The Minstrel Boy to the War Has Gone (2/2) (Cold Song 6)

[eldritchhorrors]

“Dammit, Sherlock! I’ve told you everything I can remember that was the least bit odd, but we were in the middle of the desert getting shot at, so odd is pretty relative.” John sat in his chair and glared at Sherlock, though he wasn’t sure why he bothered; Sherlock was like anti-glare teflon.

As soon as he took a good look at Sherlock his frustration died and he felt like a right arse. Sherlock had folded himself onto the sofa and buried himself in contemplation; He stared at the photos that John had carefully pinned as if they could give him more information. Perhaps they might, if he only had the patience to wait for a narrower list of possible candidates.

He’d been surrounding himself with things he’d kept tamped down for much too long and John was a possible key to unlocking it all. John could give him instant gratification instead of hard slog…that’s what Sherlock wanted, but that instant gratification was fleeting.

John knew what Sherlock needed, but he was helpless when it came to giving it to him outright. It stung, not being able to give Sherlock what he asked for, and he wasn’t sure if Sherlock even realized the difference between the easy patch and the hard fix.

The visit to Bart’s had been short, brutal, uncomfortable and ultimately useless. All Sherlock had to show for it was a new catalog of inhuman imagery to worry at. Nothing new could be gleaned from the corpse, so they’d returned to Baker Street.

It had made John hurt, that little girl’s death. He couldn’t help but imagine Sherlock’s sister on a similar table, Y-shaped incision joining the other lacerations. And if Sherlock was to be believed, and John always believed him, then John had a tie to the man who put her there. John could feel his lungs collapsing in on themselves; he should be able to help, but he couldn’t. His ordinary mortal mind was no match for the precision instrument that was Sherlock’s. He had no great memory cache, he had no insight into people’s secret histories. He’d been only a man, trying to help, trying to make sense of battle with only ordinary equipment.

When John got hurt he either walked away or lashed out. He couldn’t walk away from this and now he was lashing out at someone who didn’t need to bear that burden too.

“I need something to work with. Until Mycroft gets us a list of likely men who served in both theaters you are my only connection.”

“I know, but you said it yourself, this killer blends in. And even if he was psychotic enough to attract attention it probably wasn’t anything that wouldn’t be blamed on the war. Someone showing signs of instability wasn’t exactly uncommon.”

Sherlock appeared impossibly young and a bit lost in a way that John had never seen for himself. He had been lonely and untethered for a long time before John had met him. John had been able to assemble an incomplete picture from little things he’d heard here and there, and seeing Sherlock return to that lost isolation, even briefly, could break John in ways he’d never before considered breakable.

Sherlock frowned but when he spoke it was tangential to John’s response. “Most of my senses are too acute. I see everything; I see too much. I’m constantly buried under an avalanche of sight, sound, smell. I can only deal with that if I have strict focus, something for me to latch onto as a buffer. If the focus is there the rest becomes insignificant”

“That used to be music.”

“It dried up. Music is nothing without a soul to drive it. You can program a computer to play Bach’s work exactly as he had composed it, but we don’t listen to it performed by a computer. We listen to fallible musicians.”

“You still have your soul.”

“I walled it off. I walled everything off. No soul; no pain. I’m not even sure if I believe in a soul.”

John was able to fill in a bit of what Sherlock wasn’t saying. Sherlock didn’t want to disbelieve in the soul either. “Instead of music you found the work. And to fill in the gaps, you found--”

“Drugs.”

“And now... you need a focus.”

“As bad as it normally is...”

Sherlock trailed off, but John heard it all the same.

“You want pain as a focus, now?”

Sherlock sat up on the sofa and swung his legs off so that he could lean over and look at the floor. His hair fell over his forehead, shadowing his eyes, but John could see Sherlock’s mouth, expressive for once, and the way that it almost trembled was gutting. “Yes.”

He knew Sherlock hated the abstention from the work, the waiting only briefly punctuated by flurried bouts of analysis. But even worse than that, John knew, was how much Sherlock must despise this emotional recidivism. Sherlock was no longer that nine-year-old boy, but those nine-year-old emotions had resurfaced. Pain was fine when dealing with the sensory overload of pink suits and Triad thugs, but Sherlock hadn’t developed a healthy response mechanism for emotional overload other than complete suppression.

John didn’t think pain was what Sherlock needed. It was just the only thing he knew how to ask for.

If Sherlock had still been that child John would have grabbed him and hugged him and never let him go. Had anyone done that for little Sherlock in the aftermath? Had Mycroft pulled him into his bed at night and rocked him till he slept? Or had Mycroft tried to maintain a distant status quo? Become the aloof father figure instead of the support?

John had done that, though; hugged him, comforted him, whispered meaningless things to him, but Sherlock was a grown man, and needed reassurance like a grown man, and John loved him so damn much he ached with it sometimes, stealing his breath.

John was quite proud of how well Sherlock had dealt with everything thrown at him within the past twenty-four hours, but he knew that Sherlock was approaching critical mass and that something would have to give. The combination of emotional upheaval and a stagnant mind was volatile. Nitro glycerin.

That’s what Sherlock was telling him, but how Sherlock meant it and how John interpreted it were two different things.

And goddammit, maybe John was being a selfish bastard, but he wanted Sherlock to want him, not the sexual trappings. He wanted to know if what they had was anything at all once they stripped away the domination and the toys and Sherlock’s repression.

He didn’t know. He really didn’t.

Because knowing wasn’t the same as hoping.

During the past several months John had been able to drain, or at least redirect, some of Sherlock’s furor, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do here; this was unprecedented. Sherlock needed human contact, needed it so damn much, but his only point of reference for that was purely sexual, and he only asked for sex if it involved either pain, domination or both.

If there was one thing Sherlock hated it was being told he was ignorant on a subject, but, good Christ, was he ignorant.

In Sherlock’s warped perspective penetration equaled domination, but John had never subscribed to that idea. He’d dominated, and penetrative sex had been a part of that, but John had also bottomed during plain old vanilla sex and never felt like he was submitting. That was why John hadn’t fucked him yet...he was waiting for Sherlock to understand the difference. He was waiting for Sherlock to understand that it was okay for Sherlock to touch and be touched in turn without there being some ultimate goal that went beyond giving each other pleasure.

Sherlock never initiated sex on the nights when they weren’t sceneing. He would respond to John, enjoy what they did together, but he never asked for it. Hell, he never asked for a kiss or a hug, but he seemed to enjoy it when John gave one to him. Odd behavior for a man who claimed not to be a sub. John figured that he was practicing affection in this relationship based only on the knowledge culled from a previous one (the only one, maybe?). One that had ended poorly.

So John hugged Sherlock, and kissed him in the kitchen, on the stairs, little pecks and long, lush twinings of tongue, big bear clasps and small squeezes, all to let Sherlock know that it was okay, it was important, it was right.

Touching didn’t have to mean getting off. Getting off didn’t have to mean pain or submission. Pain and submission didn’t have to equal penetration.

John’s task was to get beyond what Sherlock could rationalize using whatever half-arsed ritual theory he was employing at the moment, and he was coming to the conclusion that he might just have to show Sherlock this thing he couldn’t discuss. Throw it all out there and point to it, saying ‘See? This. This!’ Sherlock could scoff at the words, but not the act itself.

Right.

Easy.

Right.

And if there was some portion of him that was actively fleeing from dominating, well, that was nobody’s business but his own. Sherlock trusted him, and John needed to honor that trust. He couldn’t give Sherlock what he asked for if it wasn’t in his best interest.

He couldn’t give Sherlock a lot of things right now.

(Jeezus. Jeezus. He couldn’t even imagine knowing...)

But he could give him this.

Sherlock was still looking at him like the most doe-eyed of Oliver Twists begging sir for more.

John...John was tired of fighting. Wasn’t quite sure why he was fighting. Like war. Like Afghanistan. Like life.

John stood up and took Sherlock’s hand, pulling him upright before leading Sherlock upstairs. John’s room was better equipped for what he had in mind now. Which, according to Sherlock’s currently crap level of sexual understanding, probably wasn’t much.

John pulled the covers down the bed and retrieved the lube from  his bedside table, then turned towards Sherlock, who stood in the door, uncertain and trying not to show it. John could tell now when Sherlock was being genuinely arrogant and when he was pretending to it. John usually ordered Sherlock to strip, but he wasn’t going for a subservient frame of mind at the moment, so John approached Sherlock, putting his palms to Sherlock’s chest, finger pads kissing his collarbone before stroking his hands downward.

He loved the feel of the muscle, long and lean from too few calories, loved the way the nipples firmed under his touch. John brought his hands down to Sherlock’s hips and pulled him in for a kiss. Sherlock bent his head to John’s and let John map the topography of his lips, chin, cheek sandy with barely-there stubble.

This was soft and slow exploration, with no drive or teeth, just the movement of soft flesh to soft flesh, the thrust and give lazy and golden like treacle.

John went for Sherlock’s buttons, slipping each out of the buttonhole with no hurry. He only paused the kiss to take each wrist in his hands to undo the buttons at his cuffs. Sherlock looked at him, implacable grey eyes absorbing everything, not blinking. John pushed the cotton over Sherlock’s shoulders and Sherlock dropped his arms from John’s waist so that the silk-slick cotton could slip down his arms to puddle on the floor.

They kissed again, and this time John spread his fingers through Sherlock’s hair, softer than John’s new sheets, curls springy against his palms. He had hair like a baby, remarkably at odds with his personality. Sherlock tasted like tea and baking soda toothpaste, and that taste blended with the smell of him, animal musk and burnt sugar overlaid with the expensive rosemary and lime of his shampoo.

Sometimes John felt as if he could do this all day, just devour Sherlock in small sips instead of the great big gulps that Sherlock invariably took of everything. Kissing and softness didn’t serve the ritual, so maybe they were incidental; Sherlock had no off button, and everything was either mineminemine nownownow or bloody useless. No in-betweens except for a few brief spaces that John had carved out for them. John was happy that he was part of the mineminemine group, but he wanted to slow Sherlock down for this, make him appreciate the journey. Sherlock...had no patience for that.

Strange, considering the way Sherlock had explained ritual to him, but Sherlock was also fighting assumptions about sex, about John. About power and control.

This ritual had grown too big for Sherlock to own alone, and adding another person to the decision making process had to have changed the outcome. And that made John wonder if Sherlock’s aversion to soft and sweet wasn’t just a lack of patience, but one created by fear.

If John ever ran into Victor Trevor he was going to kick some righteous posh-softened arse.

Sherlock controlled every single damn thing that John did, either through direct action or just by existing. John woke and thought of Sherlock. John went to sleep and dreamed of Sherlock when he had only dreamed of blood and despair before. The hours filling the between times were filled with Sherlock.

And John loved it.

Who did that make the bottom? Who did that make the submissive? Was there any difference at all between Dom and sub or did they occupy the same space?

Drove him nuts, thinking about it sometimes. Did Sherlock realize that? John had told him in a pretty blatant way, but he didn’t feel like Sherlock knew it except in an abstract fashion.

John grabbed Sherlock’s bottom lip between his teeth and gave a gentle tug that mimicked the way he pulled Sherlock to the bed by his belt. He fumbled with the buckle for a moment, distracted by his hands skimming Sherlock’s abdomen, and the way it tightened against the play of his fingers. Sherlock’s trousers puddled at his feet and John couldn’t help it, he was down on his knees, removing shoes, stepping Sherlock out of his clothing, yanking down pants until Sherlock was naked and his.

John couldn’t keep his mouth off Sherlock, licking up Sherlock’s inner thighs and feeling a fine tremble there. He traced deep blue veins, shocking against the pale, smooth skin, with a light caress that was more tease than substance. He was still amazed that he got to do this, that Sherlock had let him close enough, considered John worthy enough, to share this with him.

John worked his tongue against the crease of Sherlock’s thigh, and the smell of Sherlock’s sex, the deepening of Sherlock’s scent was a primitive animal-brain aphrodisiac. When John outlined Sherlock’s bollocks with a wet swipe of his tongue the muscles in Sherlock’s thighs flexed and seemed to seize under John’s hands.

“John. What...”

John traced between them with a lick, ignoring the tickle of hair as he sucked at Sherlock’s scrotum, enjoying the salt and the musk. Sherlock’s fingers came down to hold John’s shoulders, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, or John.

“What are you doing? I thought...”

John wrapped his lips around one testicle and rolled his tongue around it before applying a gentle suction. He brought one hand around Sherlock’s thigh so he could flutter a finger over Sherlock’s perineum in a tease before applying firm pressure in time with each movement of his mouth. “John.”

John felt Sherlock’s fingers against his hair, not pulling, not even gripping, but patting and stroking as if John might pull away at any moment and Sherlock didn’t want to hinder that. When John finally did pull away with a last lick it was only to press kisses to the base of Sherlock’s cock, blowing hot air against the shaft as he lipped his way up to the crown. He worked the foreskin with gentle teeth and tongue, rolling the thin layers of skin and soaking them in saliva as he tugged and pulled and worked it down with mouth alone to reveal the swollen tip, the moist slit that was already welling up with bitter and sweet.

John enveloped the glans in his mouth and held it there, not even sucking or licking. He was passive around Sherlock’s cock, as he looked into Sherlock’s widening eyes. He was stretching the tension between them, creating anticipation as he felt Sherlock twitch against his palate, but that endless loop of sensation that he loved, the one created by mutual eye contact, mutual synchronicity in the moment, was broken when Sherlock turned his head away. Sherlock’s fingers suddenly tightened in his hair and he thought that Sherlock might push him away, but those fingers never went any farther. No push away, no thrust towards. Just that finger clench and the aversion of Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock’s denial of...of...what was it? The physical connection was there, but he didn’t want to recognize or accept how John felt. No. That wasn’t right. Sherlock couldn’t accept how Sherlock felt.

Idiocy due to emotional poverty. That sounded more like it.

Bloody hell was he tired of fighting this battle because normal people did this every day and Sherlock wasn’t so fucked up that he couldn’t experience it.

John raised his hand, the one that wasn’t cradling Sherlock’s bollocks, and used it to touch Sherlock’s chin and turn his face, his eyes, back to John’s.

And John swallowed.

Sherlock’s legs gave a coltish wobble before locking back into place, but John couldn’t grin because his mouth was full and diving deep, deep, not as deep as Sherlock could go but he had a respectable mouthful and the look on Sherlock’s face was gratification, devastation, elation, reverence, panic.

And he couldn’t blame it on pain and domination.

John’s hand hadn’t even forced Sherlock to look, just nudged Sherlock’s chin. It didn’t make Sherlock’s jaw move. It didn’t make Sherlock open his eyes. John was quite sure that Sherlock realized that there was no dominance involved, just a gentle, silent request from a lover.

The fact that Sherlock acquiesced told John that Sherlock wasn’t as entrenched in denial as he seemed.

John bobbed his head but it was a languid movement that he could maintain all damn day. Sherlock wanted it harder and faster because he wanted everything that way, but John kept to his pace, sometimes pulling off with a tongue wrapped around the glans, taking a breath as he rubbed his cheek against Sherlock’s cock, making Sherlock gasp his name and halt on a short breath even as he maintained the visual connection that held them together even more than lips and cock.

He was worshipping Sherlock, and Sherlock was quite a bright boy. He would get it.

Sherlock started a slight flex of his hips, trying to get John to take a bit more, go a little faster, but John was having none of it and wouldn’t let Sherlock dictate the pace because once John gave that up he might as well cede the whole struggle. If you gave Sherlock an inch he’d take...everything.

God, John wanted. Had wanted this. He’d told Sherlock he wasn’t lifestyle. He liked the kink between them, but this is what he’d been missing...not the vanilla of the sex itself but the connection in spite of it.

John eventually pulled away, making the disconnect as wet, loud and filthy-sounding as possible. He never averted his eyes from Sherlock’s, had possibly stopped blinking, he was so mesmerized, and Sherlock looked startled. Maybe a little confused. Still a bit fearful.

John undid his own fly and got to his feet, slithering his trousers and pants off and kicking them into a into a pile on the floor, leaving him naked and thanking fuck that he’d ditched his trainers earlier. He ran his hands up Sherlock afterwards: trembling flanks, quivering stomach, rapid tattoo of Sherlock’s heartbeat under his hands.

And when John stepped towards Sherlock he slid his hands around. One reached down to cup Sherlock’s arse, and the other went around Sherlock’s shoulder to pull him into a kiss that tasted of Sherlock’s pre-come on John’s lips, of Sherlock’s confusion and heart. Their bodies were touching all along their length. John had never minded being short until this moment because he had to pull Sherlock down and lift himself up to align them like he wanted to, cocks rubbing together in the creases of each other’s thighs, moist slippery skin finding the perfect curve and hollow to glide against.

John pulled back just enough to speak, and there was barely a breath between them.

“You don’t pay attention to words. Not really.”

“I adore words. Ask anyone.”

“Words lie.”

“That’s why I like words.”

“So I want you to deduce this instead.”

John wrapped his arms around Sherlock and used his weight to make them fall to the side, bouncing them on the bed in each other’s arms. John licked Sherlock’s lips open with just the tip of his tongue, not demanding an entrance but enticing one. Sherlock’s mouth parted and John kissed Sherlock like they were both dying tomorrow. He was usually so on guard around Sherlock, trying to give him less ammunition, instead of all of it at once, but he wanted Sherlock to feel all of what John felt, and John’s only recourse was baring everything.

Cards on the table.

God this was mad, and likely to backfire, and one of the most self-destructive things he’d ever tried but he just couldn’t not.

This kiss wasn’t the raw possessiveness and ownership that happened during a scene. It wasn’t the soft comfort of one stolen during a cuddle on the sofa. It wasn’t just a step that led to mutual sexual enjoyment. This kiss, the kiss, was simply John’s heart, completely bare and trusting and stupidly obvious. So obvious that even an idiot berk like Sherlock should be able to figure out what was what.

And of course, of course Sherlock tried to fight it.

--- --- ---

Sherlock knew that John couldn’t be expected to recognize an intelligent sexual sadist in the middle of war, but he couldn’t stop pushing it because John was the only link they had so far to the original killer’s past.

There was a parabola of light peeking over that dark horizon and John was they key to unlocking it.

If John were like him...if John applied his methods...if John had a memory palace...

But John was not, and Sherlock would not like him for it if he were.

They’d gone to Bart’s to inspect the body of little Olivia Smythe. Ava Williamson’s body had been interred months ago and was not available. Two murders close together; months instead of the years that had separated the man’s earliest kills. Was the escalation something that had happened gradually in Iraq, or was it there a new variable included in his madness? Did he have a more brutal partner?

Olivia had been neatly stitched back together, looking like a porcelain doll: inexpertly mended and washed white; bone china tinted with ash, turning to blue alabaster under the harsh hum of the overhead lights as he circled her table in the morgue. Smaller than Sherrinford, dainty hands, dainty toes, hair stick-straight like a sheaf of raw wheat, instead of Sherry’s short, dark mop. Muppet hair he’d called it as he cut it when they were seven, ignoring the fact that he had the same hair.

Molly stood in the corner, arms crossed over her chest, bottom lip worried raw. She’d heard, of course, but didn’t say anything. She disliked the autopsies of children under the best of circumstances, and Sherlock guessed that this one had been especially hard.

She’d nodded at him and got out of his way. A better offer of condolence he couldn’t imagine.

Ava’s body gave up no clues but the obvious, and Sherlock hadn’t really expected otherwise. Smart killers: the clothes were gone, no biological evidence left for crafty investigators to analyse.

Tomboy with a mother who pushed her into cisgendered attire and hair-style. Keen on football, drawing, Tae Kwon Do.

He’d pulled the sheet up to her chin to cover the wounds and the more clinical incision. Eyes closed, lips slightly parted to reveal gap teeth, otherworldly pallor; he could almost imagine that she was asleep.

He’d walked away then. There was nothing for him there, and he’d known it before he’d left Baker Street. But he’d needed to be thorough; he’d needed to exorcise one more ghost.

The scene was tapped for clues, the parents couldn’t help because it was a crime of opportunity, the body held nothing new: the only existing link to the killer was John, and John couldn’t deliver what John couldn’t see.

221B felt a bit like a prison now. He had to wait at home base. He had to stay functional. He had to admit that John couldn’t magic up a suspect out of speculation and hope.

Sherlock had snapped at him, later, and John snapped back so he stopped his interrogation of John and focused on the photos that wallpapered the flat. He’d hoped that something new would jump out at him but he was afraid he was at an impasse until Mycroft (again) delivered the means to continue.

But John...was John. And John would never leave him alone.

He thought he caught concern, fond exasperation, worry, but the base note of it all eluded him, worried at him like a terrier all the same. But John took his hand, a silent agreement to own him, hurt him, make it all go away for a bit. Do the hundred and one things John had promised as he’d unselfishly gotten Sherlock off.

John pulled him, not through the kitchen and into Sherlock’s room, but up the stairs and into John’s.

Sherlock hesitated at the door. They generally kept all of the toys under Sherlock’s bed, so John’s room seemed an odd choice, but it was the domesticity of the scene before him that struck him as incongruent. John was turning down the bed, retrieving supplies, looking back at him with a warmth that blue eyes shouldn’t be capable of producing according to any color theory Sherlock knew, even Johannes Itten’s mystical rambling on the nature of hue and tone.

Sherlock didn’t like to miss things. Not missing things was his raison d'être, but he had this inescapable feeling that he was suffering from inattentional blindness: there was an obvious stimulus here, but he couldn’t see it because his attention was subverted. Was he so immersed in the case? In the attraction of pain? Or was it an interference effect? He had too many competing mental processes; maybe one was negating the others.

But he needed this. Needed it.

And maybe, once this was done, he would be remade enough to understand what was wrong (different?) with John.

John came to him and kissed him, ran his hands over Sherlock’s body, and Sherlock waited, waited, waited, for the trap to be sprung, John lulling Sherlock into a false sense of vanilla security before grabbing his hair and taking control of the kiss; taking him.

But that moment never came. John mapped his mouth and undressed him with deliberate laziness. When John pulled away to undo Sherlock’s sleeves Sherlock could only stare at him with mute anticipation, wondering where this was leading, trusting John to get him there because John was the genius in the bedroom.

The next kiss was similar to the first. The taste of John was bright and electric on his tongue but John steered it so slow that Sherlock was becoming nervous with anticipation, had to stop himself from twitching with impatience because he wanted all that John could dish out and John had the habit of drawing out the anticipation longer if Sherlock whined about it.

He gradually deepened the kiss, adding more tongue and the edge of teeth to pull at Sherlock’s bottom lip. He walked backwards, pulling Sherlock with him by the belt, and Sherlock went gladly, gratefully. They bumped the bed and John stroked his belly, and Sherlock could feel the shaking of John’s hand and John’s hand was shaking, why was it shaking?

The shaking of John’s hand told Sherlock that, yes, he was missing something obvious, something that could reduce John, strong, fearless, adrenaline-addicted John, to a
hand tremor when the threat of death could not.

He almost said something, he wasn’t sure what, but John was on his knees for him, undressing him, then his mouth roaming the sensitive skin of Sherlock’s inner thighs, his bollocks, his cock. John went down on him sometimes, but it was often from a position of dominance, and it had never been like this. This was a slow game, a slow burn that went beyond a blow job. John took a meandering path, leaving no area untested for sexual response. Licking, sucking, rubbing; he  pressed his nose into Sherlock and inhaled deeply in a neanderthal way that shouldn’t have made Sherlock’s blood effervesce the way it did. Sherlock started shaking, shaking like John had been shaking, watching that mouth work him over, coax every nuance of feeling to be had from the act of fellatio, worshipping Sherlock like Sherlock worshipped John.

A surprise about-face that seemed somehow forbidden, and wrong. Dangerous.

Sherlock had kept his hands fisted at his side, but now he couldn’t stop them reaching out, petting John’s hair, smoothing down the stubborn tuft that often stuck up in the back. “John. What...”

But he couldn’t get out any more than that as John sucked one bollock into his mouth, rolling it against his tongue with a gentle suction that almost hurt, it was so exceptionally fine. Sherlock clutched at him, grabbed his shoulders, tried to remember not to hurt the left one, tried to...

“What are you doing? I thought...”

A wet finger slid up his perineum to apply firm pressure that followed the beat of John’s mouth upon him, and the combination was a strain on Sherlock’s composure. It was amazing. Beautiful, giving, real, earthy, incredible and John John John, “John.”

Sherlock couldn’t stop touching him, couldn’t stop feeling John, couldn’t help it as John looked at him and held him in the deepest bondage he’d ever known with nothing but the motion of hands and mouth and the look in those fathomless eyes that made Sherlock fall down, down, down...

Sherlock had to look away, it was too intense. It left him too--

But John touched him. His face. His jaw. And coaxed Sherlock back to look as John held him in his mouth, hard and vulnerable and wanting, but Sherlock had no eyes for that, had eyes only for John’s eyes, and when John swallowed Sherlock still couldn’t look away, even though it felt as if he were dying a little. Because this hurt.

This hurt.

John was an inescapable fact. John took him slowly and terribly and left him with wanting and a nameless terror that still couldn’t overwhelm the magic of being wanted in this way, by this man.

Sherlock wanted it over with. Sherlock wanted it never to end.

The two desires were mutually exclusive and his vacillation between the two was tearing him apart.

He wanted John to give him orders. He wanted John to tell him what to do, make him bleed, use his body. That was easier.

John never stopped looking at Sherlock.

John never stopped looking at Sherlock.

John.

When John drew his mouth away from Sherlock’s length for a final time he hollowed his cheeks on the long sucking motion, wet tongue sliding up the shaft, pulling away from the head with a dirty ice-lolly lick and a bob of his Adam’s apple.

John stared at him, hungry, as he shucked his clothes; stared at him, devouring, as he stepped into Sherlock, touched Sherlock. Sherlock felt John’s hands stroke him, grip him, suddenly calling attention to the fact that Sherlock himself was almost crawling out of his own flesh with something unnamable and hadn’t even noticed it because he’d been consumed whole.

When John took his mouth he could feel the percussive rhythm of heartbeat against heartbeat, too close to differentiate, too rapid to time. It felt like it was trying to escape; Sherlock’s, John’s, it was practically the same thing now and he wasn’t...

When John spoke Sherlock only answered on autopilot. The conversations between mouths and between eyes were of two different natures he was sure.

John dragged him to the bed, and...

...and...

...that.

John kissed him.

John had kissed him before but this wasn’t just...

Kissing wasn’t...

John.

It was, simply, John.

He could feel it, as John’s tongue swept in and seduced his own, in the way John’s hands clasped him by the elbows. John’s body was taut and primed for sex but John himself was pliant and submitting to...not to Sherlock. Sherlock would never want that. No.

John was surrendering to the totality of them.

People had many facades that they presented to the world, and multiple levels of facade that they showed to others depending on a hierarchy of importance. John’s hierarchy of importance went from government official, to stranger, to acquaintance, to sister, to friend, to landlady, to best friend. Sherlock was the last stand, the final level of veneer, and he’d been ridiculously pleased with that.

But then John had removed that last veneer, shown himself as naked and vulnerable underneath, and Sherlock realized that he hadn’t understood at all.

It was brave.

It was idiocy. He was witnessing emotional suicide, because who in their right mind would...

Sherlock would ruin this, somehow.

That, in turn, could ruin John.

Sherlock thrashed his arms, struggling away from John’s grip, but John wouldn’t let him go. John’s hands viced down so Sherlock bit his lip till he tasted iron, and snarled as he pulled away from John’s mouth and the terrible, terrible truth it was speaking without a sound.

John was bleeding now, but Sherlock couldn’t be arsed to care because this was not what he agreed to, this was not what he wanted, and how could John do this to him, the selfish bastard.

“You have a safe word.” John ignored the way Sherlock squirmed, and leaned down, not kissing Sherlock’s mouth, but kissing the exquisitely sensitive skin of his neck, leading to his ear. It was delicate flesh, and even the slightest brush could make Sherlock judder in arousal, but right now it was like paint thinner on an open wound because it made...it made...

Sherlock kicked, but his leg tangled in the sheet as he thrashed and John was able to grab him by the shoulder and flip him onto his back.

John had the mount, stradling Sherlock’s chest, Sherlock’s wrists in his hands. This was a familiar position, but not the same, because John wasn’t trying to hold him down and possess him, hurt him like he wanted. John was breathing heavy and licking blood from the corner of his lip and trying not to hurt him because John was too bone-headed to realise that he wasn’t hurting Sherlock physically.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“You know.” John looked at him, and Sherlock looked away because as much as Sherlock liked to mock it, John had emotional wisdom, and Sherlock didn’t want to be read.

Not like John had opened himself up to be read.

Not like that.

Sherlock kept his eyes averted and closed them hard, but he stopped fighting. The tension didn’t leave him but he was no longer trying to claw at John.

“I’m making love to you.” John scooted down Sherlock’s body and placed a kiss to his sternum,  his bellybutton, making Sherlock convex then concave his stomach with a rapid patter of need. He was still holding Sherlock’s wrists, but the hold gentled until the touch was merely a cobweb between them, whisper-thin.

“No.”

“I’m making love to you because I’m in love with you.”

Sherlock tried to stifle the sound he made, abort it before it could become substantial, but he only managed to catch it in his throat where it fluttered like a dying bird.

“And you.” John spoke hushed secrets into Sherlock’s hipbone. “You love me too.”

It wasn’t a question.

There was no question.

Just...truth.

Sherlock couldn’t say anything to that. Couldn’t lie. Couldn’t tell the truth. Could only marvel at the simple power of the web John had caught him in. Carbon nanotubes weren’t as strong.

John nipped at him, just his hip, but it made Sherlock’s body curl. Sherlock’s hands found their way to John’s hair and shoulders as John moved further down. He bypassed the obvious, cock and bollocks,  raising Sherlock’s arse up to lick at his perineum and press his teeth into the curve of Sherlock’s buttock.

John’s tongue was a subtle tattoo on his skin as he graphed a path across Sherlock, lips cool but brand-hot against him. He tracked every nerve ending Sherlock possessed, it seemed, as he ran slick-wet-writhing lemniscates over groin and thigh.

When John first touched his tongue to Sherlock’s arsehole, tracing the rim with only a few scant millimeters of connection, Sherlock transcended his body, his vision like the boost of a rocket briefly lighting the firmament.

Sherlock groaned, a deep, gritty, yearning in his chest, and the sound spurred John on. John was lapping at him, the gentle flutter replaced by the deep working of his tongue, fucking into him, sloppy and wet as his lips sealed over him and sucked, and wasn’t that a filthy thing? That noise, that slurp of suction and the answering groan that rattled in John’s lungs. That tongue driving into him in waltz time, one two three, one two three.

John spread him further, wider, and pulled Sherlock open with his hands so he could burrow deeper, get closer. It was so intense that Sherlock had to bite the knuckles of one hand with his teeth, like a girl in an old black and white melodrama that John had insisted he watch and not delete. His other hand was buried in John’s hair, pushing for once, guiding John where he wanted him, and it was good, so good.

The rimming was so gluttonous that Sherlock didn’t even register the introduction of John’s fingers until they skimmed his prostate. He froze for a moment, hands palsied against John, and then he cried out and started speaking, babbling nonsense and noise and every stream-of-consciousness bit of his soul into the charged air.

John, John dear God, John what do you, how do you, please John, more I can’t take please please, this is, no idea no idea, John so good, good, good is an inadequate adjective, splendid magnificent, John, you are The Ring Cycle, Mathis Der Maler, the Rite of Spring, the Marriage of Figaro.

John, you are La Mer, you are Einstein on the Beach.

You are the Messiah and St. Matthew’s Passion.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Otello. The Goldberg Variations. Rhapsody in Blue. Bitches Brew.

Purcell’s King Arthur.

You are Music to Play in the Dark.

A Limnal Hymn.

Sherlock wasn’t sure how much he said aloud and how much he kept inside, but it was all there, inside him, breaking free and shattering into a chaotic existence as John slicked them up, slicked himself up, no condom, nothing between them, they’d already shared blood anyway, and then he pressed.

John pressed him all over. John’s lips, pressed into Sherlock’s collarbone, John’s face turned towards him to look at him as he did it. John’s hands, pressed against Sherlock’s as they clasped, and how had that happened? Sherlock holding hands with a man as they made love. It sounded freakishly humorous, but the reality of it was anything but. Every little snippet of romantic twaddle he’d ever heard about the act of fornication came back to him in a rush because none of it seemed quite so silly after all.

John’s cock pressed in, head slipping around his hole before finding purchase and ingress, and oh, oh, Sherlock could feel his body stretching around John, that first breach of his sphincter stretching him wide, reminding him that John was by no means a small man in the ways that counted.

He’d used a lot of lube, and after Sherlock had sealed tight around the head John slipped in fast, big, big, but Sherlock wanted it so much, relaxed into it so much, and John was suddenly full inside him and big, so big, and Sherlock could feel his pulse there like it was Sherlock’s pulse, and in a way...it was.

John canted his hips on the outstroke so that when he pushed back in his cock slid straight against Sherlock’s prostate, and it was almost too much, like the oversensitivity after an orgasm, but too much was shivery and gorgeous at that moment, liquid sunshine instead of blood in his veins, ethanol sweetness dissolving on his tongue like candy floss.

Sherlock was already on the verge of orgasm, he’d wanted this for so long. No-- not quite this. Sherlock had wanted sex. Fucking.

He wanted John to pick up his pace, to flex into him harder, matching greater force with the deep penetration of those languid, rolling thrusts. But John just looked in his eyes and smiled, giving him a minuscule shake of the head before leaning in to kiss him.

This was true ownership. It didn’t require pain or complex direction. It hadn’t needed rules or guidelines or that stupid safeword to make it fact. John had offered everything to gain everything. John was the bravest man Sherlock knew, and he had no choice but to fold himself up like a peace dove and slip himself into John’s pocket.

Sherlock was not quite as brave as John but it was unnerving and fright-raising all the same. They were at the end point of Occam’s razor: stripped down to bare need and bare love.

For a boy that had put on every neurotypical affectation like a layer of overcoats, the removal of it all was overwhelming.

Freeing.

John.

A layer of sweat filmed between them, making them slide smooth, and John pressed Sherlock’s legs back even further, deepening the places he touched and allowing their chests to meet and mingle with a salt sheen.

John’s scent was like fire and tea overlaid with the civet smell of fucking and it was delicious, Sherlock wanted to taste, so he did, pulling John even closer, wrapping around him in an uncomfortable parody of a sexual netsuke, but he needed John, needed him mouth to mouth, needed to follow that bead of sweat down his neck and lap, lap at his suprasternal notch, his chest, then a quick, final kiss to the corner of his jaw when he finally had to pull away, unable to sustain the doubled-up position any longer.

John could roll his hips like a belly dancer, and the slow thrust was driving Sherlock out of rational thought and into basic lizard-brain territory.

“Please.”

“You don’t have to beg.”

“I know.” Sherlock bit the inside of his cheek as John pulled out halfway and started shallow thrusts that bumped into his prostate on every inner glide. “But I want...”

“Do you know?”

Sherlock rolled his head on his neck in exasperation. “Yes. Yes. You love me, I love you. This isn’t just sex. Now get on with it.”

“You sure?” John’s eyes were bright and elfin even though Sherlock could see building desperation behind them. “I don’t need to prove my point just a little more?” John punctuated that with a quick dig of his hips.

“John!”

“Right.” John drew out, which was not what Sherlock wanted, and flipped Sherlock over, pulling at his hips until his ass was in the air and his cheek was pressed to the pillow. Sherlock gave him a dirty look over his shoulder and snarled.

John smirked. He laid one hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, the other on Sherlock’s hip, and ran his wet cock along the crack of Sherlock’s arse.

“This work for you?”

“John. Fuck me.”

“Fair enough.”

When John slammed in there was a brief moment of pain, but that just underscored the pleasure that followed. John spread him wide and went as deep as he could, a fast stroke in, hips driving against arse, slower stroke out, almost slipping out before the hard return. John was a constant rub against his prostate, near constant stimulation, no mystery there, and the unceasing beat of it was sending him over too quick.

Sherlock gasped for air and clawed at the pillow, held on, eyes tight, tears leaking because this was pleasure sharp enough to cut. John was bent over him, panting hot breaths and obscenities and love words into his spine to mingle with the moisture collecting in the small of his back.

Sherlock had never orgasmed without cock stimulation, but he could feel it building in his belly, and he laughed at the feeling, incredulous and high and it was so, so good and...

He couldn’t hold on, that ball of energy inside him getting luminous, an unstable explosive. He let go, feeling the hot wash of electrical charge reverberate inside him, overwriting every previous orgasm, making every other significant encounter with anyone else turn to dun. He could hear John gasp behind him as Sherlock fell apart, and John’s fingers bit into him, leaving bruises, his mark, but John held off his own orgasm. Sentiment? Sherlock couldn’t think. His legs shook through it, wanted to give way beneath him, so John rolled them to the side, still inside him, still flexing in.

John pressed his cheek to Sherlock’s back and insinuated his arms around him, clutching Sherlock like a security blanket.

“That.” John cleared his throat. “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Sherlock snorted and clenched around John, but he didn’t disagree.

“You are...this is...” John pressed little fluttering pecks of his lips into Sherlock’s shoulder, an odd counterpoint to his quickening thrusts.

“John.”

“What?”

“I want you to come in me.” Sherlock bore down on John, and John hissed like a predator in his ear.

“Yes.” John was digging claws into his chest, biting at the base of Sherlock’s neck, and when he finally came the orgasm drew a harsh yell from his throat, the sound muffled by Sherlock’s flesh in his teeth, the small pierce of skin, the shallow breaking of blood.

--- --- ---

The calm lassitude after sex was new to Sherlock. He’d never wanted to laze around in bed with anyone before.

John was idly tracing patterns into Sherlock’s chest with a finger, occasionally flicking a nipple into hardness.

“Do you believe in the transmigration of souls?”

John raised his head to give Sherlock a sideways look. “You have the oddest pillow talk.”

“John.”

John dropped back to the pillow. “Are you asking if I believe in God?”

“Gods don’t matter. What I wanted to know is whether you believe in any sort of afterlife.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought of it much. Growing up, if you had asked my mum, she would have said we were Church of England, but the only time it ever really figured in our lives was Christmas, and that was really about the presents. And after seeing what war is like I have a hard time believing in a beneficent God.” John turned towards him, putting one hand under the cheek that was pressed into the pillow. “Why do you ask? I assumed you were an atheist.”

“I...am.”

“You don’t sound that sure.”

“After Sherrinford died I spent a lot of time trying to make some sense of it. She didn’t feel gone. Not really. If I walked into a room it seemed like she had just stepped out of it. Sometimes it still feels that way.”

“That’s not uncommon.”

“I read a lot on religion. Everything I could get my hands on. But it seemed so rubbish. I wanted to believe that she wasn’t just...not there.” Sherlock stroked John’s hair. “Wishful thinking, the idea of a soul. It’ll be completely disproven once there is human cloning. Then the masses will have to find their comfort somewhere else.”

John grabbed Sherlock’s wrist, then twinned their hands together. “Did you? Find any comfort?”

“Religiously? No. Philosophically? Perhaps. Philosophies that support modern scientific thought instead of denial of the truth. Remind me to tell you about the correlations between theories like the Heisenberg Principle and Schrodinger’s Cat and the Buddhist Doctrine of Emptiness. Buddhism spoke to me on many levels, even as a physicist.”

“Really.”

“All is suffering, John.”

“Everything?” John smiled and leaned in for a kiss.

Sherlock returned the kiss, but his smile was tempered with something solemn. “Even this. Any happiness is ephemeral at best, and the knowledge that it is transient is painful. Viparinama Dukkha.”

John snorted. “Not really comforting, there, Sherlock.”

“Isn’t it?” Sherlock sat up, propped up on his elbows. “The Buddhist goal is cessation of all suffering, the cessation of existence. I believe in a final death. Buddhists believe in Samsara and Nibbana.”

“I never thought I’d be having this conversation with you.”

“I gave up on any religious study when I pushed her loss completely away. But now...”

“You like the comfort that Buddhist philosophy provides even if you don’t buy into the idea of endless rebirth.”

“Yes.”

Sherlock spooned up to John’s back and buried his face in the nape of John’s neck.

“I suppose contemplating the nature of Ultimate Reality might just save the wall from further mutilation. But...”

“Yes?”

“Doesn’t Buddhism focus on sublimating the ego?”

“John?”

“Hmm?”

“Piss off.”

--- --- ---

They were, for lack of a better term, cuddling, on the sofa when Mycroft came, bearing four manila folders. Sherlock would deny it but it was a sofa snuggle all the same.

Sherlock lined the folders up in a row and raised an eyebrow at John. “Are we ready to go to war?”

John nodded. “You are the very model of a modern major general.”

“Why John, that was almost clever.”

John gave him a two-fingered salute then turned to the files. His face fell, unable to sustain anything other than stoic acceptance of the job before him. He hoped that Sherlock was wrong, that he had no ties to this, but even as he thought it he knew it was a false hope. And, if it helped catch a killer and gave Sherlock some closure, it was a burden he would gladly carry.

“These men fit the profile, the locations and the timeline. If they aren’t familiar, we have other avenues of investigation available, but...” Mycroft didn’t need to finish. Other avenues were less likely to produce solid leads.

John took a breath and took the first file. There was a photo clipped to the top of the paperwork. Edward Axelrad, dusty and unsmiling in desert camo. Unfamiliar, but John skimmed through the documents anyway, looking for something to jog a memory.

He finally shook his head and placed it down.

The next file’s candidate was in civvies in a bar with a few mates, grinning drunkenly. Abel Williamson. Not familiar.

He put it with the other.

When he opened the next file he tensed immediately. He didn’t even need to glance at the name. Knew the face. Knew the shape of his jaw and his words, the photo catching him as he spoke, and his hands clenched on the file with the certainty that he felt.

“John.”

Sherlock had tensed when he had tensed, knowing that this was it. Mycroft leaned in to look at the killer. John tossed the file to the table, where the papers fanned out. The photo was on top. A handsome man, late 40’s, black fatigues, speaking with another soldier.

“John?” Sherlock looked torn, torn between the file and the look on John’s face, and the fact that Sherlock would pause for even a moment at a time like this said more to John than a hundred flowery declarations.

More than he deserved, because he was so, so sorry.

Sherlock’s hand found John’s arm and squeezed.

“I saved his life, you know.”

“John.”

“He was bleeding out. The shrapnel had clipped an artery.” John tapped the picture with a strangely steady hand. “Sebastian Moran would be dead if not for me.”

--- --- ---

The next fic will be I Must Hunt My Shadow.

Thank you for reading. Please review. It means a lot to me.