clean it up,” John instructs. His fingers stroke. “If I’m going to bleed, make it count.”
He hums his compliance, tonguing his way over John’s thigh. His hand leaves his cock, half-hard, half-spent, and returns to John’s flagging erection. His other hand, he licks clean.
“Are you done?”
“Mmhm.”
John rolls him off, puts him in a loose-limbed sprawl on his back. Sherlock hears himself giggle. He gazes up at John, serious John with his shirt and his pitying eyes. John touches his face, so careful to touch his blood-smeared cheek.
“You’re usually cleaner,” John says, his voice matching his furrowed brow.
“Usually have to be.” He feels himself smile, lips curling over hidden teeth. “That was lovely.”
John stares down at him. His touch does not waver. He looks very sad.
Naked and yet so very warm, Sherlock closes his eyes and basks in the thrumming of his senses. Thoughts resurface, seek to categorize. This too is fine.
“It’s really the same to you, isn’t it?” John asks. His fingers follow bone structure, cheekbone, nose, and jaw.
“Hm?”
“Eating and release.”
“Mm.” His body presses up, seeking John’s wandering palm. “Drinking. I don’t chew.”
“Yeah, well.” John’s fingers circle across his skin, drawing closer to what must be pleasure. His body has no other reason to squirm into the touch. “It’s not what I thought. Glad to be wrong. Don’t much fancy myself as prey.”
Sherlock laughs. He smiles up at John and at last remembers that he too has hands for reaching, for touching and holding. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
John licks his own thumb, then smudges the blood away from Sherlock’s mouth. “That’s really disturbing.” This is presumably the reason why no kisses follow. “Not actually the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s up there.”
“Then why are you still half hard?”
“Because,” John replies, “I am not a very sane man and you’ve made me worse.”
“Have I?”
“Yes. Now you stay here while I check if anyone’s on their way.” John touches his bitten thigh where saliva has clotted the bleeding, giving it an odd look as he goes for his trousers. “Don’t want to be interrupted for the next bit.”
Whatever the “next bit” is, Sherlock waits for it beneath familiar blankets. John’s right about the timing. Gate duty takes him far too long. Sherlock nearly dozes before John is finished.
“Think that’s it.” John climbs back into the loft, onto the mattress, snagging that jar on his way. “Should be a few more later in the afternoon, but that’s plenty of time. Roll over, love, on your front.”
If only to hide his smile, Sherlock complies. The coarse fabric feels decadent against his skin. Everything feels decadent.
John peels away the blankets, mouthing at the back of his neck. His hands stray down Sherlock’s spine, stray lower still, and Sherlock groans. John’s hands on his arse. How did he forget how much he adores this? That bit they did before, John’s cock between his thighs, hot and sliding, colliding with his sac; can they do that again?
The scent of arousal begins to fill up his head once more. John. John squeezing, teasing. John John John. “Whatever you’re thinking, yes,” Sherlock attempts to say. His voice is a low, half-broken croak.
John’s circling thumb presses against his hole.
Sherlock stops breathing.
Oh.
He nods into the pillow, nods and nods and nods, frantic for what he hadn’t known he wanted. John inside him in every way.
The loss of warm hands. He cries out. John curses, praises. A cold, slick touch, so startling. He cries out a second time, protest into desperation. He’s heard of this, of course he’s heard of this. Without John’s touch, the concept always seemed ridiculous and undignified. With John, there is nothing he does not want. John won’t let it hurt.
“God, you’re tight.” Fingertip between his clenching cheeks, solid body draped awkwardly across his longer form. The cool touch warms. “Are you going to cooperate or not?”
“Tell me,” Sherlock urges.
John chuckles against his shoulder. “Oh, so you do like to be told. It wasn’t just for the glamour, then? You need my voice before I fuck you.” With that, he begins to speak. Commanding and filthy, more demand and sweet threat than instruction. “With me. With me now.”
The first breach.
No breath. None.
Burns.
Stasis breaks. Pushes.
Warmth and pressure. In his arse, not his crotch. No, crotch as well. Both. Can barely think of his prick, heavy against the mattress. John inside him. Burning. Flesh within his body. Feels wrong. In a good way, he assures himself. He’ll like this. In a moment, he’ll like this.
“Up,” John orders. John shifts behind him, focuses there. “On your knees. Let’s have you do the work.”
He rises. Struggles. He can’t. John’s finger, hand, held there. He pushes back, hands and knees, the stretch terrible, exquisite. Skewered.
“First knuckle,” John reports. “You can do better than that.”
He tries. He does his best, his very best, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He keens when John begins to twist, begins to work the digit. He feels the hot drag where nothing moves, where nothing is meant to move, John has filled him, John is filling him. Sherlock twitches and twitches around him. Endless.
More from the jar, cool against the burn, coolness pressed slick inside. The wet sounds of his own arse and John’s low, predatory words. John’s cock, rocking against his hip.
“Open for me, Sherlock. Open before I fuck you open.”
John’s cock against his hip yet it happens all the same, fucked open, forced open, too much, please more, it hurts not enough. Pressure through his arse, thicker than before, what is, is that, yes, John, two fingers.
“Breathe. I have you.”
Sherlock breathes. John has him.
There’s a difference here, a depth where Sherlock’s body understands John as John, knows to clutch and clench and draw him deeper still. John peppers the small of his back with pretty curses. His soldier moves, reaches for something. Sherlock’s belt lands near his hanging head.
“Bite that if you’re going to scream.”
With that, John moves his fingers. Opposite directions.
Sherlock bites.
Screaming is not the word.
Moaning is not the word. Nor shouting. Nor begging.
There is no word.
John doesn’t stop.
John.
Don’t stop.
Cock against his flank. Rubbing, leaking. He can smell it. So hot. Then removed, then gone, then cold, then John’s mouth on him, John’s teeth, John biting so sharp shining.
Nothing else. Not ever.
His arms give out. Face against the mattress, hot air between mouth and tooth-marked leather. Everything trembles.
John’s fingers twist, movement, intrusion. They drag against his pull. They leave. Empty - normalcy turned foreign, turned strange and unwanted.
Sherlock sobs before he gasps.
Thick, thick at his hole.
He sobs again, nodding at John’s voice.
Slow, slow. Burning tight. Hand on his hip. Fingertips into flesh.
There’s no more. There’s no space left inside. Not an inch, not a breath. Slick heat stretches. Pulse pounding inside him, human heartbeat. Hot breath on his back, on cooling sweat. Slow.
Movement.
Oh.
Head on folded arms. Fingers fisted into mattress.
John across him, against him, over him, inside. Mouth at the trembling curve of his spine. Hips a slow press into his arse. More space left. How? Too much of them both, not enough, John, more. Cold air fails against his skin. John blazes through them both. Sherlock’s cock jumps against his stomach.
His hand on John’s, his hand pleading John’s, begging a touch to his ache.
“God, that’s lovely,” John praises. “Are you going to fuck my hand? You are. You’re going to fuck my hand while I fuck your arse. How does that sound?”
He bites the belt and whimpers.
“Gorgeous.” John’s teeth scrape his skin. “When I pull your hair, come for me.”
His hole clenches. Seizes.
His soldier swears. His hand slaps down, open and percussive. Tight flesh burns bright. John squeezes pain into agony and it splinters into sharp, biting shards.
He’s sucking air through his nose, body shaking. He clenches and clenches, straining, squirming backward, a clumsy impaling, and John hits him again, harder. He spits out his belt before he bites through it.
“Don’t come yet,” John orders. “Not. Yet.”
“Then fuck me,” he gasps.
John does.
Hard, painful slaps, harder than his hand, better. Again. Again. Harsh hand turned gentle, loose around his cock. Not enough, not enough, not even the dragging burn, not the extraordinary press of too much. The gasping void between each thrust. Knees between his feet. He crumples in half. A stranger’s voice sobs for John.
Fingers fist, in hair, around cock. Hands pull. John grows bigger, how is he, no, Sherlock clenches, he’s clenching, he shatters and shakes, gasping into damp cloth. John’s hips stutter stutter press. John’s cock jerks inside him, pulses wet warm. John’s hand moves, stroking sensitive until the end.
After, when there is an after, they huddle beneath blankets. John curls behind him, flaccid against the small of his back. Fingers rough in texture but smooth in touch, they trace him, set him twitching with hitching sighs. He hurts. Nearly all of him. He aches so empty.
“Run away with me,” he whispers.
John kisses the back of his neck. “No.”
“Please.” He rolls over, his body protesting every inch. Their foreheads together, their breath mingling, their legs instantly entwined. His fingertips trace the scrape of John’s cheek. Their heat and combined scent fills the loft. This is how they fit. Surely John must see that. “You could come, I have the means.”
John gazes back, quiet and steady. “No.”
“If I were human,” he begins.
John kisses shut his mouth. He kisses it shut as if to seal it. “If you were,” John replies, “you would be a very different man.”
Sherlock closes his eyes.
“You could make me.” John’s hand curls around his nape. “Or you could make me keep you here. Bugger you every day until you couldn’t walk away. But that would take a different man, too, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees, and hopes he’s not lying. He can’t stand the thought of letting go, can only hope not to think.
“Yes,” John echoes. “I’d like to keep you, though. I doubt I’d take much convincing. Barely any.”
Sherlock kisses him quiet. “Stop tempting me.”
“I wouldn’t, though,” John insists and proves it, bundling Sherlock in the circle of his arms. “Stay until morning? I know it’s barely afternoon, but- Stay until morning?”
He nods, sheltered in human warmth. The peace of it nearly lasts. Given slow moments to think, to want for something more than John’s steady breath upon his temple, Sherlock sulks against John’s chest. His petulance isn’t enough to stand against reality, but he can try. Until John stops petting the ache of his back, he can try.
“Are you certain you won’t come with me?”
“Sherlock, the only way I could go is west. You’d be killed.” John forestalls argument with a firm massage to the scalp. Only once Sherlock is thoroughly beyond speech does John pull away with a sigh. “I need to put my clothes back on. You know now’s a bad time of day.”
“I hate your job.”
John twitches his mouth away from amusement, already pulling on his shirt. “That’s fair, considering. Go on, button me up.”
Sherlock does. This is a slow, tactile goodbye. They have far too many of these.
“You too,” John urges. “Can’t have you shitting my seed into the pot stark naked.” He pauses, obviously considering it. “Unless you’d rather do that. You could, I wouldn’t stop you.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes.
“You might want to dress, though.” He kisses the corner of Sherlock’s mouth and disappears down the ladder.
Given time for light dozing and a great deal of pained hissing, Sherlock follows. On the ground, the pain is far less endearing. As are his expulsions into the chamber pot. The numbing cold of water from the barrel helps only somewhat.
John watches him with a troubled, guilty expression. He helps with the water and damp cloth. He touches Sherlock as if he’s become fragile in the short time since their lovemaking. It only worsens as Sherlock’s muscles stiffen, as he tries to sit and gasps into pain.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” John says. By now, he’s given up his attempts to air out the room. Their combined scent remains heavy around them.
“Don’t,” Sherlock snaps. “You don’t get to take that back.”
John shakes his head. “I just meant, you’ll have a hard time walking to Euston.”
Sherlock is far from mollified but is interrupted by the sound of horses from outside. Two, by the sound of it. Rare for the area. “Go mind your precious gate.”
John slides their palms together, links their fingers. “And if it’s another draughtsman?” Soothing circles from a thumb, urging him calm. Sherlock refuses. John simply slips in closer, brushing their noses together. Sherlock can taste his grin as he says, “I mean it. It could happen out here. I’m the first line of defence, not the last. What if a different man puts me under glamour?” The playful edge to John’s tone soon wears thin. It fails to flirt, not like him at all.
Outside, a door opens, closes. A carriage?
“John, I told you a week ago. Why-”
“Tell me again,” John interrupts. His grip on Sherlock’s fingers turns tight, close to grinding his bones. His gaze is even harder. “You said if another draughtsman took me, you’d stab him. You said that.”
Footsteps outside. Someone whistling a cheerful tune.
“Swear this time,” John adds. “Right now, swear it.”
The whistling trills to a finish directly outside the door.
“Sherlock, please.”
A complicated knock on the wood, a rapid rhythm.
John drops his hand. “Oh,” he says, looking over his shoulder. “I should get that.”
“John, I swear,” Sherlock tells him. Too late, too late.
“You swear what?” John asks, already pulling away. “Look, you don’t have to hide, but I have to get that.”
“Don’t.” He follows with limping steps. “Don’t open the door. You need to go across the bridge - you need to stay there. John, stop.”
John doesn’t stop.
“John, come here, I need you,” Sherlock urges. He catches John’s arm and tugs.
John turns and shoves him, hard, his palm striking just below the sternum. Sherlock doubles over, winded, his lungs as empty as John’s eyes.
He hears the rasp of naked steel. Crouched at the side of the table, straining for air, he looks up at the casual weight of a sword in John’s hand, the glint of it as John unbolts the door.
“He’s still here, sir,” John reports to the figure outside, drawing open the barrier one-handed. He steps back, stands aside, and points to Sherlock with the tip of his blade. “Didn’t take much to stall him. What now?”
Jim Moriarty steps into the gatehouse with a wide smile. He claps his hands together, gleeful as John shuts the door behind him. “Stand down, Johnny,” he answers, flashing Sherlock a grin. “It’s time your plaything and I had a talk about Michael Stamford.”
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