Fic: To The Last Drop - 3/6 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: To The Last Drop
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 5.3k out of 31k
Beta: seijichan, lifeonmars, prettyarbitrary
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: “If you want me to comfort you over my imminent death, I will be kicking you in the head,” John warns.
Warnings: Eventual off-screen character death, illness both physical and mental, assault, graphic violence, blood, bloodplay, explicit sexual behavior, dubcon, plague, attempted suicide
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
The floor hard on his knees, John sits on Sherlock’s stomach, rising and falling incrementally with Sherlock’s breaths. Though Sherlock’s pulse visibly throbs at his neck, Sherlock’s breathing is relatively slow.
“You’re trying to calm down,” John pieces together.
Sherlock nods, his unmarked hand still over his eyes. His lips remain pressed together.
“It’s okay,” John says.
Sherlock swallows. “I know.” He lifts his hand and turns it over, his palm upward in a command. “Phone.”
Unthinking, John digs into his trouser pocket. He very nearly puts the mobile in Sherlock’s hand.
“Please,” Sherlock adds, voice firm. He looks up at John with clear eyes. Stress and exhaustion line his face, the bags under his eyes like bruises, and yet Sherlock radiates control.
John scrambles off him. His leg strikes the coffee table, and with windmilling arms, he falls backward onto the sofa. John’s mobile remains clutched in his hand.
Stiffly, Sherlock climbs to his feet. He follows John and sits on the coffee table. “This was the deal, John,” he says, his words even and slow as if speaking to a particularly thick client. “If I couldn’t contain you, we would call emergency services.”
“But I was going to...” John trails off, a mental weight lifting and a moral one descending. “Oh. Oh, God.” He drops the mobile on the sofa and grabs Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock flinches but doesn’t pull away. John inspects the damage. “I bit you. Jesus fuck. I broke the skin.”
Sherlock leans forward, his left hand retrieving John’s mobile. “It’s happened, and now we have to call.” Leaning back on the coffee table, Sherlock manages to slide his bleeding hand into his tight trouser pocket. He winces but persists. The first battery he pulls out is the wrong one.
“That’s what I thought I was doing,” John says. “I swear. Sherlock, I promise I thought I was going to call.”
Sherlock slots the correct battery into the mobile. “We’re calling now.”
“I just killed you.” The words literally taste of Sherlock’s blood. John needs to wash his mouth out. No, more. John needs to go back in time and tear himself limb from limb.
“Don’t bother me with your guilt. Consider it my last request, if that will keep you from sulking.”
“I came down to get help, and then I...” The memory floats past him, through him, vague and dreamlike. “I wouldn’t even have gone for you if you hadn’t-what are you doing?”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “You wanted to call and now I’m calling.” John’s mobile lets out its usual chime as it turns on.
“Why were the batteries in your pocket?” John asks. “You never turn your phone off. What were you doing with your phone off?” He reaches for the mobile. “Do you mind? You’re the carrier now, I should be calling.”
“I’m closer to lucidity,” Sherlock says. “Though you are returning to it more rapidly than expected.”
“‘Expected’,” John repeats. He watches blankly as Sherlock’s thumb presses on the number pad, and he grabs Sherlock’s hand with both of his. John’s mobile lets out a series of beeps as it hits nine again and again, Sherlock tries to pull away, and John holds fast. “Fucking hell, Sherlock, you knew this would happen!”
“There was a possibility you would get out, but it’s sooner than I’d thought.” He twists his hand away, giving John the phone. “Fine. You call. It’s what you came down here for, isn’t it?”
“You let me kill you. You just...” John stares at his phone in one hand and, with the other, touches Sherlock’s dead mobile in his pocket. “Sherlock, that’s insane.”
Sitting on the coffee table, Sherlock meets John’s gaze without hesitation or guilt or shame, or any other non-Sherlockian emotion. He is, by a very strange standard of normal, still normal. “Make the call, John.”
“Tell me--” John turns his head to the side. He looks up at the ceiling and blinks until his eyes can be trusted not to leak. He clears his throat. “Look, just tell me why you didn’t do anything about the hinges. You can’t have overlooked that. You could’ve nailed a plank down, or, or anything.”
“You’re stalling.” Sherlock leans forward. “You’ll go into withdrawal before I lose lucidity, John. Once that happens, neither of us will call.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ll tell you once you call.”
John turns his mobile off. He tucks it onto his pocket alongside the handcuffs and switches his grip to the cuffs. “Then there is a reason.”
“John.” Sherlock grips him by the shoulders. “Your mind has been compromised. I will explain, but we cannot delay. Call first.”
With a forceful shrug, John shakes off Sherlock’s hands. “You mean, I’m going to hate the reason.”
“I mean, you’ve become a human incubator and an increasingly large part of you is going to try to stay that way. Call now, or give me my mobile back.”
John grits his teeth. “I’m not-fine. Fine.”
Sherlock holds his left hand out, his right hand resting on his knee and bleeding.
John whips the cuffs out and goes for Sherlock’s left arm first. Sherlock resists, but then, he would. John shoves forward and they topple over the coffee table together. Sherlock lands hard on his back, John again straddling him. Sherlock thrashes, flinging his right hand as far away from John as he can. Lunging forward, John jerks Sherlock’s left arm up to the metal bar on Sherlock’s armchair. Sherlock tries to shout and John promptly punches him in the solar plexus.
Winded, Sherlock curls in on himself involuntarily. He makes a rattling, gasping noise somewhat like John’s name. John locks the other cuff tight, securing Sherlock to the side of the armchair. He pats down Sherlock’s pockets immediately after and retrieves the handcuff key. Panting, John kneels on the floor while Sherlock thrashes. Sherlock keeps trying to shout without air.
In a very simple solution, John sticks his fingers into Sherlock’s mouth. “Go ahead. Bite me.”
Sherlock immediately opens his mouth as wide as he can. Chest heaving, he breathes through his nose.
“...Okay,” John says, mentally adjusting to the sensation of Sherlock’s breath and tongue on his fingers. Sherlock doesn’t feel cold anymore, or maybe it’s John that doesn’t feel hot. “You don’t want to bite me. It’s too soon for you to be able to transfer it, but... you want to be the carrier when we call. Why?”
Rolling his eyes, Sherlock makes a sarcastic noise around John’s fingers.
John removes his hand and wipes it on his trousers.
“There’s always a chance it could be lost in transfer,” Sherlock says. “That’s why I let you bite me. That’s all.”
“And then I’d die of withdrawal,” John says. “Now it’s both of us dead. That’s a terrible plan.”
Sherlock shrugs.
“If it could be lost in transfer, bite me. Doesn’t matter.” John reaches for Sherlock’s mouth a second time and Sherlock turns his head away. Impossibly early for risk of transfer, and still this. “...Right. You do want to be the carrier. Why?”
Sherlock doesn’t answer.
Knees aching, John stands.
Sherlock watches him from the floor. “Are you going to call now?”
“Give me a minute,” John says. He looks around. “Where’s my laptop?”
“John, you can write your final goodbyes after calling.”
“Never mind, I see it.” Barefoot, John pads into the kitchen. His laptop’s fan whirrs on the table. He watches his screensaver for a moment, a new photo of his army mates and civilian acquaintances being added to a digital pile every five seconds. Shaking his head, he taps the touchpad.
His investigation takes only moments. It helps that Sherlock left the tabs open. “Oh.” John reads.
A screeching noise of metal on wood distracts John for only a moment. In response, John unplugs his laptop and goes to the stairs. He stands in the landing, still reading. In the time John takes to finish, Sherlock manages to lug his armchair to the sitting room door.
“John, we can’t wait,” Sherlock insists, possibly more out of breath than before.
“Because surviving withdrawal from the first round of incubation might be possible?” John pulls the laptop lid halfway down to better glare at Sherlock. “Oh, lovely! A doctor in Argentina’s managed it twice! Did you even read the study, Sherlock? She lost over ninety-eight percent of her patients!”
“Except for the two who began treatment within an hour of their first time biting someone,” Sherlock counters. “And she kept seventy-three percent of patients alive, on average, ten hours longer than previously thought possible. Her methods are in the process of being adopted by all major hospitals for early cases. Now call.”
John snaps his laptop shut. Keeping out of Sherlock’s reach, he stomps toward Sherlock’s bedroom. He finds Sherlock’s laptop quickly enough and returns to the landing. In John’s short absence, Sherlock wedged his armchair in the doorframe and is now apparently bent on dislocating his arm or simply his hand. John bats Sherlock’s straining arm away and climbs up the stairs. He puts both laptops on the upper landing and leaves the mobiles on top of them.
“John? John, what are you doing? We’ve only half an hour left!”
John shakes his head.
“John, I am dying for this!” Sherlock shouts. “Call them now!”
“No,” John says. “When you bite me back, then I’ll call.”
Sherlock blanches from pale to ashen. He stops tugging at the handcuffs. “You can’t be serious.”
“I fucked up with Alexis,” John says. “I die. You don’t.”
“Don’t be tedious.”
John shakes his head.
Sherlock frowns.
John shucks his t-shirt.
Sherlock’s frown deepens.
A small scuffle occurs. It ends with John’s t-shirt twisted into a thick rope and forced between Sherlock’s teeth. John holds fast, his chest pressed against Sherlock’s back, Sherlock pressed against the hallway wall. The handcuff anchors Sherlock’s left arm to the chair, forcing Sherlock to stoop and compromising his centre of gravity. Gagged and with only one arm to fight with, Sherlock takes far too long to stop struggling, but at least he’s quiet about it.
Straining his ears, John doesn’t hear anything from the adjacent apartment. Mrs Turner’s married ones are much too accustomed to the noise of Sherlock’s experiments to become worried now.
“I don’t need to hold you for a day,” John says. “You’re hoping I’m too stupid to see that, but I’m not. Thirty minutes, Sherlock. Then I’m dead, no question about it, and we’ll put you through the withdrawal treatment.”
Sherlock beats his head against the wall, a loud, percussive thump. Stunned, John watches the first impact, the second, and then he thinks to prevent the third, yanking back on this t-shirt with both hands like reins to a horse’s bit. Despite the horrifically awkward angle, John manages it. Sherlock chokes.
John kicks him in the back of each knee. Sherlock goes down, hard, and John maintains his grip on the t-shirt all the way. “None of that, you arse. Someone has to save you from yourself, and, like it or not, that’s me.”
More thrashing. More groaning. John rams his good shoulder against Sherlock’s spine and keeps him pinned against the wall in a kneeling position.
“I’d rather kill myself than you, do you understand me?” John demands. “I’ve seen you die once and I am never seeing that again, you hear me? I put up with so much of your shit, you arrogant prick. I am not putting up with that.”
Via his nose, Sherlock responds with a disdainful sigh.
“You’re an idiot,” John tells him. “You shot Alexis on sight, but God forbid we call emergency services on me.”
Sherlock slaps his foot against the landing. John presses him harder against the wall, forcing Sherlock’s other arm tight against his back.
“You’re going to behave yourself now,” John continues. “Because I’m dead, Sherlock. These are my final hours and they might be yours too, so you are going to shut the hell up, and you are not going to call until you bite me, and you are not going to die.”
Gagged, cuffed, Sherlock’s struggles amount to little more than tense twitching. John holds him fast anyway.
“Bored,” Sherlock whinges. He flops this way and that in his armchair, still tethered.
John doesn’t look away from the telly. “You’re going to hurt yourself, doing that.”
Sherlock snorts. “Says the man who practically tore my arms off.”
John turns the volume up higher. Late night talk shows prattle on about things John doesn’t much care about.
“Is this really how you want to spend your final hours?” Sherlock asks. “Five hours into untreated withdrawal, you might have as long as two days left.”
“I have less than a day left,” John corrects.
“I refuse to bite you,” Sherlock says.
“We’ll see how you feel in a couple hours.” The programme goes to adverts. John can feel his eyes glaze over.
“We should have a film night,” Sherlock says. Hunched in his chair, he hugs his knees with his right arm and tilts to his left. His eyes are lost where hair turns to shadow on his face. “We can marathon the list. It’s hardly as if we have any other plans.”
“We wouldn’t even get through Star Wars.” On the other hand, no adverts. Also, Star Wars. It’d give Sherlock something else to complain about, at least.
“You want me to watch them, and I am not watching them without you. Now or never, John.”
John crosses his arms and pretends to mull it over. “Do we have any popcorn?”
“I haven’t touched your stash since the last time,” Sherlock says, naturally omitting which last time he’s referring to.
Rolling his eyes, John abandons his armchair and blanket to walk briskly into the kitchen. “Is the microwave safe?”
“Should be.”
Not exactly comforting, but John leaves it running and heads upstairs for socks and a jumper. Sherlock eyes him oddly upon his return.
“How can you bear it? It’s stifling in here,” Sherlock complains.
“It gets cold at night, Sherlock.” John settles back into his pocket of warmth, pulling his blanket over his legs. “That whole bit where we turn away from the sun for a few hours?”
Sherlock glares at him before attempting an ill-fated flop. He groans and favours his arm, but John bets on frustration as the cause. “If anyone should be snippy, it ought to be the one handcuffed to a chair.”
“Nope,” John says, listening to the popcorn pop. “It should be the one dying.”
With a wrinkled nose and disdainful eyes, Sherlock stands, manoeuvres around the armrest, and whips the blanket off John’s lap.
“Oi!”
Sherlock immediately plunks himself back down into his chair and bundles the blanket up as best he can with one arm. He hunches around the blanket sullenly.
“Right then,” John says. “No popcorn for you.”
John’s resolve lasts nearly twenty minutes into the film. Ultimately, he drags his chair next to Sherlock’s, effectively pinning Sherlock’s arm between the furniture. He sets the bowl over the gap between their armrests. Sherlock sighs and passes back John’s blanket. “It was too hot anyway,” Sherlock complains.
Unthinking, John reaches out and touches Sherlock’s forehead. “Bit warm. Don’t think it’s the fever yet. Do you have any aches?”
“All my free limbs are fine, thank you. Pleasingly mobile.”
John lowers his hand with a sigh. “Arse.”
“My arse is also fine.”
John giggles and nudges the popcorn bowl closer to Sherlock. Beside him, Sherlock chews obnoxiously loudly. He chomps away until there’s another spot of dialogue, and then he promptly talks over it.
God, John will miss this. Or not. Death’s like that, he supposes.
Sherlock kicks him in the leg.
John promptly takes the popcorn back. “Oi, what?”
“Stop thinking like that.”
“Like what?”
Sherlock simply looks at him. His face is a bruised shadow.
“Yeah, okay,” John says, and he starts talking about the film instead. Sherlock even pretends to listen.
John jolts awake, clapping his hand to his neck. Though he makes his heavy armchair jump beneath him, there’s no point: he’s not bleeding. Sherlock hasn’t bitten him yet. That might hurt less than sleeping in his chair. Jesus, that’s painful.
“Stop kicking,” Sherlock groans.
Squinting through the light of the telly, John makes out Sherlock’s shape on the floor. Sherlock’s trousers blend in well enough with the shadows, but he’s shucked his shirt as much as possible. His pale back looks like a cross between moonlight and radioactive milk.
John moves his feet. “What are you doing down there?”
“It’s cooler.”
With some contorting, John bends down and nearly touches Sherlock’s back. He doesn’t need to. Like so much sweat, heat pours off Sherlock, much more than is remotely safe.
“Water and ice,” John promises, standing.
“Don’t go.”
“I’m only going into the kitchen.”
Sherlock props his head up on his right arm. “You can’t leave me alone like this.”
“I’m not leaving. I’m right here.” John hesitates between the kitchen doors before returning and putting the next DVD in. “See? Still film night.”
“Tired,” Sherlock whinges.
“Do you hurt yet? Like it’s pushing into your extremities?”
Sherlock makes a low moan of what can only be pained agreement.
“...Okay,” John decides. “I’m going to unlock you. You can sprawl on the sofa, you’ll be more comfortable.”
Another groan.
“While you decide on that, I’ll get you water. I’m right here. Not going anywhere.”
“I know that. Rationally.”
“Makes you nervous, doesn’t it?”
Sherlock makes a sound that John hopes is a laugh. Watching Sherlock’s fake tears on a case is bad enough. Real ones might do John’s head in.
When he returns to Sherlock with a glass, John forces Sherlock to sit upright and finds Sherlock’s face reassuringly dry. Excluding the sweat. The sweat is worrying, but as long as he still has water left to sweat, it could be worse.
“Drink,” John urges. “It’ll feel cold, c’mon.”
After the first reluctant sip, Sherlock begins to chug despite John’s instructions not to. He finishes with a gasp and immediately passes the glass back to John. “More.”
John claps him on the shoulder and stands. Night blurs into morning as John tends to Sherlock. With the creeping sunlight, there follows the tiniest rise in temperature. John is thankful, though Sherlock is decidedly not. Somewhere in there, John transfers Sherlock to the sofa. John nods off in his armchair a second time, and when he wakes, Sherlock has stripped down to his briefs.
“John,” Sherlock rasps.
“Coming.” John wobbles as he stands, his head pounding. More water for Sherlock and another damp cloth. John makes a token attempt to hydrate as well.
Sprawled for maximum surface area, Sherlock groans. “Hurts.”
“I know.” Keeping his hand above Sherlock’s skin, John feels the heat radiating off Sherlock’s back and arm. Warmth surges into burning heat over Sherlock’s forearm. “Here?”
Sherlock nods into the sofa cushion.
“And it’s about hit your knees, too?”
Another nod, this one with an accompanying whimper.
“Okay. I’m going to try something.” He fetches another glass and fills it with the last of the ice. This, he places on the coffee table. He cups his hands around it before slowly laying his palm on Sherlock’s arm.
Sherlock groans, a sound of pure relief.
John starts a gentle massage, periodically cooling his hands. He begins to shiver, but Sherlock doesn’t. “I’ll be right back,” he promises. “No, I will be, it’s okay.” He works his wrist free from Sherlock’s trembling grip. “Shh, it’s all right.”
“Don’t go.”
“I’m getting a jumper. Just going upstairs.”
Sherlock shakes his head against the sofa cushion, but John hurries off anyway. It’s fucking freezing in here and the ice isn’t helping. He comes back wearing his thickest socks and two jumpers over a button-down and a t-shirt. Still a bit nippy, but not so bitter cold as a minute ago.
At the sight of John returning, Sherlock flops off the sofa in an ill-fated attempt to stand. He lies where he lands, his head toward John, one foot under the coffee table. Lying on his back with sweat-soaked pants, he’s practically giving John the full frontal.
“You usually have a sheet when you’re sprawling about naked,” John says. “Never thought I’d say this, but I miss the sheet.”
“Ugh, hot.” Sherlock gestures vaguely toward the cup on the coffee table. “Do my legs, they’re unbearable.”
John rolls his eyes but circles around the table and helps the little he can. His calves tinge in sympathy as he kneels, muscle memory of the inferno too fresh to ignore. “Can’t use too much ice. If you start shivering, that’ll only raise your core temperature.”
“I know. I’m not an idiot.”
“Yes you are.” He works his hands against taut muscle and overheated skin. It’s not John’s area of expertise, but a patient is a patient and John can finish his life with at least some professional pride. Gradually, Sherlock’s tension eases until muscle can be distinguished from bone. That’s all Sherlock is, bone and skin and trembling fever. They’ll need more than a damp cloth and some ice for this. “I’m going to draw you a bath before I freeze my hands off.”
“Such a good cold,” Sherlock argues sleepily. Much better.
“You’ll have more of it soon,” John promises. “Give me a mo’. I’ll drag you over once I get the tap running.”
“I can get up,” Sherlock says without moving.
“Can you?”
“Mm.”
Again, John leaves the human lump known as Sherlock Holmes. When he returns, Sherlock has successfully rolled onto his stomach. The effort involved may have killed him.
“Transport failing me, John,” Sherlock complains. “It’s unfair.”
“You poor git. C’mon, up we go.” John doesn’t quite drag Sherlock down the hall. He doesn’t exactly drop Sherlock in the bath and he doesn't quite drown him, but those are very pleasant mental images to consider.
John shakes and shivers while Sherlock sighs. Seated on the toilet with the lid down, John straightens his back. His spine pops. He returns to his hunch immediately after. If the water in the tub weren’t lukewarm, John might have been able to glean some heat from it. Not that the relative chill stops Sherlock’s complaints.
“I’m boiling alive,” Sherlock tells him, his absolute seriousness rivalling a toddler’s.
“Well, I’m not,” John snaps. He keeps his eyes on the closed loo door. In order to submerge his giraffe-scale limbs, Sherlock has folded his legs in the tub and thereby put his crotch on prominent display. Army experience or not, John can’t talk in the loo if someone else’s cock is out. They are two men in a loo, not a locker room. If John had to piss, that would be one thing, but this is another.
“It’s annoying, watching you freeze,” Sherlock says. “Go away.”
“If I cuff you in the tub, you could have an accident.” He could sit outside, but there’s too much risk to that. In a loo, there are many other means for Sherlock to intentionally end his life if Sherlock’s still convinced there’s a chance John will survive withdrawal.
Sherlock sloshes a bit. “Then don’t cuff me. When I want to bite you, I’ll come.”
“I’ll sit in the hall.”
“You realise you need to stay alive until I bite you, correct? Go to bed.”
The thought of blankets, of nesting in a pile of warmth, compels John to stand. “And you won’t go outside?”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Not even downstairs.”
John leaves the cold loo and staggers upstairs past his removed door. His second thoughts only occur once the duvet covers him to the chin. Curling up into a quivering puddle distracts him from any further thoughts. He shifts uncomfortably before pulling the cuffs and mobiles out of his pockets. These go on his bedside table.
Shaking and trembling despite his layers, he waits. Time passes. The chill worsens. John’s stomach rumbles, and though he can think of food-of steaming soup and toasted bread-he can’t bear leaving the shelter of his bed. This isn’t what dying felt like, the last time. A bullet really would have been kinder.
Downstairs, pipes gurgle as the tub drains. Please let that be the tub draining. John pulls the duvet over his head, tucking himself entirely within his cloth cocoon. Arms wrapped tight about himself, he strains his ears for any sound beyond the quaking of his clothing against bed sheets.
The air grows hot and humid between his face and the duvet. His skin warms while his core freezes. When he can muster the energy to move, he scratches at his stubble.
Footsteps pad up the stairs and John stops scratching. “...Sh-Sherlock?” His teeth chatter.
The floor creaks as Sherlock navigates around the leaning door. “It’s all right,” Sherlock tells him, voice deep and rough even through the duvet. “I know how to take care of you now.” Sherlock approaches the bed. He settles on the edge, his heat blazing through so many layers.
Sherlock tugs back the duvet, sending a burst of cold air and harsh light against John’s face. The sticky sweet scent of infection clings to Sherlock’s skin. John’s mouth waters. His hair in wet, curling clumps, his body unabashedly naked, Sherlock watches him in turn.
“Please,” John whispers.
Nodding, Sherlock sets his hands along the sides of John’s neck. Sherlock blazes. John gasps as heat presses its way inward, emanating from Sherlock’s touch but still unable to reach John’s frozen core.
“Christ, you’re so hot.” John reaches, touches, the backs of his hands lost to chill while his palms bask against skin. He pulls Sherlock close, or Sherlock tumbles onto him, or Sherlock drags John against himself; only the result matters.
Sherlock presses his face into the ice of John’s throat. John melts. He trembles in anticipation of true heat, but Sherlock doesn’t bite him. John writhes for it and Sherlock only nips. In an ineffectual struggle, Sherlock tugs at John’s jumper. “Stop lying on it,” he demands. His weight pins John’s thighs, his eyes turn wild, and his hands drag John upward to force him to sit. Sherlock tears the first jumper off, but there’s a second beneath, a buttoned cardigan, and two more layers beneath even that.
Dying for heat, John interferes with all efforts to disrobe him. He clutches Sherlock around the middle, over his shoulders, anyway Sherlock can be held mid-struggle. Sherlock burns as if on fire. Wouldn’t that be lovely, to be on fire?
“Do it,” John begs. He bites, hard, on Sherlock’s collarbone, but doesn’t break the skin. Time for that later. John’s turn now. “You’re so hot, Sherlock, you’re just amazing. God, I need this, you’ve no idea.”
“Yes I do,” Sherlock practically growls, fighting his way through John’s cardigan and button-down. He shoves both layers over John’s shoulders and flings them aside before pinning John back against the bed. John trembles and shivers, but he doesn’t resist when Sherlock kicks the duvet off. Not when this puts Sherlock on top of him, directly on top of him, the best blanket the world has ever known. Sharp and impossibly everywhere, Sherlock’s hips jab into John’s. Sherlock keeps shifting as if they might slot together. Seeking out a spot, Sherlock lips along John’s jaw.
John wraps his arms around Sherlock anew, holds tight, digs his fingers into muscle where it flexes over bone. “Do it.” John’s t-shirt rucks up with Sherlock’s motions. Sherlock’s hands wander downward and Sherlock has to adjust, breaking the seal of his lips on John’s skin.
John very nearly cries. Hands slippery with sweat, he grabs at Sherlock’s shoulders. “What the hell are you waiting for?”
Sherlock rears up, kneeling, and scoops up John’s legs beneath the knees. Droplets fall from his hair onto John’s chest. Still tugging at John’s legs, Sherlock plunges back on top of him. Half-winded, stunned from impact and heat, John wraps arms and legs both about Sherlock. His hand slides in a wet, sticky smear on Sherlock’s back. John finds the scratch after a moment of fumbling.
“I tore you open,” John says, marvelling.
His pelvis bruising John’s, Sherlock sets their foreheads together and pants, “I know.”
John laughs. Sherlock bites John’s mouth, his lower lip. John groans. His body jerks. He tastes Sherlock before he tastes his own blood. Sherlock drinks him, gnaws on him more. The sharp pain sets off the chaffing friction between their lower bodies. For one absurd instant, John thinks Sherlock must have three hipbones, all blazing knives, the lot of them, but the thought passes. John digs his fingers into Sherlock’s back. John claws, and Sherlock gasps and twists and never stops sucking at John’s lip.
When Sherlock’s taste overpowers the tang of blood, Sherlock seeks farther into John’s mouth with his tongue. A metallic aftertaste clings to Sherlock, and John cannot sate himself on it no matter how he tries. He’s warm, but not warm enough. Sherlock’s damp hair clings to John’s forehead and brings a chill with it. John shifts to brush the locks away, and the scent of blood spikes.
Sherlock seizes John by the wrist and sucks on his fingers, his mouth taking in three in a comfortable motion. John twitches as Sherlock’s tongue explores his bloody fingertips, his knuckles. Sherlock closes his eyes. His hips stop. His entire body stops, absolutely tense, except to shove John harder against the mattress. Teeth tight against John’s fingers, Sherlock sighs out through his nostrils. John shivers when Sherlock pops off.
“My blood, not yours,” Sherlock reports, eyes hazy.
“Your back,” John says.
“Yes.”
John chews on his lip until the blood begins to well again. He and Sherlock say nothing for a significant time after, enraptured by the taste, enthralled by the heat. John’s hands sticks to Sherlock’s back over the fresh wounds, blood kept in reserve. Tongue lazily flicking out, Sherlock nibbles at John’s lip until the tension in his body slips away.
Eyes closed, John feels the scratch of a stubbly cheek against his own, but the sensation is oddly distant. It doesn’t irritate. It simply is. All of John wants to lie limp, just the way Sherlock lies on top of him. He listens to Sherlock breathing beside his ear. So much heat. John drifts in it. Sherlock’s hips don’t hurt John’s anymore, or not as much.
Slowly drifting, John jerks back to awareness as his hand peels off Sherlock’s back. John nearly forgot. He has to do something important.
Sherlock groans and wraps an arm around John’s head, elbow on John’s shoulder, hand in his hair. “Stay.”
“Not going.”
“Then stay still.”
John finds words for what he wants. “Let me lick you.”
Sherlock turns his head. John also turns his head. Their noses do brief and bewildered battle. Much too close, John can’t focus his eyes on Sherlock’s. Sherlock’s hand shifts on John’s head. Sherlock says, “You’re a little late for that.”
John lifts his hand from Sherlock’s back and looks at the smudge of red. “You’re still bleeding.”
“Oh,” Sherlock says, as if this never occurred to him. “You want to lick my back.”
“Yeah.”
Sherlock flushes as he nods, blood welling up against his skin, but John moves to lap him up where he already leaks. Sprawled on his stomach, Sherlock groans and sighs. John licks sweat and blood both, leaving only saliva. He swallows each taste of heat.
“Stings,” Sherlock murmurs against the pillow.
John lifts his head, his eyes on Sherlock’s nape. “Should I stop?”
Sherlock reaches back for John’s hand. An odd gesture, but he relaxes so when John lets him entwine their fingers. “Never.”
“That’s longer than we have, Sherlock.”
Sherlock huffs. Lying atop his back, John rides the breath. Sherlock says, “Until we die, then.”
“Yeah, all right.” John lowers his mouth, content.
previous | next
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 5.3k out of 31k
Beta: seijichan, lifeonmars, prettyarbitrary
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: “If you want me to comfort you over my imminent death, I will be kicking you in the head,” John warns.
Warnings: Eventual off-screen character death, illness both physical and mental, assault, graphic violence, blood, bloodplay, explicit sexual behavior, dubcon, plague, attempted suicide
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
The floor hard on his knees, John sits on Sherlock’s stomach, rising and falling incrementally with Sherlock’s breaths. Though Sherlock’s pulse visibly throbs at his neck, Sherlock’s breathing is relatively slow.
“You’re trying to calm down,” John pieces together.
Sherlock nods, his unmarked hand still over his eyes. His lips remain pressed together.
“It’s okay,” John says.
Sherlock swallows. “I know.” He lifts his hand and turns it over, his palm upward in a command. “Phone.”
Unthinking, John digs into his trouser pocket. He very nearly puts the mobile in Sherlock’s hand.
“Please,” Sherlock adds, voice firm. He looks up at John with clear eyes. Stress and exhaustion line his face, the bags under his eyes like bruises, and yet Sherlock radiates control.
John scrambles off him. His leg strikes the coffee table, and with windmilling arms, he falls backward onto the sofa. John’s mobile remains clutched in his hand.
Stiffly, Sherlock climbs to his feet. He follows John and sits on the coffee table. “This was the deal, John,” he says, his words even and slow as if speaking to a particularly thick client. “If I couldn’t contain you, we would call emergency services.”
“But I was going to...” John trails off, a mental weight lifting and a moral one descending. “Oh. Oh, God.” He drops the mobile on the sofa and grabs Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock flinches but doesn’t pull away. John inspects the damage. “I bit you. Jesus fuck. I broke the skin.”
Sherlock leans forward, his left hand retrieving John’s mobile. “It’s happened, and now we have to call.” Leaning back on the coffee table, Sherlock manages to slide his bleeding hand into his tight trouser pocket. He winces but persists. The first battery he pulls out is the wrong one.
“That’s what I thought I was doing,” John says. “I swear. Sherlock, I promise I thought I was going to call.”
Sherlock slots the correct battery into the mobile. “We’re calling now.”
“I just killed you.” The words literally taste of Sherlock’s blood. John needs to wash his mouth out. No, more. John needs to go back in time and tear himself limb from limb.
“Don’t bother me with your guilt. Consider it my last request, if that will keep you from sulking.”
“I came down to get help, and then I...” The memory floats past him, through him, vague and dreamlike. “I wouldn’t even have gone for you if you hadn’t-what are you doing?”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “You wanted to call and now I’m calling.” John’s mobile lets out its usual chime as it turns on.
“Why were the batteries in your pocket?” John asks. “You never turn your phone off. What were you doing with your phone off?” He reaches for the mobile. “Do you mind? You’re the carrier now, I should be calling.”
“I’m closer to lucidity,” Sherlock says. “Though you are returning to it more rapidly than expected.”
“‘Expected’,” John repeats. He watches blankly as Sherlock’s thumb presses on the number pad, and he grabs Sherlock’s hand with both of his. John’s mobile lets out a series of beeps as it hits nine again and again, Sherlock tries to pull away, and John holds fast. “Fucking hell, Sherlock, you knew this would happen!”
“There was a possibility you would get out, but it’s sooner than I’d thought.” He twists his hand away, giving John the phone. “Fine. You call. It’s what you came down here for, isn’t it?”
“You let me kill you. You just...” John stares at his phone in one hand and, with the other, touches Sherlock’s dead mobile in his pocket. “Sherlock, that’s insane.”
Sitting on the coffee table, Sherlock meets John’s gaze without hesitation or guilt or shame, or any other non-Sherlockian emotion. He is, by a very strange standard of normal, still normal. “Make the call, John.”
“Tell me--” John turns his head to the side. He looks up at the ceiling and blinks until his eyes can be trusted not to leak. He clears his throat. “Look, just tell me why you didn’t do anything about the hinges. You can’t have overlooked that. You could’ve nailed a plank down, or, or anything.”
“You’re stalling.” Sherlock leans forward. “You’ll go into withdrawal before I lose lucidity, John. Once that happens, neither of us will call.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ll tell you once you call.”
John turns his mobile off. He tucks it onto his pocket alongside the handcuffs and switches his grip to the cuffs. “Then there is a reason.”
“John.” Sherlock grips him by the shoulders. “Your mind has been compromised. I will explain, but we cannot delay. Call first.”
With a forceful shrug, John shakes off Sherlock’s hands. “You mean, I’m going to hate the reason.”
“I mean, you’ve become a human incubator and an increasingly large part of you is going to try to stay that way. Call now, or give me my mobile back.”
John grits his teeth. “I’m not-fine. Fine.”
Sherlock holds his left hand out, his right hand resting on his knee and bleeding.
John whips the cuffs out and goes for Sherlock’s left arm first. Sherlock resists, but then, he would. John shoves forward and they topple over the coffee table together. Sherlock lands hard on his back, John again straddling him. Sherlock thrashes, flinging his right hand as far away from John as he can. Lunging forward, John jerks Sherlock’s left arm up to the metal bar on Sherlock’s armchair. Sherlock tries to shout and John promptly punches him in the solar plexus.
Winded, Sherlock curls in on himself involuntarily. He makes a rattling, gasping noise somewhat like John’s name. John locks the other cuff tight, securing Sherlock to the side of the armchair. He pats down Sherlock’s pockets immediately after and retrieves the handcuff key. Panting, John kneels on the floor while Sherlock thrashes. Sherlock keeps trying to shout without air.
In a very simple solution, John sticks his fingers into Sherlock’s mouth. “Go ahead. Bite me.”
Sherlock immediately opens his mouth as wide as he can. Chest heaving, he breathes through his nose.
“...Okay,” John says, mentally adjusting to the sensation of Sherlock’s breath and tongue on his fingers. Sherlock doesn’t feel cold anymore, or maybe it’s John that doesn’t feel hot. “You don’t want to bite me. It’s too soon for you to be able to transfer it, but... you want to be the carrier when we call. Why?”
Rolling his eyes, Sherlock makes a sarcastic noise around John’s fingers.
John removes his hand and wipes it on his trousers.
“There’s always a chance it could be lost in transfer,” Sherlock says. “That’s why I let you bite me. That’s all.”
“And then I’d die of withdrawal,” John says. “Now it’s both of us dead. That’s a terrible plan.”
Sherlock shrugs.
“If it could be lost in transfer, bite me. Doesn’t matter.” John reaches for Sherlock’s mouth a second time and Sherlock turns his head away. Impossibly early for risk of transfer, and still this. “...Right. You do want to be the carrier. Why?”
Sherlock doesn’t answer.
Knees aching, John stands.
Sherlock watches him from the floor. “Are you going to call now?”
“Give me a minute,” John says. He looks around. “Where’s my laptop?”
“John, you can write your final goodbyes after calling.”
“Never mind, I see it.” Barefoot, John pads into the kitchen. His laptop’s fan whirrs on the table. He watches his screensaver for a moment, a new photo of his army mates and civilian acquaintances being added to a digital pile every five seconds. Shaking his head, he taps the touchpad.
His investigation takes only moments. It helps that Sherlock left the tabs open. “Oh.” John reads.
A screeching noise of metal on wood distracts John for only a moment. In response, John unplugs his laptop and goes to the stairs. He stands in the landing, still reading. In the time John takes to finish, Sherlock manages to lug his armchair to the sitting room door.
“John, we can’t wait,” Sherlock insists, possibly more out of breath than before.
“Because surviving withdrawal from the first round of incubation might be possible?” John pulls the laptop lid halfway down to better glare at Sherlock. “Oh, lovely! A doctor in Argentina’s managed it twice! Did you even read the study, Sherlock? She lost over ninety-eight percent of her patients!”
“Except for the two who began treatment within an hour of their first time biting someone,” Sherlock counters. “And she kept seventy-three percent of patients alive, on average, ten hours longer than previously thought possible. Her methods are in the process of being adopted by all major hospitals for early cases. Now call.”
John snaps his laptop shut. Keeping out of Sherlock’s reach, he stomps toward Sherlock’s bedroom. He finds Sherlock’s laptop quickly enough and returns to the landing. In John’s short absence, Sherlock wedged his armchair in the doorframe and is now apparently bent on dislocating his arm or simply his hand. John bats Sherlock’s straining arm away and climbs up the stairs. He puts both laptops on the upper landing and leaves the mobiles on top of them.
“John? John, what are you doing? We’ve only half an hour left!”
John shakes his head.
“John, I am dying for this!” Sherlock shouts. “Call them now!”
“No,” John says. “When you bite me back, then I’ll call.”
Sherlock blanches from pale to ashen. He stops tugging at the handcuffs. “You can’t be serious.”
“I fucked up with Alexis,” John says. “I die. You don’t.”
“Don’t be tedious.”
John shakes his head.
Sherlock frowns.
John shucks his t-shirt.
Sherlock’s frown deepens.
A small scuffle occurs. It ends with John’s t-shirt twisted into a thick rope and forced between Sherlock’s teeth. John holds fast, his chest pressed against Sherlock’s back, Sherlock pressed against the hallway wall. The handcuff anchors Sherlock’s left arm to the chair, forcing Sherlock to stoop and compromising his centre of gravity. Gagged and with only one arm to fight with, Sherlock takes far too long to stop struggling, but at least he’s quiet about it.
Straining his ears, John doesn’t hear anything from the adjacent apartment. Mrs Turner’s married ones are much too accustomed to the noise of Sherlock’s experiments to become worried now.
“I don’t need to hold you for a day,” John says. “You’re hoping I’m too stupid to see that, but I’m not. Thirty minutes, Sherlock. Then I’m dead, no question about it, and we’ll put you through the withdrawal treatment.”
Sherlock beats his head against the wall, a loud, percussive thump. Stunned, John watches the first impact, the second, and then he thinks to prevent the third, yanking back on this t-shirt with both hands like reins to a horse’s bit. Despite the horrifically awkward angle, John manages it. Sherlock chokes.
John kicks him in the back of each knee. Sherlock goes down, hard, and John maintains his grip on the t-shirt all the way. “None of that, you arse. Someone has to save you from yourself, and, like it or not, that’s me.”
More thrashing. More groaning. John rams his good shoulder against Sherlock’s spine and keeps him pinned against the wall in a kneeling position.
“I’d rather kill myself than you, do you understand me?” John demands. “I’ve seen you die once and I am never seeing that again, you hear me? I put up with so much of your shit, you arrogant prick. I am not putting up with that.”
Via his nose, Sherlock responds with a disdainful sigh.
“You’re an idiot,” John tells him. “You shot Alexis on sight, but God forbid we call emergency services on me.”
Sherlock slaps his foot against the landing. John presses him harder against the wall, forcing Sherlock’s other arm tight against his back.
“You’re going to behave yourself now,” John continues. “Because I’m dead, Sherlock. These are my final hours and they might be yours too, so you are going to shut the hell up, and you are not going to call until you bite me, and you are not going to die.”
Gagged, cuffed, Sherlock’s struggles amount to little more than tense twitching. John holds him fast anyway.
“Bored,” Sherlock whinges. He flops this way and that in his armchair, still tethered.
John doesn’t look away from the telly. “You’re going to hurt yourself, doing that.”
Sherlock snorts. “Says the man who practically tore my arms off.”
John turns the volume up higher. Late night talk shows prattle on about things John doesn’t much care about.
“Is this really how you want to spend your final hours?” Sherlock asks. “Five hours into untreated withdrawal, you might have as long as two days left.”
“I have less than a day left,” John corrects.
“I refuse to bite you,” Sherlock says.
“We’ll see how you feel in a couple hours.” The programme goes to adverts. John can feel his eyes glaze over.
“We should have a film night,” Sherlock says. Hunched in his chair, he hugs his knees with his right arm and tilts to his left. His eyes are lost where hair turns to shadow on his face. “We can marathon the list. It’s hardly as if we have any other plans.”
“We wouldn’t even get through Star Wars.” On the other hand, no adverts. Also, Star Wars. It’d give Sherlock something else to complain about, at least.
“You want me to watch them, and I am not watching them without you. Now or never, John.”
John crosses his arms and pretends to mull it over. “Do we have any popcorn?”
“I haven’t touched your stash since the last time,” Sherlock says, naturally omitting which last time he’s referring to.
Rolling his eyes, John abandons his armchair and blanket to walk briskly into the kitchen. “Is the microwave safe?”
“Should be.”
Not exactly comforting, but John leaves it running and heads upstairs for socks and a jumper. Sherlock eyes him oddly upon his return.
“How can you bear it? It’s stifling in here,” Sherlock complains.
“It gets cold at night, Sherlock.” John settles back into his pocket of warmth, pulling his blanket over his legs. “That whole bit where we turn away from the sun for a few hours?”
Sherlock glares at him before attempting an ill-fated flop. He groans and favours his arm, but John bets on frustration as the cause. “If anyone should be snippy, it ought to be the one handcuffed to a chair.”
“Nope,” John says, listening to the popcorn pop. “It should be the one dying.”
With a wrinkled nose and disdainful eyes, Sherlock stands, manoeuvres around the armrest, and whips the blanket off John’s lap.
“Oi!”
Sherlock immediately plunks himself back down into his chair and bundles the blanket up as best he can with one arm. He hunches around the blanket sullenly.
“Right then,” John says. “No popcorn for you.”
John’s resolve lasts nearly twenty minutes into the film. Ultimately, he drags his chair next to Sherlock’s, effectively pinning Sherlock’s arm between the furniture. He sets the bowl over the gap between their armrests. Sherlock sighs and passes back John’s blanket. “It was too hot anyway,” Sherlock complains.
Unthinking, John reaches out and touches Sherlock’s forehead. “Bit warm. Don’t think it’s the fever yet. Do you have any aches?”
“All my free limbs are fine, thank you. Pleasingly mobile.”
John lowers his hand with a sigh. “Arse.”
“My arse is also fine.”
John giggles and nudges the popcorn bowl closer to Sherlock. Beside him, Sherlock chews obnoxiously loudly. He chomps away until there’s another spot of dialogue, and then he promptly talks over it.
God, John will miss this. Or not. Death’s like that, he supposes.
Sherlock kicks him in the leg.
John promptly takes the popcorn back. “Oi, what?”
“Stop thinking like that.”
“Like what?”
Sherlock simply looks at him. His face is a bruised shadow.
“Yeah, okay,” John says, and he starts talking about the film instead. Sherlock even pretends to listen.
John jolts awake, clapping his hand to his neck. Though he makes his heavy armchair jump beneath him, there’s no point: he’s not bleeding. Sherlock hasn’t bitten him yet. That might hurt less than sleeping in his chair. Jesus, that’s painful.
“Stop kicking,” Sherlock groans.
Squinting through the light of the telly, John makes out Sherlock’s shape on the floor. Sherlock’s trousers blend in well enough with the shadows, but he’s shucked his shirt as much as possible. His pale back looks like a cross between moonlight and radioactive milk.
John moves his feet. “What are you doing down there?”
“It’s cooler.”
With some contorting, John bends down and nearly touches Sherlock’s back. He doesn’t need to. Like so much sweat, heat pours off Sherlock, much more than is remotely safe.
“Water and ice,” John promises, standing.
“Don’t go.”
“I’m only going into the kitchen.”
Sherlock props his head up on his right arm. “You can’t leave me alone like this.”
“I’m not leaving. I’m right here.” John hesitates between the kitchen doors before returning and putting the next DVD in. “See? Still film night.”
“Tired,” Sherlock whinges.
“Do you hurt yet? Like it’s pushing into your extremities?”
Sherlock makes a low moan of what can only be pained agreement.
“...Okay,” John decides. “I’m going to unlock you. You can sprawl on the sofa, you’ll be more comfortable.”
Another groan.
“While you decide on that, I’ll get you water. I’m right here. Not going anywhere.”
“I know that. Rationally.”
“Makes you nervous, doesn’t it?”
Sherlock makes a sound that John hopes is a laugh. Watching Sherlock’s fake tears on a case is bad enough. Real ones might do John’s head in.
When he returns to Sherlock with a glass, John forces Sherlock to sit upright and finds Sherlock’s face reassuringly dry. Excluding the sweat. The sweat is worrying, but as long as he still has water left to sweat, it could be worse.
“Drink,” John urges. “It’ll feel cold, c’mon.”
After the first reluctant sip, Sherlock begins to chug despite John’s instructions not to. He finishes with a gasp and immediately passes the glass back to John. “More.”
John claps him on the shoulder and stands. Night blurs into morning as John tends to Sherlock. With the creeping sunlight, there follows the tiniest rise in temperature. John is thankful, though Sherlock is decidedly not. Somewhere in there, John transfers Sherlock to the sofa. John nods off in his armchair a second time, and when he wakes, Sherlock has stripped down to his briefs.
“John,” Sherlock rasps.
“Coming.” John wobbles as he stands, his head pounding. More water for Sherlock and another damp cloth. John makes a token attempt to hydrate as well.
Sprawled for maximum surface area, Sherlock groans. “Hurts.”
“I know.” Keeping his hand above Sherlock’s skin, John feels the heat radiating off Sherlock’s back and arm. Warmth surges into burning heat over Sherlock’s forearm. “Here?”
Sherlock nods into the sofa cushion.
“And it’s about hit your knees, too?”
Another nod, this one with an accompanying whimper.
“Okay. I’m going to try something.” He fetches another glass and fills it with the last of the ice. This, he places on the coffee table. He cups his hands around it before slowly laying his palm on Sherlock’s arm.
Sherlock groans, a sound of pure relief.
John starts a gentle massage, periodically cooling his hands. He begins to shiver, but Sherlock doesn’t. “I’ll be right back,” he promises. “No, I will be, it’s okay.” He works his wrist free from Sherlock’s trembling grip. “Shh, it’s all right.”
“Don’t go.”
“I’m getting a jumper. Just going upstairs.”
Sherlock shakes his head against the sofa cushion, but John hurries off anyway. It’s fucking freezing in here and the ice isn’t helping. He comes back wearing his thickest socks and two jumpers over a button-down and a t-shirt. Still a bit nippy, but not so bitter cold as a minute ago.
At the sight of John returning, Sherlock flops off the sofa in an ill-fated attempt to stand. He lies where he lands, his head toward John, one foot under the coffee table. Lying on his back with sweat-soaked pants, he’s practically giving John the full frontal.
“You usually have a sheet when you’re sprawling about naked,” John says. “Never thought I’d say this, but I miss the sheet.”
“Ugh, hot.” Sherlock gestures vaguely toward the cup on the coffee table. “Do my legs, they’re unbearable.”
John rolls his eyes but circles around the table and helps the little he can. His calves tinge in sympathy as he kneels, muscle memory of the inferno too fresh to ignore. “Can’t use too much ice. If you start shivering, that’ll only raise your core temperature.”
“I know. I’m not an idiot.”
“Yes you are.” He works his hands against taut muscle and overheated skin. It’s not John’s area of expertise, but a patient is a patient and John can finish his life with at least some professional pride. Gradually, Sherlock’s tension eases until muscle can be distinguished from bone. That’s all Sherlock is, bone and skin and trembling fever. They’ll need more than a damp cloth and some ice for this. “I’m going to draw you a bath before I freeze my hands off.”
“Such a good cold,” Sherlock argues sleepily. Much better.
“You’ll have more of it soon,” John promises. “Give me a mo’. I’ll drag you over once I get the tap running.”
“I can get up,” Sherlock says without moving.
“Can you?”
“Mm.”
Again, John leaves the human lump known as Sherlock Holmes. When he returns, Sherlock has successfully rolled onto his stomach. The effort involved may have killed him.
“Transport failing me, John,” Sherlock complains. “It’s unfair.”
“You poor git. C’mon, up we go.” John doesn’t quite drag Sherlock down the hall. He doesn’t exactly drop Sherlock in the bath and he doesn't quite drown him, but those are very pleasant mental images to consider.
John shakes and shivers while Sherlock sighs. Seated on the toilet with the lid down, John straightens his back. His spine pops. He returns to his hunch immediately after. If the water in the tub weren’t lukewarm, John might have been able to glean some heat from it. Not that the relative chill stops Sherlock’s complaints.
“I’m boiling alive,” Sherlock tells him, his absolute seriousness rivalling a toddler’s.
“Well, I’m not,” John snaps. He keeps his eyes on the closed loo door. In order to submerge his giraffe-scale limbs, Sherlock has folded his legs in the tub and thereby put his crotch on prominent display. Army experience or not, John can’t talk in the loo if someone else’s cock is out. They are two men in a loo, not a locker room. If John had to piss, that would be one thing, but this is another.
“It’s annoying, watching you freeze,” Sherlock says. “Go away.”
“If I cuff you in the tub, you could have an accident.” He could sit outside, but there’s too much risk to that. In a loo, there are many other means for Sherlock to intentionally end his life if Sherlock’s still convinced there’s a chance John will survive withdrawal.
Sherlock sloshes a bit. “Then don’t cuff me. When I want to bite you, I’ll come.”
“I’ll sit in the hall.”
“You realise you need to stay alive until I bite you, correct? Go to bed.”
The thought of blankets, of nesting in a pile of warmth, compels John to stand. “And you won’t go outside?”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Not even downstairs.”
John leaves the cold loo and staggers upstairs past his removed door. His second thoughts only occur once the duvet covers him to the chin. Curling up into a quivering puddle distracts him from any further thoughts. He shifts uncomfortably before pulling the cuffs and mobiles out of his pockets. These go on his bedside table.
Shaking and trembling despite his layers, he waits. Time passes. The chill worsens. John’s stomach rumbles, and though he can think of food-of steaming soup and toasted bread-he can’t bear leaving the shelter of his bed. This isn’t what dying felt like, the last time. A bullet really would have been kinder.
Downstairs, pipes gurgle as the tub drains. Please let that be the tub draining. John pulls the duvet over his head, tucking himself entirely within his cloth cocoon. Arms wrapped tight about himself, he strains his ears for any sound beyond the quaking of his clothing against bed sheets.
The air grows hot and humid between his face and the duvet. His skin warms while his core freezes. When he can muster the energy to move, he scratches at his stubble.
Footsteps pad up the stairs and John stops scratching. “...Sh-Sherlock?” His teeth chatter.
The floor creaks as Sherlock navigates around the leaning door. “It’s all right,” Sherlock tells him, voice deep and rough even through the duvet. “I know how to take care of you now.” Sherlock approaches the bed. He settles on the edge, his heat blazing through so many layers.
Sherlock tugs back the duvet, sending a burst of cold air and harsh light against John’s face. The sticky sweet scent of infection clings to Sherlock’s skin. John’s mouth waters. His hair in wet, curling clumps, his body unabashedly naked, Sherlock watches him in turn.
“Please,” John whispers.
Nodding, Sherlock sets his hands along the sides of John’s neck. Sherlock blazes. John gasps as heat presses its way inward, emanating from Sherlock’s touch but still unable to reach John’s frozen core.
“Christ, you’re so hot.” John reaches, touches, the backs of his hands lost to chill while his palms bask against skin. He pulls Sherlock close, or Sherlock tumbles onto him, or Sherlock drags John against himself; only the result matters.
Sherlock presses his face into the ice of John’s throat. John melts. He trembles in anticipation of true heat, but Sherlock doesn’t bite him. John writhes for it and Sherlock only nips. In an ineffectual struggle, Sherlock tugs at John’s jumper. “Stop lying on it,” he demands. His weight pins John’s thighs, his eyes turn wild, and his hands drag John upward to force him to sit. Sherlock tears the first jumper off, but there’s a second beneath, a buttoned cardigan, and two more layers beneath even that.
Dying for heat, John interferes with all efforts to disrobe him. He clutches Sherlock around the middle, over his shoulders, anyway Sherlock can be held mid-struggle. Sherlock burns as if on fire. Wouldn’t that be lovely, to be on fire?
“Do it,” John begs. He bites, hard, on Sherlock’s collarbone, but doesn’t break the skin. Time for that later. John’s turn now. “You’re so hot, Sherlock, you’re just amazing. God, I need this, you’ve no idea.”
“Yes I do,” Sherlock practically growls, fighting his way through John’s cardigan and button-down. He shoves both layers over John’s shoulders and flings them aside before pinning John back against the bed. John trembles and shivers, but he doesn’t resist when Sherlock kicks the duvet off. Not when this puts Sherlock on top of him, directly on top of him, the best blanket the world has ever known. Sharp and impossibly everywhere, Sherlock’s hips jab into John’s. Sherlock keeps shifting as if they might slot together. Seeking out a spot, Sherlock lips along John’s jaw.
John wraps his arms around Sherlock anew, holds tight, digs his fingers into muscle where it flexes over bone. “Do it.” John’s t-shirt rucks up with Sherlock’s motions. Sherlock’s hands wander downward and Sherlock has to adjust, breaking the seal of his lips on John’s skin.
John very nearly cries. Hands slippery with sweat, he grabs at Sherlock’s shoulders. “What the hell are you waiting for?”
Sherlock rears up, kneeling, and scoops up John’s legs beneath the knees. Droplets fall from his hair onto John’s chest. Still tugging at John’s legs, Sherlock plunges back on top of him. Half-winded, stunned from impact and heat, John wraps arms and legs both about Sherlock. His hand slides in a wet, sticky smear on Sherlock’s back. John finds the scratch after a moment of fumbling.
“I tore you open,” John says, marvelling.
His pelvis bruising John’s, Sherlock sets their foreheads together and pants, “I know.”
John laughs. Sherlock bites John’s mouth, his lower lip. John groans. His body jerks. He tastes Sherlock before he tastes his own blood. Sherlock drinks him, gnaws on him more. The sharp pain sets off the chaffing friction between their lower bodies. For one absurd instant, John thinks Sherlock must have three hipbones, all blazing knives, the lot of them, but the thought passes. John digs his fingers into Sherlock’s back. John claws, and Sherlock gasps and twists and never stops sucking at John’s lip.
When Sherlock’s taste overpowers the tang of blood, Sherlock seeks farther into John’s mouth with his tongue. A metallic aftertaste clings to Sherlock, and John cannot sate himself on it no matter how he tries. He’s warm, but not warm enough. Sherlock’s damp hair clings to John’s forehead and brings a chill with it. John shifts to brush the locks away, and the scent of blood spikes.
Sherlock seizes John by the wrist and sucks on his fingers, his mouth taking in three in a comfortable motion. John twitches as Sherlock’s tongue explores his bloody fingertips, his knuckles. Sherlock closes his eyes. His hips stop. His entire body stops, absolutely tense, except to shove John harder against the mattress. Teeth tight against John’s fingers, Sherlock sighs out through his nostrils. John shivers when Sherlock pops off.
“My blood, not yours,” Sherlock reports, eyes hazy.
“Your back,” John says.
“Yes.”
John chews on his lip until the blood begins to well again. He and Sherlock say nothing for a significant time after, enraptured by the taste, enthralled by the heat. John’s hands sticks to Sherlock’s back over the fresh wounds, blood kept in reserve. Tongue lazily flicking out, Sherlock nibbles at John’s lip until the tension in his body slips away.
Eyes closed, John feels the scratch of a stubbly cheek against his own, but the sensation is oddly distant. It doesn’t irritate. It simply is. All of John wants to lie limp, just the way Sherlock lies on top of him. He listens to Sherlock breathing beside his ear. So much heat. John drifts in it. Sherlock’s hips don’t hurt John’s anymore, or not as much.
Slowly drifting, John jerks back to awareness as his hand peels off Sherlock’s back. John nearly forgot. He has to do something important.
Sherlock groans and wraps an arm around John’s head, elbow on John’s shoulder, hand in his hair. “Stay.”
“Not going.”
“Then stay still.”
John finds words for what he wants. “Let me lick you.”
Sherlock turns his head. John also turns his head. Their noses do brief and bewildered battle. Much too close, John can’t focus his eyes on Sherlock’s. Sherlock’s hand shifts on John’s head. Sherlock says, “You’re a little late for that.”
John lifts his hand from Sherlock’s back and looks at the smudge of red. “You’re still bleeding.”
“Oh,” Sherlock says, as if this never occurred to him. “You want to lick my back.”
“Yeah.”
Sherlock flushes as he nods, blood welling up against his skin, but John moves to lap him up where he already leaks. Sprawled on his stomach, Sherlock groans and sighs. John licks sweat and blood both, leaving only saliva. He swallows each taste of heat.
“Stings,” Sherlock murmurs against the pillow.
John lifts his head, his eyes on Sherlock’s nape. “Should I stop?”
Sherlock reaches back for John’s hand. An odd gesture, but he relaxes so when John lets him entwine their fingers. “Never.”
“That’s longer than we have, Sherlock.”
Sherlock huffs. Lying atop his back, John rides the breath. Sherlock says, “Until we die, then.”
“Yeah, all right.” John lowers his mouth, content.
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