Fic: To The Last Drop - 5/6 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: To The Last Drop
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 6.3k out of 31k
Beta: seijichan, lifeonmars, prettyarbitrary, airynothing
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
Chapter Five
“Jesus, it’s cold.” John searches about blearily and without success. “Where are your sheets?” Even sitting up against the headboard, he can’t spot any in Sherlock’s bedroom.
“Kitchen floor.” Lying more or less facedown, Sherlock flops his hand in the approximate direction.
“Why?”
Sherlock turns his head, arching his neck. “You were about to kill yourself. Why stop to pick up blankets?”
“About that,” John says.
“I will restrain you if necessary,” Sherlock answers without moving.
“How did you know? What I was... doing.”
Sprawled and twisted with an unblinking stare, Sherlock does a remarkable, if unwitting, impression of a cat. “I didn’t hear you in the loo.”
John picks at a spot of blood on the mattress.
Heavier than lead, Sherlock’s gaze transfers to the gooseflesh on John’s bare arms. “Here,” Sherlock says. He reaches backward, folding his arms behind his spine to pull at the sleeves of his open shirt. After a quick squirm, Sherlock deposits the stained garment in John’s lap.
“Thanks.” He spreads the formerly white shirt over his crossed legs. Again, smudges of blood distract him. He traces them with one finger before daring to look at Sherlock’s back. “I should do something about that. And your front.”
“Hm? Why bother?”
“Because-” No, a doctor’s line of reasoning won’t work. Reason itself won’t work. “Because,” John says, “I could make it sting.”
Sherlock crawls up onto all fours before settling back on his haunches. “You could.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Do you want to?” Sherlock counters.
“That’s why I’m asking.”
“Fine. Where are your supplies?”
Leaning heavily on each other, they fetch them together. Sherlock’s robe squeezes at John’s arms, but it’s sufficiently wide in the middle and certainly more than long enough. Already immune to the cold, Sherlock accompanies him in only his trousers.
“I want this on my bed,” Sherlock tells him.
“The sofa would be fine. Or a chair. Anything, really,” John says, but Sherlock’s arm slips from around his shoulders. They both wobble until John staggers after him. “Fine, okay. Wait, no, hold on.”
Sherlock groans.
“I need a few more things, that’s all.” They backtrack into the kitchen. John rifles through the cabinets. Sherlock’s hand rides his left shoulder. Sherlock’s forehead presses into the right shoulder. “We have to eat before we collapse.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Eat and I’ll hurt you.”
Sherlock lifts his head.
John turns around. Their faces are close. Sherlock’s teeth are at the level of John’s eyes, but John’s mouth is of a height with Sherlock’s neck.
“I eat or you’ll hurt me,” Sherlock corrects.
“I said ‘and’. I meant ‘and’.”
“Would you?” Sherlock asks, but there’s no question in his low tone.
John reaches up. Under Sherlock’s greasy hair, John pinches the cartilage of Sherlock’s ear. He digs in with his thumbnail. Eyelids at half-mast, Sherlock sways closer. John lets go.
“Eat,” he orders.
“You were going to see to my chest first.”
“I’ll take care of your back while you eat. Now sit.”
Sherlock doesn’t obey, not immediately. John raises an eyebrow and sets his hand on the knife drawer. Sherlock sits.
John heats up the last tin of soup. He stands close to the stove, arms wrapped around himself as much as the robe will allow.
“Multitasking, John,” Sherlock whinges.
“Shut up, I’m taking care of you.”
“Not enough.”
John is standing at Sherlock’s side. John must have moved from stove to table, but his mind neglected to record that moment. John holds Sherlock’s head between his hands, feeling for clamminess and fever. This is the important fact.
“All right?” John asks him. Sherlock’s face is hotter than John’s hands. This means little, all told. The pallor could be blood loss. Sherlock’s eyes look bruised, and there’s a chance they might be.
“Fine.”
“Liar.”
Sherlock smiles faintly. He sags, his head lolling against John’s hands.
“Observe your symptoms for me,” John says.
“What for?”
“Show off for me.”
“Mm. The heat isn’t as intense. Before, it felt like it was seeping through me. This time is more... submerged. More rapid.”
“What else?”
“Restless.” Sherlock murmurs only a few more details before trailing off, his eyes dull in his pale, discoloured face.
“You look exhausted.”
“Yes, that too.”
“You need to eat.”
“I’m not hungry yet.”
“I’m not waiting until the next round to feed you,” John says. “How’s your stomach?”
“Fine.” A pause. “Acidic.”
“Can you eat without being sick? Honest answer, Sherlock.”
A sullen nod. His hair tickles John’s palms and John lets go.
“Water, first,” John says, moving to fetch him a glass. A searing pain shoots through John’s shoulder, and John cries out, hand flying to his old wound, before he registers Sherlock’s grip on his left arm. Another sharp yank and John topples into the chair and Sherlock both. Momentum carries them only an instant before dropping them to the floor. The chair breaks, some part of it letting out a wooden snap.
Sprawled on the floor, Sherlock grabs at him, eyes as wild as his clutching hands. Sherlock pulls at the robe, pulls himself up by John’s shoulders, and John goes after his wrists. He breaks Sherlock’s grip and shoves him down. The back of Sherlock’s head smacks against the floor. Hands planted on Sherlock’s shoulders, effectively on all-fours, John pins him. Even this doesn’t put an end to Sherlock’s onslaught: he kicks and thrashes, nearly bucking John off him. Sherlock switches tactics as suddenly as he’d begun, and he clamps his legs around John’s waist.
John backhands him across the face.
“John-”
“What the hell are you doing?” He doesn’t bother with another slap, not when he has Sherlock’s neck beneath one hand. “‘I’ll attack John, what a good idea!’ No, it bloody well isn’t!”
“You moved.” Sherlock’s eyes turn the words to poison. “I ought to hamstring you.”
“I took one step! One. In the kitchen.” He increases the pressure of his hand with each phrase. “Where I am staying until you eat your damn food.”
“You can’t leave.”
“Do I look like I’m going somewhere? In my pants, really?” A hard squeeze for emphasis.
Sherlock’s fingers dig into John’s forearms. He gets out one strained syllable: “Stay.”
“I’m staying.” John eases up on the pressure but keeps his thumbs over Sherlock’s throat as Sherlock gasps for air. “Of course I’m staying.”
“You tried to leave.” Sherlock coughs. His legs drop from around John’s middle.
In return, John releases Sherlock’s neck. He rises into a crouching kneel, sitting on his own feet. He keeps one hand on Sherlock’s stomach for balance. “I tried to get you a glass of water, you twat.”
“What, with a gun in your mouth? Is that what you slipped away to do?”
“Christ, Sherlock, I’m not going to do that again.”
“You were about to kill yourself.”
“I changed my mind,” John says.
“John, your gun was in your mouth.”
As Sherlock’s chest heaves, the bite marks over his collarbones glisten, his skin parted to give way to fresh blood. John touches one of the imperfect circles. Broken skin sits better with him than a broken voice.
“John, look at me.”
“I am looking at you.”
“Look me in the eyes.”
John traces the bites. Sherlock’s chest rises and falls. Once, twice, thirty-odd times. On the stove, the soup begins to make sounds soup shouldn’t make.
“I’m going to stand up,” John tells bloody collarbones. “I’m going to turn off the stove. You are going to eat.” Slowly, John stands. His body doesn’t want to move. It’s heavier and more sluggish than it was before the scuffle. “I might eat, too.” He leans down and offers Sherlock his hand.
Sherlock grasps John’s wrist, John returns the grip, and they stagger until more or less vertical. Sherlock doesn’t let go, but John doesn’t expect him to. He turns off the stove with his other hand. His skin prickles with the sudden cold.
“Did I hurt you?” John asks, eyes on the stove dial. “I heard your head hit the floor.”
“Nothing hurts.”
John looks up at him.
“Nothing hurts,” Sherlock repeats. A tinge of awe enters his voice. “I feel it, but it’s not... I wouldn’t call it ‘pain’ any longer.”
“What would you call it?”
“I don’t know.” Looking down at his own chest, Sherlock presses his fingertips into the bite marks. He shivers, a minute tremble of the shoulders. “It’s like scratching an itch. Or stretching. Somewhere between the two.”
“I don’t think I had that, my round,” John says. “It’s changing, it-”
“What was it that you had, during your round?” Sherlock interrupts. “Hm? An itch in the back of your throat, perhaps. Is that what you were feeling?”
Jaw set, John opens the cupboard. He retrieves a bowl and slams the cupboard shut. “Drop it. Just, just eat, all right? You have to eat. Whatever you want afterward, just eat.”
Sherlock steps closer, as if about to bite out John’s eyes. “Tell me why you tried to kill yourself.”
“I’ll tell you after.”
“Tell me during.”
“Fine,” John says. “Fine, have it your way.”
“Excellent. Sit on the floor and wrap the sheet around your legs.”
“What?”
“My sheet, John. It’s right there.” Sherlock gestures to the site of their previous nap.
“For Christ’s sake, you don’t need to tie me up.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “You’re cold. Your legs are bare.” He stares John down until John does as told. Only then does Sherlock join him with bowl and spoon. Some soup sloshes onto the floor. He sits on the sheet, pinning John down without the smallest attempt at subtlety.
Steam rises from the bowl. John leans toward it. The steam dwindles slowly, and the soup takes even longer. When Sherlock has choked down a reasonable amount, John says, “I would rather kill myself than you. That’s all.”
The spoon clinks against the bowl as Sherlock abandons them to the kitchen floor. His eyes never waver from John’s. “I don’t care.”
“Do you want to kill me?” John asks. “I mean, really, do you?”
“If I wanted to kill you, I would have called emergency services days ago.”
“Look,” John says, “there are only so many ways for this to end. But you don’t want to kill me and I don’t want to kill you, and we’d both stop the other from committing suicide. One way or another, we’re going to tear each other apart.”
“But that doesn’t matter.”
John stares at him. “Sherlock, are you listening to yourself?”
“Always.”
“How does that not matter?”
Sherlock groans and tugs his hair into a strained, oily shape. “Everything is gone, yes? You understand that. We no longer have the rest of the world. I am here. You are here. That is everything.” He grips John’s arm. A gleam that has nothing to do with the kitchen light shines in his eyes. “That is what we need to hold onto. We stay together regardless of what follows.”
John presses the back of his free hand to Sherlock’s forehead. “Right, that is definitely the fever talking.”
“You’re simply cold.” Sherlock captures John’s hand and holds it between his palms to demonstrate. He curls John’s fingers, rubs them, and even breathes on them. Sherlock’s teeth come close to John’s fingertips, and John merely holds steady. Catching his eye, Sherlock grins.
“Do you see?” Sherlock asks. “You have to see it, do you see it? It’s so obvious, it’s right there, John.”
John looks at their hands. Scabs and bruises decorate skin drawn over sharp bone. Perhaps they’ve both bled from beneath the fingernails. Maybe that’s each other’s blood. The bite marks on the backs of their hands nearly match.
“We’re all that matters,” Sherlock explains. “No one else is important for the rest of our lives.”
John shakes his head. He begins to pull his hand away before a bright warning in Sherlock’s eyes stops him. “We’re not going to die at the same time,” John says.
“It’ll be close enough.”
“No it fucking won’t,” John says. “I’m not going to survive you again. You do not get to do that to me twice.”
Sherlock narrows his eyes. “Meaning, you’d force me to endure it instead.”
“What happened to us dying ‘close enough’ together?”
“I could engineer that, if you’d be willing.”
“Load my gun and put our heads together, you mean.”
Sherlock turns John’s hand over, baring John’s wrist. He runs a fingertip down the line of John’s tendons.
John shivers. His skin prickles into gooseflesh. He doesn’t pull away.
“There’s another possibility I’d prefer,” Sherlock murmurs.
“You mean...mutual.”
A small nod, far too heavy to be a larger gesture. “I’ll cut you after you do the same for me,” Sherlock promises. “Hold you down if I have to.” Sherlock pins him already, skewers him with eyes and hands and one careful stroking fingertip.
John frees his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth. “We slit each other’s wrists and then we...?”
“Drink each other, yes.”
All the air evacuates John’s lungs in the shape of one word. “Jesus.”
“John, listen, it’s the best way-”
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that,” John interrupts. “That is, that’s brilliant.”
Sherlock grins, wild teeth framed by bitten lips. “Obviously.”
“How do you want to do it?” John leans in and, dizzy, he knocks his forehead against Sherlock’s. “It would be cleaner in the bath.” No carpets stained, no linens ruined. Less of an upset to Mrs Hudson. “D’you want to?” Rising to a kneel, he tugs at Sherlock’s arm, the skin hot beneath his cold fingers.
“Somewhere else. The car will be dropped off within the next twenty-four hours.”
“What car?” John frowns at him and Sherlock frowns back.
“The car to leave in before Mrs Hudson returns. You were quite insistent.”
“Right, that car.” John settles back on the floor. “That was quick, though, wasn’t it? Can’t believe we don’t have forever left.”
Sherlock grins faintly. “We have the rest of our lives.”
John snorts. He catches Sherlock’s eyes and giggles take them both. Breathless, shoulders shaking, John slumps to the floor and curls in on himself, arms folded across his centre. Sherlock lasts only moments longer, soundlessly laughing as he crumples over John. His chin digs into John’s back in a way that would once have been painful.
They subside slowly. Any giggle or hiccup sparks their laughter anew. After a measureless time, they simply fit together on the floor. Their bodies shift as they breathe. Sherlock’s warm weight presses without restraining.
“It should be like this,” John mumbles.
“Hm?”
“When we do it. Me on my stomach with my hand behind my neck. You on my back with your arm on the floor.”
Sherlock hums his approval. “Extremely difficult for you to escape, in that position. Though, hm. You’re not afraid you’ll try to leave me again. In fact, you’re certain you won’t.”
“Is that a yes, then?”
“What do you get out of the position?” Sherlock asks. “You’re getting something you want. What is it?”
“I just... want to, all right?”
For an instant John nearly believes Sherlock might not answer. That instant passes.
“Oh. Oh.” Sherlock’s weight and warmth vanish from John’s side. John grabs him, unthinking, and Sherlock smirks down at him. “That’s it. You want me on top of you so you’ll feel I’m still there, even if I do die first.”
“No,” John says reflexively. “Well, maybe. I don’t know.” He sits up as well and adjusts the sheet around himself. “Are we doing it like that or not?”
“We are. We will.” Sherlock sways or lunges forward, and his hands either cup John’s face or wrap about his neck. So difficult to tell which. “I’ll make it amazing, John. It will be the best way anyone has ever died. I promise.” His thumb brushes over John’s throat, tracing his windpipe. “That is what you want, isn’t it?”
John nods between two blazing palms. “What about you? Is there anything else you’d like?”
Sherlock’s gaze doesn’t shift from John’s eyes. It freezes, as if restrained. “No,” Sherlock answers after a pause. He removes both hands from John’s neck and returns them to his sides. “This is enough.”
“What is it?”
“I said, this is enough.”
“What would make it more than enough?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Sherlock snaps. “I know it’s difficult for you, but try.”
Brow furrowed, John licks his lips. His healing, bitten lower lip. He swallows thickly. “Ah. I’m, um. I’m not... Well. You know I’m not.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Everyone knows you’re not.”
“Sherlock, everyone thinks-”
“They’re morons,” Sherlock interrupts. “Oblivious and thick. Stop talking about them.” He grabs onto the edge of the worktop overhead and drags himself upward. His bare feet shuffle. He wobbles. He leans over the counter and his face leaves John’s line of sight. His ribs place themselves on display instead, bone a poorly kept secret beneath his skin. Here and there, an untouched patch of flesh peeks out between the contusions and abrasions.
John studies Sherlock before inspecting his own hands. He rises into a kneeling position. The sheet barely cushions his knees from the floor. He holds steady. His hands, both hands, hold steady.
When he stands, his head spins. The sheet slips and falls. He catches himself on the counter, on Sherlock. His palm warms on Sherlock’s back while his legs freeze. Without withdrawing from the touch, Sherlock turns his face away.
“I can hear you grinding your teeth,” John says.
Sherlock snorts.
John curls his fingers against Sherlock’s fever-hot skin. He scrapes his fingernails over layers of scratches, some half-healed, most otherwise.
“Something you’d like to do, doctor?” Sherlock drawls, the title an insult. “Still going to bandage me up?”
“No. I want to cut you open.” John picks off a scab and smears the revealed, shallow red over Sherlock’s spine. Another scab, another smudge. Sherlock looks so much better, bloody. Not as pale. With thumb and forefinger, John draws nonsense with rapidly drying ink.
In slow, almost sleepy increments, Sherlock’s head lowers. Tension fluctuates through him, but his varying heart rate doesn’t visibly impact his rate of bleeding. On an exhale, Sherlock makes a noise.
“What was that?” John asks.
“I said, I thought you didn’t want to kill me.”
“I don’t.” He rubs his red fingers against a relatively unmarked spot, but the blood has dried. “I’d keep it light. Make sure you don’t go into shock.”
“We might not be able to now, biologically.”
“Right. So.” John clears his throat. “Let me? Before I fucking freeze?”
Sherlock shakes his head. “I’m not ready to transfer it back. It's still the same strain.”
“No, not what I meant, no,” John says. “I don’t need you to bite me, I don’t need to drink, I just...” He drops his words in an untidy mental jumble and sighs. “The biting is too messy. I want it clean. I, I don’t know. Let me.”
“Where?”
“Your back? To start.”
“In the kitchen?”
“Oh, um.” One chair broken, the table small and cluttered. He doesn’t trust the counters to be sanitary half the time. “No, not in here. The sitting room.”
“You want me on the coffee table,” Sherlock says.
John nods.
Sherlock tugs open the cutlery drawer. “Fine.”
John cuts.
Skin parts. Blood wells. Here a trickle, there a drip. Red obfuscates the clear lines of his making.
There are many lines among the scratches. Never too deep, never too close, never too long. His hands do not slip. His head may spin, the room may rock, but his hands are utterly in control. His right hand presses against the back of Sherlock’s neck. “Stop arching into it.”
“Go faster.”
John doesn’t.
Sherlock’s back continues into his front, skin wrapping over muscle and bone all the way around. There is angle and pressure and speed. There are hisses and gasps, and none of them are from John. John makes them louder regardless.
John kneels next to him. John leans over him. John sits across from him. They move together, John to take a better angle and Sherlock to offer one. Undamaged skin is hard to find. Sherlock sits up while John considers the undersides of his arms.
“I wish we could start from scratch,” John says.
“Hm?” Swaying, Sherlock blinks his eyes open. “Oh. You mean a blank canvas.”
“Yeah,” John says. “Wish you could see your back, too.”
“Take a photo.”
“With what?”
“My phone.”
“Where is it?”
Sherlock pauses, a tiny break in his natural fluidity. “I’ve no idea. Never mind, I can feel it well enough to piece together how it must look.”
John glances up to Sherlock’s eyes. Looking up is far easier than looking away, and so John sits, blade in hand, skin under his palm, watching hazy eyes in a flushed, bruised face. “How does it feel?”
“Sublime. Keep going.”
Choosing the site carefully, John indulges him. John muses, “I should rub you down with salt.”
“Would you?” Sherlock asks, as if this is marvellous, stupendous, as if John has had an unexpected stroke of genius.
“Do you want me to?” John sits up a bit straighter and cracks his back. He can walk to the kitchen, could stand long enough to retrieve the salt, he’s almost sure of it. “Sherlock? Do you want me to?”
“I’ve...” Sherlock swallows. “I’ve had another idea.”
Ah. John had only sparked the stroke of genius after all. “A better idea, you mean.”
“Obviously, I always mean that.”
“Just so we’re clear, I draw the line at flaying you,” John tells him.
Sherlock scoffs. “This is about drawing blood, not losing skin. No.”
“So...?”
“There’s one area that’s effectively untouched. Your blank canvas, if you would.”
John frowns. Matching Sherlock’s gaze, he waits, but no clarification comes. John’s eyes drift upward. “I could give you a good nick on the temple.” He reaches up and lifts Sherlock’s greasy hair out of the way. “Not a big one, I don’t want to risk that on your head.”
“A second area,” Sherlock corrects. “Larger.”
John’s frown returns, deeper than before.
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “I’m sitting on it.”
“Oh,” John says. “Oh, right.”
“You don’t want to.”
“I’d prefer the forehead,” John says.
“Go ahead,” Sherlock says, and John can’t bring the knife so close to Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock closes them, but the worry remains.
John lowers his hands carefully into his lap. They stain the sheet immediately. He wipes the knife clean on the cloth over his thigh, one flat of the blade and then the other. Beneath the sheet, his own skin is frozen.
“John?”
“Forgot how cold I was.”
“It’s not ready to transfer,” Sherlock says. “Soon. I can feel it... becoming ready.”
“I’m okay. I ignored it for the past...however long that was. It’s not that bad.” The cold brings its own kind of pain. It’s sharp, for all it does not slice. It feels the way winter smells. “Do you want to cut me or bite me?”
Eyes on John, Sherlock absently touches his own chest. His fingertips smudge neat red lines. John could lick them clean. “No preference,” Sherlock says, but his voice tightens.
“Do you... want something else?”
Sherlock groans. “Why does it matter?”
“Because we’re dying, you git,” John answers, an incredulous laugh trying to interrupt him. “Go on, last requests, what do you want?”
“My last request is that you stop asking.” In a cross between a flounce and a fall, Sherlock propels himself from table to sofa. “Here, cut on my arm.”
“I was only offering.” More deeply than intended, he digs the knife into Sherlock's skin. “You don’t have to be an arse about it.”
“You were offering to let me fuck you until you bleed? Really, John?”
John looks at him sharply.
Sherlock meets his gaze.
“No,” John says, “I wasn’t offering that.”
“There we are, then.”
“It hadn’t really crossed my mind.” He keeps the knife against Sherlock’s skin, over tense muscle.
“Obviously not,” Sherlock says. “I don’t have to be at the top of my form to see that.”
“Right. Okay.”
“You can keep cutting me.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm.”
John swallows. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Dying?”
Sherlock shakes his head. His clumping hair clings to the sofa cushion in spots. “The other bit.”
“Well,” John says, “did you want to make me bleed out the arse before I bit you?”
“No,” Sherlock answers. His eyes narrow as he frowns into the middle distance. “I'm not sure why not, now. Why, does it matter?”
“Not sure. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Very succinct.”
John responds with a jab of the blade.
Sherlock hisses. His eyes close. On his arm, drops of blood drip by the scars of track marks.
John lifts the knife. A damp, red shine follows the edge. As he tilts the blade, the shine shifts, flowing, thickening, never quite able to drip. He licks his lips instead of licking metal, but it's a close thing.
“We should have done this sooner,” Sherlock says. “We could have been doing this for days.”
“God, that would have been lovely. Would it-” again, he licks his lips “-would it be all right if I gave you that nick on the forehead after all?”
Sherlock leans toward him in a casual sprawl. “Go on.”
John shifts. One knee presses into the sofa cushions as he rises up. Snake-like, Sherlock moves his head in response, continually offering the right side of his face. John steadies him with one hand. John steadies himself on Sherlock. Sherlock’s eyes move beneath their closed lids, but he reacts no further at the touches. Not at John’s fingers. Not at John’s knife. He is simply still, as if relaxed into sleep.
John flicks him on the ear.
Immediately, two indignant eyes blaze open. “What?”
“You didn't look like you.” Problem solved. With a grin he can’t stop, he turns placement into pressure. Skin resists, surrenders, and bleeds. Sherlock freezes, his mouth caught open. John drags a slow crescent around Sherlock’s eye, over the eyebrow, down the temple. “That's brilliant.” John’s tongue sneaks back out between his lips.
Sherlock tilts his head in a simple offer.
John bends his neck and kneels lower on the sofa.
The blood is simply blood. No transfer. No fulfilment. The taste arrives, but the yearning remains. He licks the curving cut. He presses his lips against Sherlock’s temple. He swallows. He drops the knife onto the floor.
Blazing, Sherlock’s hands burn through the back of John’s shirt, the light touch of fingertips still torch-like. No grip, no clutch, no pulling or pressure. Only heat, solid instead of liquid. John climbs on top of him in an easy straddle. The contact pushes some of the chill from his legs.
It feels right. It is right. The two of them, together, waiting to become. It won’t be long now.
The bleeding slows no matter how John scrapes his teeth over the cut. He suckles until all he tastes is skin. Under him, Sherlock shifts. His thighs shake beneath John’s, and he pushes John back with a hand on each hip.
“It’s fine,” John says.
Sherlock snorts. “Wrong.”
“No, I mean. It’s okay,” John says, and it is. He breathes in stale sweat and the sweet fever tang, and it is more than okay. “How much would it hurt?” He pulls back only far enough to meet Sherlock’s eyes.
Sherlock’s hands shift on John's back, falling lower. “...You’re offering.”
“How much would it hurt?” John repeats.
Without hesitation: “I could make it agonising.”
“Yeah, okay. Good.” He takes another lick at Sherlock’s temple, but it’s not much. His forehead ends up on Sherlock’s shoulder, the crown of his head propped against the sofa. “Think I might just lie down for it, if that’s all right.”
“Yes,” Sherlock says. “You can do that, that’s all right. I don’t expect-I mean, you look exhausted.”
“Only half feel it.”
“Then you’re obviously numb.”
“Mm.”
John doesn’t move. Sherlock curls hot fingers around the back of John’s neck. John closes his eyes. “Ta,” John mumbles. He might doze. It might be his turn to take care of Sherlock, or it might be the other way around. He doesn't know.
A quiet eternity drifts around the flat. It’s almost, but not quite, warm. A chill sneaks in when Sherlock eases him back by the shoulders. The light against John’s face hurts his eyes. The air against his face is cold and dry.
“If we don’t move now, I’ll bite you here,” Sherlock tells him.
John hums his permission, but Sherlock pushes at him, pushes and pulls until they’re upright. John shivers, Sherlock shoves, and they stumble their way out of the sitting room. He hears the crack before he feels the hit, his shoulder’s impact against the door frame. He groans and tries to go back for seconds, but Sherlock bullies him forward, his grip unrelenting until they make it into the bedroom.
Inside, Sherlock shuts the door and locks them in darkness. He flicks on the light. One arm raised against the lamp, John squints around the room for the blankets. Sherlock seizes him by the wrist. Bones grind. Bruises twinge. John makes a sound. The sound is distinctly a whimper until it becomes a moan.
Sherlock grins, more teeth than lips. “Good?”
“God, yes.”
Sherlock pushes John onto the bed. He follows with a heavy body and crushing hands. His eyes shine. “Better?”
John nods, a rapid bobbing of the head. “More. Please.”
“Shirt off.”
“Cold,” John protests, but Sherlock shoves a searing palm against John's neck.
“I'm a furnace. Shirt off.”
They strip John without John ever sitting up. John fights him, makes Sherlock beat him down. Sherlock digs his fingernails into skin. With the weight of his body behind them, his scratches nearly pierce.
John writhes. He groans and he trembles. Gripping beneath the knee, Sherlock yanks John’s legs up, and the force of it, Sherlock’s fading balance, everything, topples them over and nearly off the bed.
Fit to break his ribs, John laughs. Sprawled half on his back, half on his side, he slams his elbows down on Sherlock’s shoulders. Sherlock growls and fights open the trembling vice of John’s legs. John’s thighs burn, his hips scream, and Sherlock hasn’t even shoved John’s knees against the mattress yet.
“That’s it,” John spurs him on. “Rip me open, do it. Just fucking do it.” He lifts his chin, bares his throat, and grins all the wider at the absolute focus in Sherlock’s eyes. He arches his back, trying to emphasise the vulnerability of his belly, but the motion devolves into shaking, gasping, when Sherlock strikes him in the gut.
Kneeling, Sherlock tries to hoist him up a second time. John’s legs slip from his hands. John’s bum lands on Sherlock’s thighs, and Sherlock is actually warm, so warm.
More adjusting, more shoving. Nearly tipping over, Sherlock ruts against him as if attempting to stab John open with a too-blunt blade. Gasping, groaning, giggling, John tugs at Sherlock’s hair until Sherlock will spare a look for John’s face.
“Not going to happen,” John pants.
Sherlock’s colouring, already splotched and pale, grows even worse.
John shakes his head. “Not on my back.”
They flip John over, kicking and clawing through the process. His aching legs fold beneath him like broken bird wings. His arse hits his heels as Sherlock drags him back with a vicious hand on each hip.
“Cold-”
“I know,” Sherlock interrupts. One hand leaves John’s hip. “Just let me, let me-”
“I'm fucking freezing-”
There is, at best, half a second of warning.
John’s mouth opens. In his throat, there are swears. In his mouth, there is nothing. Not breath. Not air. A vacuum of agony.
“Better?” The second hand returns. Two hands, blazing, one on each side. Against John’s back: an inferno. Heat, heat everywhere, heat inside him, heat stinging him apart. "John?"
John nods against his folded arms, teeth digging into his forearm, his hair scraping against the bed.
Dry friction and jerky movement spark the best agony his nerves have ever known. Sherlock’s chest against his back, Sherlock’s piercing lap cradling his bum, Sherlock’s heat invades him. The sides of Sherlock’s thighs slide against his, so warm, warm, warm. John’s muscles rebel, his limbs twist, and the stabs nearly soften into a slide. Slicker, somehow.
“Did you just come?” John asks on the second attempt.
“No.” Sherlock grunts. His pace slows to a stop. He moves one hand and touches with one finger. John keens at the sting, but he could cry at the loss of so much contact, so much heat. “You’re bleeding.”
“Oh.” He lets his head drop back down. “Good. Now get on me.”
Sherlock drives them both down. He pushes and tugs and slips out, and it stings, it hurts, shit and sweat and blood in the wound, but Sherlock shoves back in and John could cry with relief. Torn skin tears further. The raw burn builds without chance to fade. His body keeps trying to curl in on itself. His insides fight to rearrange, to break or burst or bend from the pressure.
Pinned on the bed, face flat, body rocking, John gropes blindly behind his head. Sherlock pants against the back of his neck. His stubble scrapes, but it doesn’t scrape John open. So much below and so little up here. John rips at Sherlock’s hair, pulling Sherlock’s mouth to his shoulder.
“Bite me,” John orders in a high, winded whisper.
Sherlock’s teeth pinch skin without puncturing it. Reduced leverage or not from where he sprawls on John's back, Sherlock keeps pushing into him. Keeps dragging out. The stretch grows. The sting grows. It grows so slowly.
John digs his untrimmed fingernails deep into Sherlock’s scalp. “Sherlock.” John can draw blood too.
With a grunt, Sherlock scratches down John’s side. Scratching, shoving, burning, breaking. Does the skin part? Does John open? Sweat or blood, what is that between their skin?
Without biting, Sherlock’s mouth rides on John's neck, on his shoulder, below his ear. Shallow breaths and straining slaps of movement speed up. Faster and not enough. Sherlock works deeper, deeper, and John is still waiting for piercing teeth on his shoulder when Sherlock’s balls hit his. “Jesus Christ, would you fucking bite me,” John chokes out.
“Won't need to.”
“Sherlock, I swear-”
Sherlock nips him. “You’re bleeding.” Short, rough thrusts. Very short. “Down here.”
John’s body tenses, clenches. He is only tension and blood.
“Yes?” Sherlock asks.
“Anywhere. Now.”
“In a minute.”
“Now.”
“Please.”
John gives him his minute.
Sherlock’s movements slow. His breathing falters. He groans and shoves and strains. He slips out and lays his cheek on John’s nape. He sets his palm over the back of John’s hand. Their skin sticks together, bound in drying red.
“Tired,” Sherlock complains. “Not finished. Merely... tired.”
“Bite me, all right? Bite, rest, try again later.”
Sherlock lifts his head. “Again?”
“When you’re the one freezing his arse off, yeah.”
Sherlock’s mouth touches John’s skin. It is not a bite.
Sherlock pulls back. John shivers. Sherlock moves down John’s body. John shivers more the farther he goes.
Sherlock’s tongue touches John’s skin. His teeth follow. The sting and the stretch, the burn and the bleeding, it is all there, all under his mouth. John freezes. Except for that one tiny, inconsequential part of himself, he freezes.
Sherlock bites and gnaws. Sherlock spreads him open, pulls each tear wider, sharper, but the heat still fades, the heat is still gone. John’s skin prickles into gooseflesh. Every hot breath against his arse only brings shivers.
John turns over, nearly kneeing Sherlock in the face. “Up here. Give it to me, c'mon.”
“It can transfer through your arse.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not.” When Sherlock’s eyes remain on John’s lower body-the trickle of blood on his thighs, his chaffed, flaccid prick-John yanks him up by the hair and shoves his other, much abused hand in Sherlock's face.
Sherlock bites the meat of John’s palm. John bleeds. The shivers continue.
“Somewhere else,” John says.
With a growl, Sherlock tries higher. He bites John’s arms, he scrapes open scab after scab and sets his mouth to all of them, but it’s still not enough, it’s still freezing cold, and the only bit of warmth John has is Sherlock, only Sherlock.
Sherlock who bites, who tears, who opens John with teeth and frustration. John holds on to him. John holds on, and holds on, and holds on.
Sherlock is a fire barely contained in human skin. Sherlock is burning up. Sherlock is burning him up. Oh God. Oh thank God.
John’s hands slip. They fall. He lies back against the mattress, sinks into it. He nudges his chin higher. A sigh wavers out through his lips. Sherlock’s teeth settle against his throat. They frame his windpipe. Yes. This.
Sherlock’s ragged breath puffs against the side of John’s neck. Exhale, inhale. Puff, scent. Then, at last, pressure. Two curving lines of pressure, each sharply punctuated. John closes his eyes and prepares for warmth.
It doesn’t come.
It doesn’t happen.
Nothing happens, except Sherlock rearing up, except Sherlock leaving him cold and alone.
“The hell is wrong with you?” John's words fall out as more of a mumble than a demand.
“It’s not transferring.”
“I noticed, keep going-”
“John. It is not. Transferring.”
“So keep going-”
Sherlock shakes him by the shoulders. “It won’t transfer.”
“Try anyway.” When Sherlock refuses to move, John adds, “Please.” He pulls at Sherlock. “Please?”
“I’m going to kill you,” Sherlock says, his voice as broken as John’s body. “Do you understand? This is it, John. It’s settled. I’m going to keep biting you until you die, I’m going to rip your throat out, do you understand that?”
“Yeah.” A tiny breath for a small word. Two more: “Do it.”
Sherlock stares down at him, mouth bloody, face ashen. “No.”
back |
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 6.3k out of 31k
Beta: seijichan, lifeonmars, prettyarbitrary, airynothing
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
Chapter Five
“Jesus, it’s cold.” John searches about blearily and without success. “Where are your sheets?” Even sitting up against the headboard, he can’t spot any in Sherlock’s bedroom.
“Kitchen floor.” Lying more or less facedown, Sherlock flops his hand in the approximate direction.
“Why?”
Sherlock turns his head, arching his neck. “You were about to kill yourself. Why stop to pick up blankets?”
“About that,” John says.
“I will restrain you if necessary,” Sherlock answers without moving.
“How did you know? What I was... doing.”
Sprawled and twisted with an unblinking stare, Sherlock does a remarkable, if unwitting, impression of a cat. “I didn’t hear you in the loo.”
John picks at a spot of blood on the mattress.
Heavier than lead, Sherlock’s gaze transfers to the gooseflesh on John’s bare arms. “Here,” Sherlock says. He reaches backward, folding his arms behind his spine to pull at the sleeves of his open shirt. After a quick squirm, Sherlock deposits the stained garment in John’s lap.
“Thanks.” He spreads the formerly white shirt over his crossed legs. Again, smudges of blood distract him. He traces them with one finger before daring to look at Sherlock’s back. “I should do something about that. And your front.”
“Hm? Why bother?”
“Because-” No, a doctor’s line of reasoning won’t work. Reason itself won’t work. “Because,” John says, “I could make it sting.”
Sherlock crawls up onto all fours before settling back on his haunches. “You could.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Do you want to?” Sherlock counters.
“That’s why I’m asking.”
“Fine. Where are your supplies?”
Leaning heavily on each other, they fetch them together. Sherlock’s robe squeezes at John’s arms, but it’s sufficiently wide in the middle and certainly more than long enough. Already immune to the cold, Sherlock accompanies him in only his trousers.
“I want this on my bed,” Sherlock tells him.
“The sofa would be fine. Or a chair. Anything, really,” John says, but Sherlock’s arm slips from around his shoulders. They both wobble until John staggers after him. “Fine, okay. Wait, no, hold on.”
Sherlock groans.
“I need a few more things, that’s all.” They backtrack into the kitchen. John rifles through the cabinets. Sherlock’s hand rides his left shoulder. Sherlock’s forehead presses into the right shoulder. “We have to eat before we collapse.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Eat and I’ll hurt you.”
Sherlock lifts his head.
John turns around. Their faces are close. Sherlock’s teeth are at the level of John’s eyes, but John’s mouth is of a height with Sherlock’s neck.
“I eat or you’ll hurt me,” Sherlock corrects.
“I said ‘and’. I meant ‘and’.”
“Would you?” Sherlock asks, but there’s no question in his low tone.
John reaches up. Under Sherlock’s greasy hair, John pinches the cartilage of Sherlock’s ear. He digs in with his thumbnail. Eyelids at half-mast, Sherlock sways closer. John lets go.
“Eat,” he orders.
“You were going to see to my chest first.”
“I’ll take care of your back while you eat. Now sit.”
Sherlock doesn’t obey, not immediately. John raises an eyebrow and sets his hand on the knife drawer. Sherlock sits.
John heats up the last tin of soup. He stands close to the stove, arms wrapped around himself as much as the robe will allow.
“Multitasking, John,” Sherlock whinges.
“Shut up, I’m taking care of you.”
“Not enough.”
John is standing at Sherlock’s side. John must have moved from stove to table, but his mind neglected to record that moment. John holds Sherlock’s head between his hands, feeling for clamminess and fever. This is the important fact.
“All right?” John asks him. Sherlock’s face is hotter than John’s hands. This means little, all told. The pallor could be blood loss. Sherlock’s eyes look bruised, and there’s a chance they might be.
“Fine.”
“Liar.”
Sherlock smiles faintly. He sags, his head lolling against John’s hands.
“Observe your symptoms for me,” John says.
“What for?”
“Show off for me.”
“Mm. The heat isn’t as intense. Before, it felt like it was seeping through me. This time is more... submerged. More rapid.”
“What else?”
“Restless.” Sherlock murmurs only a few more details before trailing off, his eyes dull in his pale, discoloured face.
“You look exhausted.”
“Yes, that too.”
“You need to eat.”
“I’m not hungry yet.”
“I’m not waiting until the next round to feed you,” John says. “How’s your stomach?”
“Fine.” A pause. “Acidic.”
“Can you eat without being sick? Honest answer, Sherlock.”
A sullen nod. His hair tickles John’s palms and John lets go.
“Water, first,” John says, moving to fetch him a glass. A searing pain shoots through John’s shoulder, and John cries out, hand flying to his old wound, before he registers Sherlock’s grip on his left arm. Another sharp yank and John topples into the chair and Sherlock both. Momentum carries them only an instant before dropping them to the floor. The chair breaks, some part of it letting out a wooden snap.
Sprawled on the floor, Sherlock grabs at him, eyes as wild as his clutching hands. Sherlock pulls at the robe, pulls himself up by John’s shoulders, and John goes after his wrists. He breaks Sherlock’s grip and shoves him down. The back of Sherlock’s head smacks against the floor. Hands planted on Sherlock’s shoulders, effectively on all-fours, John pins him. Even this doesn’t put an end to Sherlock’s onslaught: he kicks and thrashes, nearly bucking John off him. Sherlock switches tactics as suddenly as he’d begun, and he clamps his legs around John’s waist.
John backhands him across the face.
“John-”
“What the hell are you doing?” He doesn’t bother with another slap, not when he has Sherlock’s neck beneath one hand. “‘I’ll attack John, what a good idea!’ No, it bloody well isn’t!”
“You moved.” Sherlock’s eyes turn the words to poison. “I ought to hamstring you.”
“I took one step! One. In the kitchen.” He increases the pressure of his hand with each phrase. “Where I am staying until you eat your damn food.”
“You can’t leave.”
“Do I look like I’m going somewhere? In my pants, really?” A hard squeeze for emphasis.
Sherlock’s fingers dig into John’s forearms. He gets out one strained syllable: “Stay.”
“I’m staying.” John eases up on the pressure but keeps his thumbs over Sherlock’s throat as Sherlock gasps for air. “Of course I’m staying.”
“You tried to leave.” Sherlock coughs. His legs drop from around John’s middle.
In return, John releases Sherlock’s neck. He rises into a crouching kneel, sitting on his own feet. He keeps one hand on Sherlock’s stomach for balance. “I tried to get you a glass of water, you twat.”
“What, with a gun in your mouth? Is that what you slipped away to do?”
“Christ, Sherlock, I’m not going to do that again.”
“You were about to kill yourself.”
“I changed my mind,” John says.
“John, your gun was in your mouth.”
As Sherlock’s chest heaves, the bite marks over his collarbones glisten, his skin parted to give way to fresh blood. John touches one of the imperfect circles. Broken skin sits better with him than a broken voice.
“John, look at me.”
“I am looking at you.”
“Look me in the eyes.”
John traces the bites. Sherlock’s chest rises and falls. Once, twice, thirty-odd times. On the stove, the soup begins to make sounds soup shouldn’t make.
“I’m going to stand up,” John tells bloody collarbones. “I’m going to turn off the stove. You are going to eat.” Slowly, John stands. His body doesn’t want to move. It’s heavier and more sluggish than it was before the scuffle. “I might eat, too.” He leans down and offers Sherlock his hand.
Sherlock grasps John’s wrist, John returns the grip, and they stagger until more or less vertical. Sherlock doesn’t let go, but John doesn’t expect him to. He turns off the stove with his other hand. His skin prickles with the sudden cold.
“Did I hurt you?” John asks, eyes on the stove dial. “I heard your head hit the floor.”
“Nothing hurts.”
John looks up at him.
“Nothing hurts,” Sherlock repeats. A tinge of awe enters his voice. “I feel it, but it’s not... I wouldn’t call it ‘pain’ any longer.”
“What would you call it?”
“I don’t know.” Looking down at his own chest, Sherlock presses his fingertips into the bite marks. He shivers, a minute tremble of the shoulders. “It’s like scratching an itch. Or stretching. Somewhere between the two.”
“I don’t think I had that, my round,” John says. “It’s changing, it-”
“What was it that you had, during your round?” Sherlock interrupts. “Hm? An itch in the back of your throat, perhaps. Is that what you were feeling?”
Jaw set, John opens the cupboard. He retrieves a bowl and slams the cupboard shut. “Drop it. Just, just eat, all right? You have to eat. Whatever you want afterward, just eat.”
Sherlock steps closer, as if about to bite out John’s eyes. “Tell me why you tried to kill yourself.”
“I’ll tell you after.”
“Tell me during.”
“Fine,” John says. “Fine, have it your way.”
“Excellent. Sit on the floor and wrap the sheet around your legs.”
“What?”
“My sheet, John. It’s right there.” Sherlock gestures to the site of their previous nap.
“For Christ’s sake, you don’t need to tie me up.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “You’re cold. Your legs are bare.” He stares John down until John does as told. Only then does Sherlock join him with bowl and spoon. Some soup sloshes onto the floor. He sits on the sheet, pinning John down without the smallest attempt at subtlety.
Steam rises from the bowl. John leans toward it. The steam dwindles slowly, and the soup takes even longer. When Sherlock has choked down a reasonable amount, John says, “I would rather kill myself than you. That’s all.”
The spoon clinks against the bowl as Sherlock abandons them to the kitchen floor. His eyes never waver from John’s. “I don’t care.”
“Do you want to kill me?” John asks. “I mean, really, do you?”
“If I wanted to kill you, I would have called emergency services days ago.”
“Look,” John says, “there are only so many ways for this to end. But you don’t want to kill me and I don’t want to kill you, and we’d both stop the other from committing suicide. One way or another, we’re going to tear each other apart.”
“But that doesn’t matter.”
John stares at him. “Sherlock, are you listening to yourself?”
“Always.”
“How does that not matter?”
Sherlock groans and tugs his hair into a strained, oily shape. “Everything is gone, yes? You understand that. We no longer have the rest of the world. I am here. You are here. That is everything.” He grips John’s arm. A gleam that has nothing to do with the kitchen light shines in his eyes. “That is what we need to hold onto. We stay together regardless of what follows.”
John presses the back of his free hand to Sherlock’s forehead. “Right, that is definitely the fever talking.”
“You’re simply cold.” Sherlock captures John’s hand and holds it between his palms to demonstrate. He curls John’s fingers, rubs them, and even breathes on them. Sherlock’s teeth come close to John’s fingertips, and John merely holds steady. Catching his eye, Sherlock grins.
“Do you see?” Sherlock asks. “You have to see it, do you see it? It’s so obvious, it’s right there, John.”
John looks at their hands. Scabs and bruises decorate skin drawn over sharp bone. Perhaps they’ve both bled from beneath the fingernails. Maybe that’s each other’s blood. The bite marks on the backs of their hands nearly match.
“We’re all that matters,” Sherlock explains. “No one else is important for the rest of our lives.”
John shakes his head. He begins to pull his hand away before a bright warning in Sherlock’s eyes stops him. “We’re not going to die at the same time,” John says.
“It’ll be close enough.”
“No it fucking won’t,” John says. “I’m not going to survive you again. You do not get to do that to me twice.”
Sherlock narrows his eyes. “Meaning, you’d force me to endure it instead.”
“What happened to us dying ‘close enough’ together?”
“I could engineer that, if you’d be willing.”
“Load my gun and put our heads together, you mean.”
Sherlock turns John’s hand over, baring John’s wrist. He runs a fingertip down the line of John’s tendons.
John shivers. His skin prickles into gooseflesh. He doesn’t pull away.
“There’s another possibility I’d prefer,” Sherlock murmurs.
“You mean...mutual.”
A small nod, far too heavy to be a larger gesture. “I’ll cut you after you do the same for me,” Sherlock promises. “Hold you down if I have to.” Sherlock pins him already, skewers him with eyes and hands and one careful stroking fingertip.
John frees his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth. “We slit each other’s wrists and then we...?”
“Drink each other, yes.”
All the air evacuates John’s lungs in the shape of one word. “Jesus.”
“John, listen, it’s the best way-”
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that,” John interrupts. “That is, that’s brilliant.”
Sherlock grins, wild teeth framed by bitten lips. “Obviously.”
“How do you want to do it?” John leans in and, dizzy, he knocks his forehead against Sherlock’s. “It would be cleaner in the bath.” No carpets stained, no linens ruined. Less of an upset to Mrs Hudson. “D’you want to?” Rising to a kneel, he tugs at Sherlock’s arm, the skin hot beneath his cold fingers.
“Somewhere else. The car will be dropped off within the next twenty-four hours.”
“What car?” John frowns at him and Sherlock frowns back.
“The car to leave in before Mrs Hudson returns. You were quite insistent.”
“Right, that car.” John settles back on the floor. “That was quick, though, wasn’t it? Can’t believe we don’t have forever left.”
Sherlock grins faintly. “We have the rest of our lives.”
John snorts. He catches Sherlock’s eyes and giggles take them both. Breathless, shoulders shaking, John slumps to the floor and curls in on himself, arms folded across his centre. Sherlock lasts only moments longer, soundlessly laughing as he crumples over John. His chin digs into John’s back in a way that would once have been painful.
They subside slowly. Any giggle or hiccup sparks their laughter anew. After a measureless time, they simply fit together on the floor. Their bodies shift as they breathe. Sherlock’s warm weight presses without restraining.
“It should be like this,” John mumbles.
“Hm?”
“When we do it. Me on my stomach with my hand behind my neck. You on my back with your arm on the floor.”
Sherlock hums his approval. “Extremely difficult for you to escape, in that position. Though, hm. You’re not afraid you’ll try to leave me again. In fact, you’re certain you won’t.”
“Is that a yes, then?”
“What do you get out of the position?” Sherlock asks. “You’re getting something you want. What is it?”
“I just... want to, all right?”
For an instant John nearly believes Sherlock might not answer. That instant passes.
“Oh. Oh.” Sherlock’s weight and warmth vanish from John’s side. John grabs him, unthinking, and Sherlock smirks down at him. “That’s it. You want me on top of you so you’ll feel I’m still there, even if I do die first.”
“No,” John says reflexively. “Well, maybe. I don’t know.” He sits up as well and adjusts the sheet around himself. “Are we doing it like that or not?”
“We are. We will.” Sherlock sways or lunges forward, and his hands either cup John’s face or wrap about his neck. So difficult to tell which. “I’ll make it amazing, John. It will be the best way anyone has ever died. I promise.” His thumb brushes over John’s throat, tracing his windpipe. “That is what you want, isn’t it?”
John nods between two blazing palms. “What about you? Is there anything else you’d like?”
Sherlock’s gaze doesn’t shift from John’s eyes. It freezes, as if restrained. “No,” Sherlock answers after a pause. He removes both hands from John’s neck and returns them to his sides. “This is enough.”
“What is it?”
“I said, this is enough.”
“What would make it more than enough?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Sherlock snaps. “I know it’s difficult for you, but try.”
Brow furrowed, John licks his lips. His healing, bitten lower lip. He swallows thickly. “Ah. I’m, um. I’m not... Well. You know I’m not.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Everyone knows you’re not.”
“Sherlock, everyone thinks-”
“They’re morons,” Sherlock interrupts. “Oblivious and thick. Stop talking about them.” He grabs onto the edge of the worktop overhead and drags himself upward. His bare feet shuffle. He wobbles. He leans over the counter and his face leaves John’s line of sight. His ribs place themselves on display instead, bone a poorly kept secret beneath his skin. Here and there, an untouched patch of flesh peeks out between the contusions and abrasions.
John studies Sherlock before inspecting his own hands. He rises into a kneeling position. The sheet barely cushions his knees from the floor. He holds steady. His hands, both hands, hold steady.
When he stands, his head spins. The sheet slips and falls. He catches himself on the counter, on Sherlock. His palm warms on Sherlock’s back while his legs freeze. Without withdrawing from the touch, Sherlock turns his face away.
“I can hear you grinding your teeth,” John says.
Sherlock snorts.
John curls his fingers against Sherlock’s fever-hot skin. He scrapes his fingernails over layers of scratches, some half-healed, most otherwise.
“Something you’d like to do, doctor?” Sherlock drawls, the title an insult. “Still going to bandage me up?”
“No. I want to cut you open.” John picks off a scab and smears the revealed, shallow red over Sherlock’s spine. Another scab, another smudge. Sherlock looks so much better, bloody. Not as pale. With thumb and forefinger, John draws nonsense with rapidly drying ink.
In slow, almost sleepy increments, Sherlock’s head lowers. Tension fluctuates through him, but his varying heart rate doesn’t visibly impact his rate of bleeding. On an exhale, Sherlock makes a noise.
“What was that?” John asks.
“I said, I thought you didn’t want to kill me.”
“I don’t.” He rubs his red fingers against a relatively unmarked spot, but the blood has dried. “I’d keep it light. Make sure you don’t go into shock.”
“We might not be able to now, biologically.”
“Right. So.” John clears his throat. “Let me? Before I fucking freeze?”
Sherlock shakes his head. “I’m not ready to transfer it back. It's still the same strain.”
“No, not what I meant, no,” John says. “I don’t need you to bite me, I don’t need to drink, I just...” He drops his words in an untidy mental jumble and sighs. “The biting is too messy. I want it clean. I, I don’t know. Let me.”
“Where?”
“Your back? To start.”
“In the kitchen?”
“Oh, um.” One chair broken, the table small and cluttered. He doesn’t trust the counters to be sanitary half the time. “No, not in here. The sitting room.”
“You want me on the coffee table,” Sherlock says.
John nods.
Sherlock tugs open the cutlery drawer. “Fine.”
John cuts.
Skin parts. Blood wells. Here a trickle, there a drip. Red obfuscates the clear lines of his making.
There are many lines among the scratches. Never too deep, never too close, never too long. His hands do not slip. His head may spin, the room may rock, but his hands are utterly in control. His right hand presses against the back of Sherlock’s neck. “Stop arching into it.”
“Go faster.”
John doesn’t.
Sherlock’s back continues into his front, skin wrapping over muscle and bone all the way around. There is angle and pressure and speed. There are hisses and gasps, and none of them are from John. John makes them louder regardless.
John kneels next to him. John leans over him. John sits across from him. They move together, John to take a better angle and Sherlock to offer one. Undamaged skin is hard to find. Sherlock sits up while John considers the undersides of his arms.
“I wish we could start from scratch,” John says.
“Hm?” Swaying, Sherlock blinks his eyes open. “Oh. You mean a blank canvas.”
“Yeah,” John says. “Wish you could see your back, too.”
“Take a photo.”
“With what?”
“My phone.”
“Where is it?”
Sherlock pauses, a tiny break in his natural fluidity. “I’ve no idea. Never mind, I can feel it well enough to piece together how it must look.”
John glances up to Sherlock’s eyes. Looking up is far easier than looking away, and so John sits, blade in hand, skin under his palm, watching hazy eyes in a flushed, bruised face. “How does it feel?”
“Sublime. Keep going.”
Choosing the site carefully, John indulges him. John muses, “I should rub you down with salt.”
“Would you?” Sherlock asks, as if this is marvellous, stupendous, as if John has had an unexpected stroke of genius.
“Do you want me to?” John sits up a bit straighter and cracks his back. He can walk to the kitchen, could stand long enough to retrieve the salt, he’s almost sure of it. “Sherlock? Do you want me to?”
“I’ve...” Sherlock swallows. “I’ve had another idea.”
Ah. John had only sparked the stroke of genius after all. “A better idea, you mean.”
“Obviously, I always mean that.”
“Just so we’re clear, I draw the line at flaying you,” John tells him.
Sherlock scoffs. “This is about drawing blood, not losing skin. No.”
“So...?”
“There’s one area that’s effectively untouched. Your blank canvas, if you would.”
John frowns. Matching Sherlock’s gaze, he waits, but no clarification comes. John’s eyes drift upward. “I could give you a good nick on the temple.” He reaches up and lifts Sherlock’s greasy hair out of the way. “Not a big one, I don’t want to risk that on your head.”
“A second area,” Sherlock corrects. “Larger.”
John’s frown returns, deeper than before.
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “I’m sitting on it.”
“Oh,” John says. “Oh, right.”
“You don’t want to.”
“I’d prefer the forehead,” John says.
“Go ahead,” Sherlock says, and John can’t bring the knife so close to Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock closes them, but the worry remains.
John lowers his hands carefully into his lap. They stain the sheet immediately. He wipes the knife clean on the cloth over his thigh, one flat of the blade and then the other. Beneath the sheet, his own skin is frozen.
“John?”
“Forgot how cold I was.”
“It’s not ready to transfer,” Sherlock says. “Soon. I can feel it... becoming ready.”
“I’m okay. I ignored it for the past...however long that was. It’s not that bad.” The cold brings its own kind of pain. It’s sharp, for all it does not slice. It feels the way winter smells. “Do you want to cut me or bite me?”
Eyes on John, Sherlock absently touches his own chest. His fingertips smudge neat red lines. John could lick them clean. “No preference,” Sherlock says, but his voice tightens.
“Do you... want something else?”
Sherlock groans. “Why does it matter?”
“Because we’re dying, you git,” John answers, an incredulous laugh trying to interrupt him. “Go on, last requests, what do you want?”
“My last request is that you stop asking.” In a cross between a flounce and a fall, Sherlock propels himself from table to sofa. “Here, cut on my arm.”
“I was only offering.” More deeply than intended, he digs the knife into Sherlock's skin. “You don’t have to be an arse about it.”
“You were offering to let me fuck you until you bleed? Really, John?”
John looks at him sharply.
Sherlock meets his gaze.
“No,” John says, “I wasn’t offering that.”
“There we are, then.”
“It hadn’t really crossed my mind.” He keeps the knife against Sherlock’s skin, over tense muscle.
“Obviously not,” Sherlock says. “I don’t have to be at the top of my form to see that.”
“Right. Okay.”
“You can keep cutting me.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm.”
John swallows. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Dying?”
Sherlock shakes his head. His clumping hair clings to the sofa cushion in spots. “The other bit.”
“Well,” John says, “did you want to make me bleed out the arse before I bit you?”
“No,” Sherlock answers. His eyes narrow as he frowns into the middle distance. “I'm not sure why not, now. Why, does it matter?”
“Not sure. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Very succinct.”
John responds with a jab of the blade.
Sherlock hisses. His eyes close. On his arm, drops of blood drip by the scars of track marks.
John lifts the knife. A damp, red shine follows the edge. As he tilts the blade, the shine shifts, flowing, thickening, never quite able to drip. He licks his lips instead of licking metal, but it's a close thing.
“We should have done this sooner,” Sherlock says. “We could have been doing this for days.”
“God, that would have been lovely. Would it-” again, he licks his lips “-would it be all right if I gave you that nick on the forehead after all?”
Sherlock leans toward him in a casual sprawl. “Go on.”
John shifts. One knee presses into the sofa cushions as he rises up. Snake-like, Sherlock moves his head in response, continually offering the right side of his face. John steadies him with one hand. John steadies himself on Sherlock. Sherlock’s eyes move beneath their closed lids, but he reacts no further at the touches. Not at John’s fingers. Not at John’s knife. He is simply still, as if relaxed into sleep.
John flicks him on the ear.
Immediately, two indignant eyes blaze open. “What?”
“You didn't look like you.” Problem solved. With a grin he can’t stop, he turns placement into pressure. Skin resists, surrenders, and bleeds. Sherlock freezes, his mouth caught open. John drags a slow crescent around Sherlock’s eye, over the eyebrow, down the temple. “That's brilliant.” John’s tongue sneaks back out between his lips.
Sherlock tilts his head in a simple offer.
John bends his neck and kneels lower on the sofa.
The blood is simply blood. No transfer. No fulfilment. The taste arrives, but the yearning remains. He licks the curving cut. He presses his lips against Sherlock’s temple. He swallows. He drops the knife onto the floor.
Blazing, Sherlock’s hands burn through the back of John’s shirt, the light touch of fingertips still torch-like. No grip, no clutch, no pulling or pressure. Only heat, solid instead of liquid. John climbs on top of him in an easy straddle. The contact pushes some of the chill from his legs.
It feels right. It is right. The two of them, together, waiting to become. It won’t be long now.
The bleeding slows no matter how John scrapes his teeth over the cut. He suckles until all he tastes is skin. Under him, Sherlock shifts. His thighs shake beneath John’s, and he pushes John back with a hand on each hip.
“It’s fine,” John says.
Sherlock snorts. “Wrong.”
“No, I mean. It’s okay,” John says, and it is. He breathes in stale sweat and the sweet fever tang, and it is more than okay. “How much would it hurt?” He pulls back only far enough to meet Sherlock’s eyes.
Sherlock’s hands shift on John's back, falling lower. “...You’re offering.”
“How much would it hurt?” John repeats.
Without hesitation: “I could make it agonising.”
“Yeah, okay. Good.” He takes another lick at Sherlock’s temple, but it’s not much. His forehead ends up on Sherlock’s shoulder, the crown of his head propped against the sofa. “Think I might just lie down for it, if that’s all right.”
“Yes,” Sherlock says. “You can do that, that’s all right. I don’t expect-I mean, you look exhausted.”
“Only half feel it.”
“Then you’re obviously numb.”
“Mm.”
John doesn’t move. Sherlock curls hot fingers around the back of John’s neck. John closes his eyes. “Ta,” John mumbles. He might doze. It might be his turn to take care of Sherlock, or it might be the other way around. He doesn't know.
A quiet eternity drifts around the flat. It’s almost, but not quite, warm. A chill sneaks in when Sherlock eases him back by the shoulders. The light against John’s face hurts his eyes. The air against his face is cold and dry.
“If we don’t move now, I’ll bite you here,” Sherlock tells him.
John hums his permission, but Sherlock pushes at him, pushes and pulls until they’re upright. John shivers, Sherlock shoves, and they stumble their way out of the sitting room. He hears the crack before he feels the hit, his shoulder’s impact against the door frame. He groans and tries to go back for seconds, but Sherlock bullies him forward, his grip unrelenting until they make it into the bedroom.
Inside, Sherlock shuts the door and locks them in darkness. He flicks on the light. One arm raised against the lamp, John squints around the room for the blankets. Sherlock seizes him by the wrist. Bones grind. Bruises twinge. John makes a sound. The sound is distinctly a whimper until it becomes a moan.
Sherlock grins, more teeth than lips. “Good?”
“God, yes.”
Sherlock pushes John onto the bed. He follows with a heavy body and crushing hands. His eyes shine. “Better?”
John nods, a rapid bobbing of the head. “More. Please.”
“Shirt off.”
“Cold,” John protests, but Sherlock shoves a searing palm against John's neck.
“I'm a furnace. Shirt off.”
They strip John without John ever sitting up. John fights him, makes Sherlock beat him down. Sherlock digs his fingernails into skin. With the weight of his body behind them, his scratches nearly pierce.
John writhes. He groans and he trembles. Gripping beneath the knee, Sherlock yanks John’s legs up, and the force of it, Sherlock’s fading balance, everything, topples them over and nearly off the bed.
Fit to break his ribs, John laughs. Sprawled half on his back, half on his side, he slams his elbows down on Sherlock’s shoulders. Sherlock growls and fights open the trembling vice of John’s legs. John’s thighs burn, his hips scream, and Sherlock hasn’t even shoved John’s knees against the mattress yet.
“That’s it,” John spurs him on. “Rip me open, do it. Just fucking do it.” He lifts his chin, bares his throat, and grins all the wider at the absolute focus in Sherlock’s eyes. He arches his back, trying to emphasise the vulnerability of his belly, but the motion devolves into shaking, gasping, when Sherlock strikes him in the gut.
Kneeling, Sherlock tries to hoist him up a second time. John’s legs slip from his hands. John’s bum lands on Sherlock’s thighs, and Sherlock is actually warm, so warm.
More adjusting, more shoving. Nearly tipping over, Sherlock ruts against him as if attempting to stab John open with a too-blunt blade. Gasping, groaning, giggling, John tugs at Sherlock’s hair until Sherlock will spare a look for John’s face.
“Not going to happen,” John pants.
Sherlock’s colouring, already splotched and pale, grows even worse.
John shakes his head. “Not on my back.”
They flip John over, kicking and clawing through the process. His aching legs fold beneath him like broken bird wings. His arse hits his heels as Sherlock drags him back with a vicious hand on each hip.
“Cold-”
“I know,” Sherlock interrupts. One hand leaves John’s hip. “Just let me, let me-”
“I'm fucking freezing-”
There is, at best, half a second of warning.
John’s mouth opens. In his throat, there are swears. In his mouth, there is nothing. Not breath. Not air. A vacuum of agony.
“Better?” The second hand returns. Two hands, blazing, one on each side. Against John’s back: an inferno. Heat, heat everywhere, heat inside him, heat stinging him apart. "John?"
John nods against his folded arms, teeth digging into his forearm, his hair scraping against the bed.
Dry friction and jerky movement spark the best agony his nerves have ever known. Sherlock’s chest against his back, Sherlock’s piercing lap cradling his bum, Sherlock’s heat invades him. The sides of Sherlock’s thighs slide against his, so warm, warm, warm. John’s muscles rebel, his limbs twist, and the stabs nearly soften into a slide. Slicker, somehow.
“Did you just come?” John asks on the second attempt.
“No.” Sherlock grunts. His pace slows to a stop. He moves one hand and touches with one finger. John keens at the sting, but he could cry at the loss of so much contact, so much heat. “You’re bleeding.”
“Oh.” He lets his head drop back down. “Good. Now get on me.”
Sherlock drives them both down. He pushes and tugs and slips out, and it stings, it hurts, shit and sweat and blood in the wound, but Sherlock shoves back in and John could cry with relief. Torn skin tears further. The raw burn builds without chance to fade. His body keeps trying to curl in on itself. His insides fight to rearrange, to break or burst or bend from the pressure.
Pinned on the bed, face flat, body rocking, John gropes blindly behind his head. Sherlock pants against the back of his neck. His stubble scrapes, but it doesn’t scrape John open. So much below and so little up here. John rips at Sherlock’s hair, pulling Sherlock’s mouth to his shoulder.
“Bite me,” John orders in a high, winded whisper.
Sherlock’s teeth pinch skin without puncturing it. Reduced leverage or not from where he sprawls on John's back, Sherlock keeps pushing into him. Keeps dragging out. The stretch grows. The sting grows. It grows so slowly.
John digs his untrimmed fingernails deep into Sherlock’s scalp. “Sherlock.” John can draw blood too.
With a grunt, Sherlock scratches down John’s side. Scratching, shoving, burning, breaking. Does the skin part? Does John open? Sweat or blood, what is that between their skin?
Without biting, Sherlock’s mouth rides on John's neck, on his shoulder, below his ear. Shallow breaths and straining slaps of movement speed up. Faster and not enough. Sherlock works deeper, deeper, and John is still waiting for piercing teeth on his shoulder when Sherlock’s balls hit his. “Jesus Christ, would you fucking bite me,” John chokes out.
“Won't need to.”
“Sherlock, I swear-”
Sherlock nips him. “You’re bleeding.” Short, rough thrusts. Very short. “Down here.”
John’s body tenses, clenches. He is only tension and blood.
“Yes?” Sherlock asks.
“Anywhere. Now.”
“In a minute.”
“Now.”
“Please.”
John gives him his minute.
Sherlock’s movements slow. His breathing falters. He groans and shoves and strains. He slips out and lays his cheek on John’s nape. He sets his palm over the back of John’s hand. Their skin sticks together, bound in drying red.
“Tired,” Sherlock complains. “Not finished. Merely... tired.”
“Bite me, all right? Bite, rest, try again later.”
Sherlock lifts his head. “Again?”
“When you’re the one freezing his arse off, yeah.”
Sherlock’s mouth touches John’s skin. It is not a bite.
Sherlock pulls back. John shivers. Sherlock moves down John’s body. John shivers more the farther he goes.
Sherlock’s tongue touches John’s skin. His teeth follow. The sting and the stretch, the burn and the bleeding, it is all there, all under his mouth. John freezes. Except for that one tiny, inconsequential part of himself, he freezes.
Sherlock bites and gnaws. Sherlock spreads him open, pulls each tear wider, sharper, but the heat still fades, the heat is still gone. John’s skin prickles into gooseflesh. Every hot breath against his arse only brings shivers.
John turns over, nearly kneeing Sherlock in the face. “Up here. Give it to me, c'mon.”
“It can transfer through your arse.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not.” When Sherlock’s eyes remain on John’s lower body-the trickle of blood on his thighs, his chaffed, flaccid prick-John yanks him up by the hair and shoves his other, much abused hand in Sherlock's face.
Sherlock bites the meat of John’s palm. John bleeds. The shivers continue.
“Somewhere else,” John says.
With a growl, Sherlock tries higher. He bites John’s arms, he scrapes open scab after scab and sets his mouth to all of them, but it’s still not enough, it’s still freezing cold, and the only bit of warmth John has is Sherlock, only Sherlock.
Sherlock who bites, who tears, who opens John with teeth and frustration. John holds on to him. John holds on, and holds on, and holds on.
Sherlock is a fire barely contained in human skin. Sherlock is burning up. Sherlock is burning him up. Oh God. Oh thank God.
John’s hands slip. They fall. He lies back against the mattress, sinks into it. He nudges his chin higher. A sigh wavers out through his lips. Sherlock’s teeth settle against his throat. They frame his windpipe. Yes. This.
Sherlock’s ragged breath puffs against the side of John’s neck. Exhale, inhale. Puff, scent. Then, at last, pressure. Two curving lines of pressure, each sharply punctuated. John closes his eyes and prepares for warmth.
It doesn’t come.
It doesn’t happen.
Nothing happens, except Sherlock rearing up, except Sherlock leaving him cold and alone.
“The hell is wrong with you?” John's words fall out as more of a mumble than a demand.
“It’s not transferring.”
“I noticed, keep going-”
“John. It is not. Transferring.”
“So keep going-”
Sherlock shakes him by the shoulders. “It won’t transfer.”
“Try anyway.” When Sherlock refuses to move, John adds, “Please.” He pulls at Sherlock. “Please?”
“I’m going to kill you,” Sherlock says, his voice as broken as John’s body. “Do you understand? This is it, John. It’s settled. I’m going to keep biting you until you die, I’m going to rip your throat out, do you understand that?”
“Yeah.” A tiny breath for a small word. Two more: “Do it.”
Sherlock stares down at him, mouth bloody, face ashen. “No.”
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