Show Me How to Stop Running (2/2), NC-17, John/Sherlock
Title: Show Me How to Stop Running (2/2)
Rating: NC-17
Length: 12,392 words
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Summary: John gets turned into a werewolf during Afghanistan, and it sucks, but then he moves in with another werewolf, and it gets better.
John's second full moon in London goes much like his first, but this time when he wakes up, the night before feels like a years-old memory punctuated with flashes of sensation. He's also managed not to ruin any of his bedding this time, a revelation that leaves him feeling inordinately proud. Well, there's a slight tear in the fabric from where one of his claws had gotten tangled, but that doesn't count.
The wolf feels closer now, humming just under his skin instead of locked in a corner of his mind, and he can feel its pleasure. It likes the dark wolf that is Sherlock, and they had curled up together at the end of the night, two round balls of fur that'd just barely brushed together.
“How is your memory?” Sherlock asks, and once his blanket is folded, begins to fold John's as well.
“Good, actually. I mean, it doesn't feel the same as a normal memory, but I'm getting there.”
“That's good. Waiting in here with you bores me, and having Lestrade around on full moons is incredibly irritating. 221C was not made to fit three fully-grown wolves for an entire night.”
John can sympathize, now. The thought of Lestrade locked in with him again, once more having to share such a small space, makes the wolf anxious. As does the thought of being locked up again at all -- his wolf wants air, fresh air, and the feel of a breeze against its fur.
We can't, he tells it, It's not safe, and the wolf growls, displeased.
--
The feeling doesn't go away tomorrow, or the day after, and when John goes out to apply for jobs, he finds his nose picking up scents he'd never paid attention to before -- perfume, soap, the sickly-sweetness of disease, and the sharp, acrid odor of fear.
That woman had sex this morning, and feels anxious. That man had sex with another man, and hasn't changed his clothes since the night before, when he'd eaten pizza and spilled a beer on his trousers. There is a stray dog in that direction, but stray dogs tend to be afraid of him, and not the other way around.
It's not that his nose is any better (it's better than it was when he was fully human, but hasn't changed since becoming a werewolf). It's that the wolf knows what it all means, while his human side's pretty much limited to “food”, “unwashed”, and “artificial”.
Thank you, he thinks to the wolf, and feels its pleasure as a response.
“Don't move towards the source of an interesting scent like that,” Sherlock advises, when John tilts his head and leans towards the tantalizing odors emanating from the Chinese restaurant down the street. “It makes you look like a dog. You can always go inside if you want to investigate further.”
He hadn't even realized he'd been doing it. “Is that something your mother taught you?” He lowers his voice. “About being a wolf?”
Sherlock shoots him a sidelong glance. “Among other things, yes.”
“Care to share with the rest of us?” John prompts, when Sherlock makes no motions to elaborate.
“It seems to come naturally to you,” Sherlock says, but obligingly ticks off points onto his fingers. “Don't growl at others. Don't bite. Don't lick. Don't touch dead things. Don't scare the horses,” and John is struck by a mental image of a much smaller Sherlock growling at a stable of horses just to make them rear. Sherlock catches John's expression and scowls at him. “I was a child, and our mother was used to raising Mycroft, who always did as he was told.”
“Those do seem to be common sense,” John agrees, but the wolf is already rumbling its lack of understanding. It sees nothing wrong with Sherlock licking fresh blood from his fingers, or the way Lestrade had greeted him the first time, bringing their faces close to each other like wolves instead of touching hands like humans.
--
John's never realized how much the wolf could help him, but it helps him now. The improved senses that had seemed overwhelming at first feel normal instead, lines of information streaming into the wolf's mind and passed, after translation, into John's.
He gets a job at a hospital, and the wolf memorizes the different scents of disease, until a patient needs only to get close to him before he can tell the difference between a cold and the flu, can identify when he can send someone off with a scrip for antibiotics versus a need to investigate further.
And in return, John lets it shadow his movements, lets it hide in his eyes when he walks home and run their hands over the rough bark of the trees they pass, leaving his scent as a marker. He tries not to make it obvious, but he knows he's failed when he catches Donovan's eyes on him when he stops by Scotland Yard and the wolf pulls him to a halt outside Lestrade's open office.
The man's not in, but the room reeks of him, of territory claimed, and they respect him too much to intrude without an invitation. John strokes his bare hand down the doorframe -- I stopped by, while you weren't here, it says, and covers the old, faded scent of Sherlock having done the same.
“What?” Donovan asks, and walks in. Not wolf, his wolf snarls in derision. No territory. “Too good to wait?”
“I'll wait outside,” John says instead, even though there's a perfectly serviceable chair in front of his desk.
She doesn't say it, but he knows she's thinking it (freak), and the wolf bares John's teeth at her. He doesn't stop it.
--
Do people always smell this much like food? John texts Sherlock, when there is a bad car accident and a half-dozen people are wheeled into the hospital, and John finds his stomach growling. He's craving red meat, which is more than a little alarming. Food, the wolf agrees, and John sends it a vehement, No.
Only when they're bleeding, Sherlock texts back.
--
There's a woman at the hospital who is pretty and kind and exactly John's type. And before the wolf, he would have smiled, and stammered, and asked her to have dinner with him. She'd say yes if he asked, he knows, because she bares her teeth at him (smiles, he tells the wolf, wants to be friends), and watches him when he walks by.
Before, when he'd smelled a woman (when he'd been human), he'd smelled their shampoo, or their perfume, and it had been nice. Exciting. But when he scents one now, the wolf bypasses all that and reports to him, Healthy, female, not wolf. Humandanger? Weak, soft. Prey?
It sees the world in black and white -- wolf and not wolf, prey and not prey. It doesn't see the point in making bonds with humans. Its only interests are in Greg and Sherlock.
He asks her out anyways, defiantly, because it's his choice, not the wolf's. She blushes and says yes, shyly.
Sherlock finds out, of course. “A date, John?” he asks when John's on his way out the door, straightening his cuffs.
“You don't need to sound so skeptical,” John replies defensively. “What's wrong with going on a date?”
“With who? One of them? What would be the point?”
“Maybe I just want to have a good time.”
“You can have a good time with me. And then you wouldn't need to wear so much cologne.” Sherlock's nose wrinkles minutely. The cologne is a little bit overpowering, but he'd already rinsed a lot of it off; to a human, it probably barely registers.
“I want a girlfriend, Sherlock. Haven't you ever --”
“Not with one of them,” Sherlock says, and his voice clearly says, What would I want with a human?
“Well, you're more of a wolf than I am. I'm still human 29 days out of the month, and I'd like some human companionship.”
--
The wolf's not pleased. Sarah bares her teeth too much. She meets his eyes and drops her gaze only to do it again and again. She's wearing too much of some sort of perfume that irritates him, and it feels like someone shouting “Look at me! Look at me!” right at his nose. Preynotfriend, his wolf insists. Not wolf.
Notprey, John thinks firmly at it, and pushes it down when it refuses to subside. They make small talk -- John asks about her favorite films, and she asks how he's enjoying his job, and in a corner of his mind the wolf paces in circles, bored. She can't run with him, can't speak to him, and the only thing enticing about her is her body, which is really not enough for a relationship.
He takes her home and kisses her goodnight, which feels wrong, because what he wants to do is tuck his nose behind her ear and inhale deeply -- but he knows he can't. The kiss is chaste, and she bares her teeth at him and says, “Good night, John,” and touches his arm lightly.
Boring, the wolf says to him, clawing at the corners of the mental enclosure John's set for it, and John sighs, lets it rise up again. Yes, okay, he says.
There won't be a second date.
--
For all that the wolf barely cares about humans, neatly throwing them all in a box labeled 'not wolf', he makes an exception for Harry. Or perhaps it is John who makes the exception, and the wolf merely accepts it.
Harry isn't wearing any perfume when she meets him, because she's not looking for a girlfriend anymore. There's no sharp scent of alcohol clinging to her, so if she has been drinking, it's not recently. She hugs John when she sees him, and he gets a nose full of her scent.
Blood, John's wolf says immediately, Not wolf, blood. Pack, and John breathes out in relief. He doesn't know what he would have done, if the wolf didn't accept her.
They talk and it's awkward, because Harry doesn't want to talk about Clara, and John doesn't want to talk about Afghanistan. John tells her what he dares about Sherlock (he's brilliant, he conducts experiments in the flat, he calls himself a consulting detective), and tries not to mention any cases that involved life or death situations.
He doesn't say anything he really wants to tell her (I got turned into a werewolf and he's one too and so is a DI on the force, I can identify people by smell from twenty feet away, the wolf in my head talks to me and considers you family).
He's not sure how he'd even begin.
--
John doesn't realize how unusual their running speed is until Sherlock vaults a chain-link fence in one smooth motion, and John follows just as easily. When he turns around to check on the officers behind him (Sherlock had deduced where the killer had stashed the next body, and was leading them to it -- John tries very hard not to think about search and rescue dogs, but he can't keep the smile from his face), they are panting heavily and barely keeping up. They stop at the fence.
Sherlock shouts to them their destination, and tells them to take a car, that they'll meet at the body. John follows when he runs off. He's not even winded. The night breeze against his face is pleasantly cool.
“I have a limp, you know. From the war,” he comments, when he follows Sherlock up a fire escape.
“Psychosomatic doesn't count,” Sherlock replies, and, with a running start, vaults onto the next building over.
John hesitates, but the wolf says jump, so he does. He makes the jump with a few feet to spare. “Why are we going this way?”
“It's a straight line. Faster than taking a cab, given the traffic.”
“You think it's fun,” John accuses, after the third leap. Sherlock's coat billows dramatically each time, which has got to be deliberate.
Sherlock looks at him. “Don't you?” When John doesn't answer, Sherlock continues, “Le Parkour, John. It's not uncommon. Even normal people do it.”
“Probably not from two stories up,” John mutters under his breath, and Sherlock laughs.
--
John doesn't realize their murderer is waiting for them at the body -- the stench of death, and blood, and decaying flesh drowns out his sense of smell. Unlike Sherlock, he is not so lupine that human bodies don't bother him, and it seizes his attention. He is taken off guard when the murderer charges him.
He has a knife, and John catches it with his forearm, feels the thud and the sudden pain as it embeds itself deep into his flesh. The wolf roars, and surges up.
“John! John!” Someone is shaking his shoulders. Sherlock. Packmate, safe, friend, his wolf says, and its fury drains away. It doesn't fight when John pushes it back down.
“What? What is it?” John shakes his head; his face feels weird. There's something wrong with his vision, and his words come out mangled. He brings a hand to his face. His teeth are sharp, snout protruding just slightly; how had that happened?
“You can't change. It's not safe. The police will be here any minute now. Change back,” Sherlock orders, and catches the wolf's eyes with his own. His wolf whimpers, withdraws into his skin, and color leeches back into his world. His teeth flatten. There's blood in his mouth. It's not his own.
“Did I? Is he --” But John can see their murderer now, sprawled on his back, eyes wide with terror, cowering from him. He can smell sweat, and urine, and blood from where John bit into his arm. He wrinkles his nose, but the wolf laughs, darkly pleased. John becomes suddenly aware of his own arm; the knife is still in it, buried to the hilt. “Fuck.”
Sherlock yanks the knife out of John's arm, and pushes back the sleeve to look at the wound -- it's deep, and John should be frightened, would be frightened, but he seems to have lost his sense of fear. “It's not bad,” Sherlock says. “Don't let the police see, or they'll try to send you to hospital.”
It's still bleeding, but sluggishly, and the wolf offers up a memory -- electricity jolting through his body, the acrid scent of burning fur. John had woken up with burn marks in the past, in Afghanistan, but they'd never persisted longer than a few days. He opens his hand, then closes it. The motion causes more blood to well up, and it hurts, but it's a clean hurt, sharp and pure.
Sherlock is still holding his forearm, and he lifts it higher, bows his head over it. John's not sure what he's doing until he feels the sudden warm wetness of Sherlock's tongue against his skin, and he sucks in a surprised breath through his teeth. Sherlock casts his eyes upward. “Hurts?”
“I -- only a little. You surprised me.”
“I'm cleaning away the blood. Saliva enhances wound healing,” he says, and cleans the blood from John's arm with short, efficient licks. John is taken by surprise by the surge of heat it causes in the pit of his stomach, followed swiftly by the urge to push Sherlock against a wall and sink blunt teeth into his throat.Claim him, his wolf says, and John replies, No.
When the wound is clean, just a jagged streak of red that oozes blood sluggishly, Sherlock pulls his sleeve back down for him and lets go. John can smell his blood in Sherlock's mouth. He's momentarily mesmerized by the way Sherlock's tongue darts out to lick traces of John's blood from his lips.
“The police are here,” Sherlock says, and steps away. John watches as Sherlock throws the cloak of humanity over himself, concealing the wolf shape underneath. His stance changes, and he adjusts his coat, and something in his face shifts. It's like an optical illusion, because suddenly Sherlock's human -- a strange human, but still human. “Lestrade isn't with them. We should go.”
John leads a couple officers to the body -- the wolf marvels at how they could have missed it; its scent is nearly overpowering, while Sherlock talks to the others and deals with their murderer.
“Is that blood? Are you hurt?” Someone asks, and reaches for his arm.
John pulls it back, tugs on the sleeve of his jacket self-consciously. It'll need another patch. “No,” he says, and smiles at her. “It's probably just the light.”
He doesn't bother bandaging it when he gets home. It heals within three days.
--
“Lestrade isn't coming tonight,” Sherlock says. He is lying on the sofa again, in his dressing robe. “Missing persons case. Open and shut case, but he's going to be looking for the victim's body.”
“Can he do that? Be a search dog, I mean.” John checks his watch, but it doesn't carry meaning for him. He doesn't know what time moonrise is, just feels it running over his skin, tugging and prickling, growing ever closer.
“Certainly. His sense of smell is better than that of any dogs they have on the force,” Sherlock replies, looking at the ceiling. “We'll change in here today. You didn't destroy anything last time, and 221C is boring. Also, Mrs. Hudson thinks we're keeping Lestrade's dogs in there.”
“Lestrade doesn't have dogs.”
Sherlock waves a dismissive hand. “Irrelevant. It's important not to be seen as a stray, when running about London as a wolf. Thankfully, most people are too blind to tell the difference between a wolf and a dog.”
Sherlock strips with his usual perfunctory indifference, and John looks away, a flush rising on his cheeks. Sherlock's all sharp angles and smooth, unmarred expanses of pale, pale skin, and John wants. John wants with an intensity felt by human and wolf both, wants to mark him and claim him and hurt him.
He's sure Sherlock knows, but he doesn't bring it up, and his anxiety over the matter is pushed away by the wolf's glee when the change finally hits him. It hurts less this time. The wolf's rising to the surface and spilling over into reality, rather than clawing its way out, and John can feel his own thoughts getting pushed down.
He pushes back, and the wolf growls. It translates itself into the real world, a rumble that works its way through his chest and up his throat and out his mouth. The wolf pushes him away, and John feels his awareness fading, darkness creeping up around the edges of his mind. It feels like going blind, and it frightens him. Is this how it'd felt for the wolf, when John had locked him away in a corner of his mind?
I'm sorry, he thinks to it, You can be in charge now.
And suddenly John -- John is still here, can still feel, and once he stops fighting for control the wolf lets him float closer, into the passenger's seat of their shared body.
Sherlock cocks his head at him and barks inquisitively. Okay? his ears ask. Pack. Friend, his tail says, and John's wolf wags his tail and yips back.
Sherlock pads closer, and noses John's cheek; his tongue darts out to lick John's jaw. It'd be submissive, but his ears say otherwise, and the wolf growls at him, tries to bring his head higher than Sherlock's. Sherlock wins the ensuing wrestling match, but only because Sherlock fights with the same level of cunning he has as a human, and whenever John tries to help the wolf, they end up tripping over their own paws.
They end up lying on the ground, with Sherlock gnawing on one of John's ears like a puppy. John's tail wags, and the wolf's tongue lolls out happily. The wolf points their snout towards the window -- firmly shut, but John's seen Sherlock come in from it in his wolf form before, and whines. Outside?
No, John thinks to it, and pulls them down when the wolf tries to rise. Danger, he thinks to it. Humans. The wolf subsides reluctantly; it doesn't like humans, associates them with pain and fire.
Now that John's present during his transformation, he's bored. There's not enough space to run, and all the scents in the flat are boring, things he's smelled a million times before. Sherlock's interesting, but there's only so much they can do without destroying furniture. Bored, he whines.
Bored, Sherlock agrees, and looks wistfully at the window -- it's a sliding window, not one that pushes open, and they can neither of them manage it with paws.
Sherlock shows him the flat from a four-legged perspective, everything just slightly different from the way John remembers it, with hidden spaces he'd never noticed when he was taller. John discovers several experiments he hadn't known about that don't smell as revolting as he expects, but he suspects it's the wolf's influence that makes him think that, because at least one of them is a dead rabbit.
When he tries to fish it out from behind the fridge, Sherlock growls at him, and John growls back, because he's bored and wants to go out but they can't. And they tussle again for a moment, because they are both wolves and it's what bored wolves do.
As the sun rises, John realizes, with some surprise, that this is the happiest his wolf has ever been, and he wants to hold on to that feeling, forever.
--
John's never been conscious for the change before, and when he feels the moon's pull recede, he's surprised to realize it doesn't hurt. The wolf hands control off to John without a protest, and it feels like stepping out of a warm bath, or getting up after a massage so strong it leaves his muscles feeling like jelly. The blanket he's on is warm, and soft, and it takes effort to lift his head.
Sherlock lies next to him, equally awake, a relaxed expression on his face. John rolls on his side to face him. “Is it always like that?” He asks. “That was lovely.”
“I don't know,” he replies, a touch testily, because John tends to ask Sherlock questions about being a werewolf before he asks Greg, despite the fact that Sherlock's answer is frequently, “I've no frame of reference. This is normal to me.”
Sherlock stretches then, a shaft of sunlight catching on his bare chest, and John's mouth goes dry with wanting. Sherlock looks at him, cocks his head, sniffs the air. There's no way he can miss the way John's body is stirring, the way the wolf's focus has shifted from taking a nap to Sherlock. John waits with bated breath until Sherlock scowls at him, demands, “Well, do you or don't you? How can you possibly be taking so long to decide?”
“You knew?”
Sherlock looks at him as if he's an idiot. “That you were attracted to me? Of course. You've found me attractive since we first met. I was waiting to see if you were interested. It shouldn't be such a difficult decision.”
John swallows. “Oh,” he breathes. “Can I?” He reaches for Sherlock and Sherlock tilts his head, lets John slide a hand behind the back of his neck and pull him in.
They are both sleepy and lazy from the change -- Sherlock tends to throw it off more quickly than John, but he hasn't yet, and there's no urgency in the kiss. They have all day for this.
Sherlock runs his fingers over the scar on John's shoulder, and he shivers. “This is how it happened,” he says, and rubs his palm against it, making the skin tingle. He follows his hand with his lips and tongue, and John groans. “It doesn't hurt you anymore.”
Sherlock drags a hand down John's chest, lightly scratching. He hesitates at John's belly, at John's cock bumping against the base of his palm. He brings his face close to John's, and their eyes meet. “Do you want...?”
“Yes, God, yes,” John says, and squeezes the back of Sherlock's neck, presses their mouths together. He bites down on Sherlock's tongue when he wraps a hand around his cock, and he's about to apologize, but Sherlock makes a low, needy sound in response, and his hips stutter against John, cock sliding slickly against his belly. Sherlock digs his fingers into the scar on John's shoulders, and it hurts, it hurts like a sunburst on the inside of his eyelids, but it feels so bright.
“Yeah, like that, fuck, more,” someone is growling, low and guttural, and John realizes with surprise that it's him.
“Hold still, hold still, let me,” Sherlock mutters against his mouth, and fumbles with his hand between them, catches both their cocks in his long, elegant fingers, stroking them in tandem, slow at first, then faster. They're so close they're sharing breath, and John's drowning in the scent of him, thrusting uncontrollably until his orgasm breaks over him in a rushing wave of pleasure. Sherlock says John's name when he comes, groans it like an oath as warm wetness spills between their bellies and the scent of their release blankets the room.
Later, when they come back to themselves, Sherlock drags his fingers through their semen, mixed together, and brings his hand up. He looks at it under the light, then licks it thoughtfully. “Hmm,” he says, and makes a pleased sort of hum.
John laughs shakily. “I'm not young enough to be up for a second round anytime soon,” he warns, but the wolf, ever curious, causes him to do the same, tasting their mixed fluids.
Interesting, his wolf agrees.
--
John worries that they'll have to talk about what happened between them, but his wolf's smug confidence reassures him. Mine, it rumbles happily, and when John gets back from the kitchen with breakfast, Sherlock smiles at him, lazy and warm.
Yours, agrees Sherlock's slouch, and the tilt of his head, and the coy way he glances at John out the corner of his eyes -- feigning submission, because it drives his wolf crazy, and Sherlock knows it.
“Did you want any toast?” John offers him the plate, but Sherlock pushes it away.
“I'm not hungry.” That's his code phrase for “I don't want to eat human food right now.”
Sherlock checks his email until John finishes eating, then presses John down against the table and mouths his throat, his ears, his jaw. He sucks a vivid purple bruise on John's throat then another on his hip, but John draws blood first when he bites down on Sherlock's lower lip, and he sucks on it greedily, basking in the taste of him.
They smear their scent everywhere, mark the sofa and the tables and the armchairs and the walls.
Us, it says.
--
Lestrade, of course, knows the instant he calls them to a crime scene. Sherlock's scent clings to John now, and John's to Sherlock. It's impossible to miss. He wrinkles his nose at John as if to say, Sherlock? Really?
John shrugs and gives him an embarrassed grin in response while Sherlock splits off to examine the body with a glee that is, frankly, a lot of the reason why people think he's a sociopath.
“Well, I'm happy for you. I think.” Lestrade sits on the hood of a police car, and John sits next to him.
“Is it obvious?”
Lestrade nods, and puts his hands in his pockets. “To me, bleedingly. To everyone else, less so. Sherlock's not usually in such a good mood. He hasn't even said anything to Anderson yet, not even to insult his moustache.”
Anderson's been trying to grow a moustache for the last two weeks. John cringes inwardly every time he sees it.
“So, Sherlock's going to teach me how to call the change soon,” John comments, and glances at Lestrade out of the corner of his eyes. “Any pointers?”
“There's a trick to calling the wolf up. Once you do it the first time, the rest is easy, but it'll make you hungry afterwards, so it's always best to keep a stash of food in the cupboards. When you go out, wear a collar or someone might report you as a stray. It's happened a few times, and let me tell you, you don't want to spend a full moon night dodging dog wardens.”
John chuckles, imagining a wolf the size of Sherlock or Lestrade running from dog wardens.
Sherlock stands suddenly. “John!” he calls. “John, come look at this, tell me what you think.”
“That's my cue,” John says, and rises to obey.
--
“Close your eyes and think about being a wolf,” Sherlock instructs for the thousandth time, sounding baffled at John's week-long failure to master the art of turning into a wolf at will. “Remember what the change during a full moon feels like, and then do it.”
“I'm trying,” John growls through gritted teeth. Change? He asks the wolf, but it's just as confused as he is, because the full moon is weeks away, and there is no pull turn him inside out.
He figures it out after another half-hour of reaching and twisting -- there is a trick to it, a sort of strange mental shift that makes coarse brown fur ripple slowly down his back. “Got it,” he says, pleased.
Sherlock looks up from the book he's reading. “Congratulations,” he says, when John, fully wolf now, hops off the bed. He offers a hand for John to sniff. John does so, then licks Sherlock's fingers, and Sherlock scratches him under the chin.
He feels different than he does under a full moon; he's in charge, not the wolf. At least, he thinks so, because when the body moves, he remembers trying to move it. But it feels different. Everything feels different. The wolf's thoughts flash through his consciousness as naturally as his own do, and being on four legs, losing his color vision, isn't foreign or disorienting at all.
There is a tug on his scruff, then Sherlock's hand in front of his face, holding a tuft of fur. “You're beginning to shed.”
John whines, and noses Sherlock's fingers. He ducks his head and rubs his ears against them. Sherlock scratches him obligingly. More fur flutters to the floor, and Sherlock nudges it with a bare toe. “Hmm.”
Sherlock shuts the book and stands up. “Wait for me in the sitting room.”
John ignores the command and follows Sherlock into his bedroom with only a momentary hesitation at its threshold. He's never been in Sherlock's room before. Sherlock, when he sleeps, joins John in his bedroom, or if John's not present, tends to favor the sofa for collapsing on when gripped by post-case exhaustion.
John investigates curiously. The chair is pushed into the desk, and the clothes in the closet smell like the dry cleaners. There is a stack of books in the corner, and a soft rug on the floor that is littered with short strands of dark fur, and John doesn't dare investigate the top of the desk, because it smells like poison.
And pushed against the wall is a bed, unmade, smelling of Sherlock (the scent is stale, he hasn't lain it in for days). He jumps onto it and rolls around, rubbing his scent over the mattress. Sherlock wraps his fingers around John's tail and pulls.
“You're leaving hair on my sheets,” he complains. “I told you to wait for me in the sitting room.”
Sherlock doesn't keep condoms or lubricant in his nightstand -- instead, John gets a glimpse of a worn leather collar and a brush. Sherlock pulls out the latter. There are bits of fur caught between the tines, some Sherlock's and the rest Lestrade's, but the scent is nearly gone. It hasn't been touched for months.
“Lestrade and I brush each other's coats out, when it becomes necessary,” Sherlock explains. “I can do yours now.”
Sherlock spreads old newspapers out on the floor in front of the fireplace, and at his gesture, John lays down on them obligingly. The first draw of the brush through John's fur scratches in just the right way, and he leans into it. Each subsequent stroke relaxes him further, and by the time Sherlock shakes his muzzle to draw his attention, John and his wolf are half-asleep.
There is a small pile of fur all around him. Short strands of it cling to Sherlock's shirt and trousers. John laughs, or as much as he's able to as a wolf, jaw dropping and tongue lolling out playfully. He stands and shakes, sending fur flying all over the place; Sherlock shoves him in the shoulder, laughing too. “You'll be the one to clean that up, then,” he says. “Because I spent so much of my valuable time grooming you.”
John flattens his ears and tries his fiercest growl, but the effect is rather ruined when Sherlock ruffles his ears and John finds his tail wagging involuntarily.
--
Greg joins them for the full moon, and Sherlock leaves the window open. Before they strip, Sherlock tosses a shopping bag at John. “You'll need this,” he says.
It's a collar made from plain brown leather, roughly the same color as John's fur. It smells new (it is new, the receipt's still in the bag), and at the wolf's nudge, John brings it to his mouth and gives it an experimental chew. There's no tag. “So no one causes a panic about wolves escaped from the zoo?” He guesses.
Lestrade nods, and pulls his collar from the pocket of his coat -- his is blue, and made of fabric, and has a shiny metal tag attached to the buckle. “I spend a lot of time in wolf form around humans,” he explains, slightly sheepishly, as he closes it around his neck. “It comes in handy if I ever need to go somewhere I can't as DI Lestrade, or need to track someone.”
“He pretends to be a dog,” Sherlock says, and there is a sneer that is really a snarl in his voice, because of course Sherlock would never pretend to be a dog. He barely pretends to be tame.
“Thanks,” John says, and buckles the collar around his neck. He doesn't miss the way Sherlock's eyes track the movement of his hands, or the way he licks his lips. John memorizes that for later, when they are human again and alone together.
This time, when the change comes, everything's different. He's caught up in the wolf's glee, welcome to share its joy when it bounds to Sherlock, nuzzles his neck and gets an answering lick in return. The collar around their neck feels strange, and the wolf scratches at it with one of his hind legs until John stops them.
He recognizes Greg, and when the wolf becomes wary (our territory, interloper?), John soothes it (friend, trust). The wariness recedes.
He approaches, and Greg rolls onto his back, exposes his stomach. Your territory, he agrees. Not mine, and John mouths his throat agreeably, wolf pleased. They sniff each other -- male, healthy, wolf, familiar. The closest to pack a werewolf gets.
Reintroductions over, the open window beckons to them. Greg jumps out first, and Sherlock follows. He looks back at John before he leaps, cocks his head and twitches his ears. Ready?
Yes, John thinks.
Yes, the wolf agrees, and they slip out into the night.
The outside world is a cacophony of scents and sounds and prey, and John follows Greg and Sherlock ecstatically, stopping every few feet to investigate something new -- the paths marked out by dogs, a scrap of food tossed to the floor, a human who had walked by, not twenty minutes ago, carrying takeaway. He detects the signs of pain too -- dried bloodstains, fear smeared across a wall or a lamppost.
Greg leads them to a park, where John rolls on his back in the grass and scratches deep grooves into the bases of the trees. Sherlock is a bit of a prat, no matter what form he's in, and he seems to take great delight in bullying stray dogs out of the park.
John tackles Greg, because he wants to, because he can, because his wolf is playing, and they wrestle and paw and bite until Sherlock tries to join them. They both gang up on him to hold him down, until he gives up and bares his throat with a happy wag of the tail.
They don't mark their territory, because neither Sherlock nor Greg will respect boundaries if they're on a case. But there are other werewolves who do. When Greg leads them across the city, the wolf maps the territories out in their mind, laying them over the map John's got in his head.
A patch, here and there, belonging to a lone wolf. And the rest, theirs. All of it theirs, because there are three of them, and the others are alone.
John interrupts a mugging by walking into the middle of it and pawing at the attacker, and is rewarded with quick pat on the head, followed by the would-be victim's hasty retreat, stinking of fear. Sherlock takes them on a run, through little-used parts of the city, places John's never bothered to go before. Greg brings them to the butcher shop that has a soft spot for dogs, where an employee tosses them scraps.
And at the end of their night, John raises his head in a howl and they join him, singing their claim to the moon.
Mine, mine, mine.
Part 1
Rating: NC-17
Length: 12,392 words
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Summary: John gets turned into a werewolf during Afghanistan, and it sucks, but then he moves in with another werewolf, and it gets better.
John's second full moon in London goes much like his first, but this time when he wakes up, the night before feels like a years-old memory punctuated with flashes of sensation. He's also managed not to ruin any of his bedding this time, a revelation that leaves him feeling inordinately proud. Well, there's a slight tear in the fabric from where one of his claws had gotten tangled, but that doesn't count.
The wolf feels closer now, humming just under his skin instead of locked in a corner of his mind, and he can feel its pleasure. It likes the dark wolf that is Sherlock, and they had curled up together at the end of the night, two round balls of fur that'd just barely brushed together.
“How is your memory?” Sherlock asks, and once his blanket is folded, begins to fold John's as well.
“Good, actually. I mean, it doesn't feel the same as a normal memory, but I'm getting there.”
“That's good. Waiting in here with you bores me, and having Lestrade around on full moons is incredibly irritating. 221C was not made to fit three fully-grown wolves for an entire night.”
John can sympathize, now. The thought of Lestrade locked in with him again, once more having to share such a small space, makes the wolf anxious. As does the thought of being locked up again at all -- his wolf wants air, fresh air, and the feel of a breeze against its fur.
We can't, he tells it, It's not safe, and the wolf growls, displeased.
--
The feeling doesn't go away tomorrow, or the day after, and when John goes out to apply for jobs, he finds his nose picking up scents he'd never paid attention to before -- perfume, soap, the sickly-sweetness of disease, and the sharp, acrid odor of fear.
That woman had sex this morning, and feels anxious. That man had sex with another man, and hasn't changed his clothes since the night before, when he'd eaten pizza and spilled a beer on his trousers. There is a stray dog in that direction, but stray dogs tend to be afraid of him, and not the other way around.
It's not that his nose is any better (it's better than it was when he was fully human, but hasn't changed since becoming a werewolf). It's that the wolf knows what it all means, while his human side's pretty much limited to “food”, “unwashed”, and “artificial”.
Thank you, he thinks to the wolf, and feels its pleasure as a response.
“Don't move towards the source of an interesting scent like that,” Sherlock advises, when John tilts his head and leans towards the tantalizing odors emanating from the Chinese restaurant down the street. “It makes you look like a dog. You can always go inside if you want to investigate further.”
He hadn't even realized he'd been doing it. “Is that something your mother taught you?” He lowers his voice. “About being a wolf?”
Sherlock shoots him a sidelong glance. “Among other things, yes.”
“Care to share with the rest of us?” John prompts, when Sherlock makes no motions to elaborate.
“It seems to come naturally to you,” Sherlock says, but obligingly ticks off points onto his fingers. “Don't growl at others. Don't bite. Don't lick. Don't touch dead things. Don't scare the horses,” and John is struck by a mental image of a much smaller Sherlock growling at a stable of horses just to make them rear. Sherlock catches John's expression and scowls at him. “I was a child, and our mother was used to raising Mycroft, who always did as he was told.”
“Those do seem to be common sense,” John agrees, but the wolf is already rumbling its lack of understanding. It sees nothing wrong with Sherlock licking fresh blood from his fingers, or the way Lestrade had greeted him the first time, bringing their faces close to each other like wolves instead of touching hands like humans.
--
John's never realized how much the wolf could help him, but it helps him now. The improved senses that had seemed overwhelming at first feel normal instead, lines of information streaming into the wolf's mind and passed, after translation, into John's.
He gets a job at a hospital, and the wolf memorizes the different scents of disease, until a patient needs only to get close to him before he can tell the difference between a cold and the flu, can identify when he can send someone off with a scrip for antibiotics versus a need to investigate further.
And in return, John lets it shadow his movements, lets it hide in his eyes when he walks home and run their hands over the rough bark of the trees they pass, leaving his scent as a marker. He tries not to make it obvious, but he knows he's failed when he catches Donovan's eyes on him when he stops by Scotland Yard and the wolf pulls him to a halt outside Lestrade's open office.
The man's not in, but the room reeks of him, of territory claimed, and they respect him too much to intrude without an invitation. John strokes his bare hand down the doorframe -- I stopped by, while you weren't here, it says, and covers the old, faded scent of Sherlock having done the same.
“What?” Donovan asks, and walks in. Not wolf, his wolf snarls in derision. No territory. “Too good to wait?”
“I'll wait outside,” John says instead, even though there's a perfectly serviceable chair in front of his desk.
She doesn't say it, but he knows she's thinking it (freak), and the wolf bares John's teeth at her. He doesn't stop it.
--
Do people always smell this much like food? John texts Sherlock, when there is a bad car accident and a half-dozen people are wheeled into the hospital, and John finds his stomach growling. He's craving red meat, which is more than a little alarming. Food, the wolf agrees, and John sends it a vehement, No.
Only when they're bleeding, Sherlock texts back.
--
There's a woman at the hospital who is pretty and kind and exactly John's type. And before the wolf, he would have smiled, and stammered, and asked her to have dinner with him. She'd say yes if he asked, he knows, because she bares her teeth at him (smiles, he tells the wolf, wants to be friends), and watches him when he walks by.
Before, when he'd smelled a woman (when he'd been human), he'd smelled their shampoo, or their perfume, and it had been nice. Exciting. But when he scents one now, the wolf bypasses all that and reports to him, Healthy, female, not wolf. Humandanger? Weak, soft. Prey?
It sees the world in black and white -- wolf and not wolf, prey and not prey. It doesn't see the point in making bonds with humans. Its only interests are in Greg and Sherlock.
He asks her out anyways, defiantly, because it's his choice, not the wolf's. She blushes and says yes, shyly.
Sherlock finds out, of course. “A date, John?” he asks when John's on his way out the door, straightening his cuffs.
“You don't need to sound so skeptical,” John replies defensively. “What's wrong with going on a date?”
“With who? One of them? What would be the point?”
“Maybe I just want to have a good time.”
“You can have a good time with me. And then you wouldn't need to wear so much cologne.” Sherlock's nose wrinkles minutely. The cologne is a little bit overpowering, but he'd already rinsed a lot of it off; to a human, it probably barely registers.
“I want a girlfriend, Sherlock. Haven't you ever --”
“Not with one of them,” Sherlock says, and his voice clearly says, What would I want with a human?
“Well, you're more of a wolf than I am. I'm still human 29 days out of the month, and I'd like some human companionship.”
--
The wolf's not pleased. Sarah bares her teeth too much. She meets his eyes and drops her gaze only to do it again and again. She's wearing too much of some sort of perfume that irritates him, and it feels like someone shouting “Look at me! Look at me!” right at his nose. Preynotfriend, his wolf insists. Not wolf.
Notprey, John thinks firmly at it, and pushes it down when it refuses to subside. They make small talk -- John asks about her favorite films, and she asks how he's enjoying his job, and in a corner of his mind the wolf paces in circles, bored. She can't run with him, can't speak to him, and the only thing enticing about her is her body, which is really not enough for a relationship.
He takes her home and kisses her goodnight, which feels wrong, because what he wants to do is tuck his nose behind her ear and inhale deeply -- but he knows he can't. The kiss is chaste, and she bares her teeth at him and says, “Good night, John,” and touches his arm lightly.
Boring, the wolf says to him, clawing at the corners of the mental enclosure John's set for it, and John sighs, lets it rise up again. Yes, okay, he says.
There won't be a second date.
--
For all that the wolf barely cares about humans, neatly throwing them all in a box labeled 'not wolf', he makes an exception for Harry. Or perhaps it is John who makes the exception, and the wolf merely accepts it.
Harry isn't wearing any perfume when she meets him, because she's not looking for a girlfriend anymore. There's no sharp scent of alcohol clinging to her, so if she has been drinking, it's not recently. She hugs John when she sees him, and he gets a nose full of her scent.
Blood, John's wolf says immediately, Not wolf, blood. Pack, and John breathes out in relief. He doesn't know what he would have done, if the wolf didn't accept her.
They talk and it's awkward, because Harry doesn't want to talk about Clara, and John doesn't want to talk about Afghanistan. John tells her what he dares about Sherlock (he's brilliant, he conducts experiments in the flat, he calls himself a consulting detective), and tries not to mention any cases that involved life or death situations.
He doesn't say anything he really wants to tell her (I got turned into a werewolf and he's one too and so is a DI on the force, I can identify people by smell from twenty feet away, the wolf in my head talks to me and considers you family).
He's not sure how he'd even begin.
--
John doesn't realize how unusual their running speed is until Sherlock vaults a chain-link fence in one smooth motion, and John follows just as easily. When he turns around to check on the officers behind him (Sherlock had deduced where the killer had stashed the next body, and was leading them to it -- John tries very hard not to think about search and rescue dogs, but he can't keep the smile from his face), they are panting heavily and barely keeping up. They stop at the fence.
Sherlock shouts to them their destination, and tells them to take a car, that they'll meet at the body. John follows when he runs off. He's not even winded. The night breeze against his face is pleasantly cool.
“I have a limp, you know. From the war,” he comments, when he follows Sherlock up a fire escape.
“Psychosomatic doesn't count,” Sherlock replies, and, with a running start, vaults onto the next building over.
John hesitates, but the wolf says jump, so he does. He makes the jump with a few feet to spare. “Why are we going this way?”
“It's a straight line. Faster than taking a cab, given the traffic.”
“You think it's fun,” John accuses, after the third leap. Sherlock's coat billows dramatically each time, which has got to be deliberate.
Sherlock looks at him. “Don't you?” When John doesn't answer, Sherlock continues, “Le Parkour, John. It's not uncommon. Even normal people do it.”
“Probably not from two stories up,” John mutters under his breath, and Sherlock laughs.
--
John doesn't realize their murderer is waiting for them at the body -- the stench of death, and blood, and decaying flesh drowns out his sense of smell. Unlike Sherlock, he is not so lupine that human bodies don't bother him, and it seizes his attention. He is taken off guard when the murderer charges him.
He has a knife, and John catches it with his forearm, feels the thud and the sudden pain as it embeds itself deep into his flesh. The wolf roars, and surges up.
“John! John!” Someone is shaking his shoulders. Sherlock. Packmate, safe, friend, his wolf says, and its fury drains away. It doesn't fight when John pushes it back down.
“What? What is it?” John shakes his head; his face feels weird. There's something wrong with his vision, and his words come out mangled. He brings a hand to his face. His teeth are sharp, snout protruding just slightly; how had that happened?
“You can't change. It's not safe. The police will be here any minute now. Change back,” Sherlock orders, and catches the wolf's eyes with his own. His wolf whimpers, withdraws into his skin, and color leeches back into his world. His teeth flatten. There's blood in his mouth. It's not his own.
“Did I? Is he --” But John can see their murderer now, sprawled on his back, eyes wide with terror, cowering from him. He can smell sweat, and urine, and blood from where John bit into his arm. He wrinkles his nose, but the wolf laughs, darkly pleased. John becomes suddenly aware of his own arm; the knife is still in it, buried to the hilt. “Fuck.”
Sherlock yanks the knife out of John's arm, and pushes back the sleeve to look at the wound -- it's deep, and John should be frightened, would be frightened, but he seems to have lost his sense of fear. “It's not bad,” Sherlock says. “Don't let the police see, or they'll try to send you to hospital.”
It's still bleeding, but sluggishly, and the wolf offers up a memory -- electricity jolting through his body, the acrid scent of burning fur. John had woken up with burn marks in the past, in Afghanistan, but they'd never persisted longer than a few days. He opens his hand, then closes it. The motion causes more blood to well up, and it hurts, but it's a clean hurt, sharp and pure.
Sherlock is still holding his forearm, and he lifts it higher, bows his head over it. John's not sure what he's doing until he feels the sudden warm wetness of Sherlock's tongue against his skin, and he sucks in a surprised breath through his teeth. Sherlock casts his eyes upward. “Hurts?”
“I -- only a little. You surprised me.”
“I'm cleaning away the blood. Saliva enhances wound healing,” he says, and cleans the blood from John's arm with short, efficient licks. John is taken by surprise by the surge of heat it causes in the pit of his stomach, followed swiftly by the urge to push Sherlock against a wall and sink blunt teeth into his throat.Claim him, his wolf says, and John replies, No.
When the wound is clean, just a jagged streak of red that oozes blood sluggishly, Sherlock pulls his sleeve back down for him and lets go. John can smell his blood in Sherlock's mouth. He's momentarily mesmerized by the way Sherlock's tongue darts out to lick traces of John's blood from his lips.
“The police are here,” Sherlock says, and steps away. John watches as Sherlock throws the cloak of humanity over himself, concealing the wolf shape underneath. His stance changes, and he adjusts his coat, and something in his face shifts. It's like an optical illusion, because suddenly Sherlock's human -- a strange human, but still human. “Lestrade isn't with them. We should go.”
John leads a couple officers to the body -- the wolf marvels at how they could have missed it; its scent is nearly overpowering, while Sherlock talks to the others and deals with their murderer.
“Is that blood? Are you hurt?” Someone asks, and reaches for his arm.
John pulls it back, tugs on the sleeve of his jacket self-consciously. It'll need another patch. “No,” he says, and smiles at her. “It's probably just the light.”
He doesn't bother bandaging it when he gets home. It heals within three days.
--
“Lestrade isn't coming tonight,” Sherlock says. He is lying on the sofa again, in his dressing robe. “Missing persons case. Open and shut case, but he's going to be looking for the victim's body.”
“Can he do that? Be a search dog, I mean.” John checks his watch, but it doesn't carry meaning for him. He doesn't know what time moonrise is, just feels it running over his skin, tugging and prickling, growing ever closer.
“Certainly. His sense of smell is better than that of any dogs they have on the force,” Sherlock replies, looking at the ceiling. “We'll change in here today. You didn't destroy anything last time, and 221C is boring. Also, Mrs. Hudson thinks we're keeping Lestrade's dogs in there.”
“Lestrade doesn't have dogs.”
Sherlock waves a dismissive hand. “Irrelevant. It's important not to be seen as a stray, when running about London as a wolf. Thankfully, most people are too blind to tell the difference between a wolf and a dog.”
Sherlock strips with his usual perfunctory indifference, and John looks away, a flush rising on his cheeks. Sherlock's all sharp angles and smooth, unmarred expanses of pale, pale skin, and John wants. John wants with an intensity felt by human and wolf both, wants to mark him and claim him and hurt him.
He's sure Sherlock knows, but he doesn't bring it up, and his anxiety over the matter is pushed away by the wolf's glee when the change finally hits him. It hurts less this time. The wolf's rising to the surface and spilling over into reality, rather than clawing its way out, and John can feel his own thoughts getting pushed down.
He pushes back, and the wolf growls. It translates itself into the real world, a rumble that works its way through his chest and up his throat and out his mouth. The wolf pushes him away, and John feels his awareness fading, darkness creeping up around the edges of his mind. It feels like going blind, and it frightens him. Is this how it'd felt for the wolf, when John had locked him away in a corner of his mind?
I'm sorry, he thinks to it, You can be in charge now.
And suddenly John -- John is still here, can still feel, and once he stops fighting for control the wolf lets him float closer, into the passenger's seat of their shared body.
Sherlock cocks his head at him and barks inquisitively. Okay? his ears ask. Pack. Friend, his tail says, and John's wolf wags his tail and yips back.
Sherlock pads closer, and noses John's cheek; his tongue darts out to lick John's jaw. It'd be submissive, but his ears say otherwise, and the wolf growls at him, tries to bring his head higher than Sherlock's. Sherlock wins the ensuing wrestling match, but only because Sherlock fights with the same level of cunning he has as a human, and whenever John tries to help the wolf, they end up tripping over their own paws.
They end up lying on the ground, with Sherlock gnawing on one of John's ears like a puppy. John's tail wags, and the wolf's tongue lolls out happily. The wolf points their snout towards the window -- firmly shut, but John's seen Sherlock come in from it in his wolf form before, and whines. Outside?
No, John thinks to it, and pulls them down when the wolf tries to rise. Danger, he thinks to it. Humans. The wolf subsides reluctantly; it doesn't like humans, associates them with pain and fire.
Now that John's present during his transformation, he's bored. There's not enough space to run, and all the scents in the flat are boring, things he's smelled a million times before. Sherlock's interesting, but there's only so much they can do without destroying furniture. Bored, he whines.
Bored, Sherlock agrees, and looks wistfully at the window -- it's a sliding window, not one that pushes open, and they can neither of them manage it with paws.
Sherlock shows him the flat from a four-legged perspective, everything just slightly different from the way John remembers it, with hidden spaces he'd never noticed when he was taller. John discovers several experiments he hadn't known about that don't smell as revolting as he expects, but he suspects it's the wolf's influence that makes him think that, because at least one of them is a dead rabbit.
When he tries to fish it out from behind the fridge, Sherlock growls at him, and John growls back, because he's bored and wants to go out but they can't. And they tussle again for a moment, because they are both wolves and it's what bored wolves do.
As the sun rises, John realizes, with some surprise, that this is the happiest his wolf has ever been, and he wants to hold on to that feeling, forever.
--
John's never been conscious for the change before, and when he feels the moon's pull recede, he's surprised to realize it doesn't hurt. The wolf hands control off to John without a protest, and it feels like stepping out of a warm bath, or getting up after a massage so strong it leaves his muscles feeling like jelly. The blanket he's on is warm, and soft, and it takes effort to lift his head.
Sherlock lies next to him, equally awake, a relaxed expression on his face. John rolls on his side to face him. “Is it always like that?” He asks. “That was lovely.”
“I don't know,” he replies, a touch testily, because John tends to ask Sherlock questions about being a werewolf before he asks Greg, despite the fact that Sherlock's answer is frequently, “I've no frame of reference. This is normal to me.”
Sherlock stretches then, a shaft of sunlight catching on his bare chest, and John's mouth goes dry with wanting. Sherlock looks at him, cocks his head, sniffs the air. There's no way he can miss the way John's body is stirring, the way the wolf's focus has shifted from taking a nap to Sherlock. John waits with bated breath until Sherlock scowls at him, demands, “Well, do you or don't you? How can you possibly be taking so long to decide?”
“You knew?”
Sherlock looks at him as if he's an idiot. “That you were attracted to me? Of course. You've found me attractive since we first met. I was waiting to see if you were interested. It shouldn't be such a difficult decision.”
John swallows. “Oh,” he breathes. “Can I?” He reaches for Sherlock and Sherlock tilts his head, lets John slide a hand behind the back of his neck and pull him in.
They are both sleepy and lazy from the change -- Sherlock tends to throw it off more quickly than John, but he hasn't yet, and there's no urgency in the kiss. They have all day for this.
Sherlock runs his fingers over the scar on John's shoulder, and he shivers. “This is how it happened,” he says, and rubs his palm against it, making the skin tingle. He follows his hand with his lips and tongue, and John groans. “It doesn't hurt you anymore.”
Sherlock drags a hand down John's chest, lightly scratching. He hesitates at John's belly, at John's cock bumping against the base of his palm. He brings his face close to John's, and their eyes meet. “Do you want...?”
“Yes, God, yes,” John says, and squeezes the back of Sherlock's neck, presses their mouths together. He bites down on Sherlock's tongue when he wraps a hand around his cock, and he's about to apologize, but Sherlock makes a low, needy sound in response, and his hips stutter against John, cock sliding slickly against his belly. Sherlock digs his fingers into the scar on John's shoulders, and it hurts, it hurts like a sunburst on the inside of his eyelids, but it feels so bright.
“Yeah, like that, fuck, more,” someone is growling, low and guttural, and John realizes with surprise that it's him.
“Hold still, hold still, let me,” Sherlock mutters against his mouth, and fumbles with his hand between them, catches both their cocks in his long, elegant fingers, stroking them in tandem, slow at first, then faster. They're so close they're sharing breath, and John's drowning in the scent of him, thrusting uncontrollably until his orgasm breaks over him in a rushing wave of pleasure. Sherlock says John's name when he comes, groans it like an oath as warm wetness spills between their bellies and the scent of their release blankets the room.
Later, when they come back to themselves, Sherlock drags his fingers through their semen, mixed together, and brings his hand up. He looks at it under the light, then licks it thoughtfully. “Hmm,” he says, and makes a pleased sort of hum.
John laughs shakily. “I'm not young enough to be up for a second round anytime soon,” he warns, but the wolf, ever curious, causes him to do the same, tasting their mixed fluids.
Interesting, his wolf agrees.
--
John worries that they'll have to talk about what happened between them, but his wolf's smug confidence reassures him. Mine, it rumbles happily, and when John gets back from the kitchen with breakfast, Sherlock smiles at him, lazy and warm.
Yours, agrees Sherlock's slouch, and the tilt of his head, and the coy way he glances at John out the corner of his eyes -- feigning submission, because it drives his wolf crazy, and Sherlock knows it.
“Did you want any toast?” John offers him the plate, but Sherlock pushes it away.
“I'm not hungry.” That's his code phrase for “I don't want to eat human food right now.”
Sherlock checks his email until John finishes eating, then presses John down against the table and mouths his throat, his ears, his jaw. He sucks a vivid purple bruise on John's throat then another on his hip, but John draws blood first when he bites down on Sherlock's lower lip, and he sucks on it greedily, basking in the taste of him.
They smear their scent everywhere, mark the sofa and the tables and the armchairs and the walls.
Us, it says.
--
Lestrade, of course, knows the instant he calls them to a crime scene. Sherlock's scent clings to John now, and John's to Sherlock. It's impossible to miss. He wrinkles his nose at John as if to say, Sherlock? Really?
John shrugs and gives him an embarrassed grin in response while Sherlock splits off to examine the body with a glee that is, frankly, a lot of the reason why people think he's a sociopath.
“Well, I'm happy for you. I think.” Lestrade sits on the hood of a police car, and John sits next to him.
“Is it obvious?”
Lestrade nods, and puts his hands in his pockets. “To me, bleedingly. To everyone else, less so. Sherlock's not usually in such a good mood. He hasn't even said anything to Anderson yet, not even to insult his moustache.”
Anderson's been trying to grow a moustache for the last two weeks. John cringes inwardly every time he sees it.
“So, Sherlock's going to teach me how to call the change soon,” John comments, and glances at Lestrade out of the corner of his eyes. “Any pointers?”
“There's a trick to calling the wolf up. Once you do it the first time, the rest is easy, but it'll make you hungry afterwards, so it's always best to keep a stash of food in the cupboards. When you go out, wear a collar or someone might report you as a stray. It's happened a few times, and let me tell you, you don't want to spend a full moon night dodging dog wardens.”
John chuckles, imagining a wolf the size of Sherlock or Lestrade running from dog wardens.
Sherlock stands suddenly. “John!” he calls. “John, come look at this, tell me what you think.”
“That's my cue,” John says, and rises to obey.
--
“Close your eyes and think about being a wolf,” Sherlock instructs for the thousandth time, sounding baffled at John's week-long failure to master the art of turning into a wolf at will. “Remember what the change during a full moon feels like, and then do it.”
“I'm trying,” John growls through gritted teeth. Change? He asks the wolf, but it's just as confused as he is, because the full moon is weeks away, and there is no pull turn him inside out.
He figures it out after another half-hour of reaching and twisting -- there is a trick to it, a sort of strange mental shift that makes coarse brown fur ripple slowly down his back. “Got it,” he says, pleased.
Sherlock looks up from the book he's reading. “Congratulations,” he says, when John, fully wolf now, hops off the bed. He offers a hand for John to sniff. John does so, then licks Sherlock's fingers, and Sherlock scratches him under the chin.
He feels different than he does under a full moon; he's in charge, not the wolf. At least, he thinks so, because when the body moves, he remembers trying to move it. But it feels different. Everything feels different. The wolf's thoughts flash through his consciousness as naturally as his own do, and being on four legs, losing his color vision, isn't foreign or disorienting at all.
There is a tug on his scruff, then Sherlock's hand in front of his face, holding a tuft of fur. “You're beginning to shed.”
John whines, and noses Sherlock's fingers. He ducks his head and rubs his ears against them. Sherlock scratches him obligingly. More fur flutters to the floor, and Sherlock nudges it with a bare toe. “Hmm.”
Sherlock shuts the book and stands up. “Wait for me in the sitting room.”
John ignores the command and follows Sherlock into his bedroom with only a momentary hesitation at its threshold. He's never been in Sherlock's room before. Sherlock, when he sleeps, joins John in his bedroom, or if John's not present, tends to favor the sofa for collapsing on when gripped by post-case exhaustion.
John investigates curiously. The chair is pushed into the desk, and the clothes in the closet smell like the dry cleaners. There is a stack of books in the corner, and a soft rug on the floor that is littered with short strands of dark fur, and John doesn't dare investigate the top of the desk, because it smells like poison.
And pushed against the wall is a bed, unmade, smelling of Sherlock (the scent is stale, he hasn't lain it in for days). He jumps onto it and rolls around, rubbing his scent over the mattress. Sherlock wraps his fingers around John's tail and pulls.
“You're leaving hair on my sheets,” he complains. “I told you to wait for me in the sitting room.”
Sherlock doesn't keep condoms or lubricant in his nightstand -- instead, John gets a glimpse of a worn leather collar and a brush. Sherlock pulls out the latter. There are bits of fur caught between the tines, some Sherlock's and the rest Lestrade's, but the scent is nearly gone. It hasn't been touched for months.
“Lestrade and I brush each other's coats out, when it becomes necessary,” Sherlock explains. “I can do yours now.”
Sherlock spreads old newspapers out on the floor in front of the fireplace, and at his gesture, John lays down on them obligingly. The first draw of the brush through John's fur scratches in just the right way, and he leans into it. Each subsequent stroke relaxes him further, and by the time Sherlock shakes his muzzle to draw his attention, John and his wolf are half-asleep.
There is a small pile of fur all around him. Short strands of it cling to Sherlock's shirt and trousers. John laughs, or as much as he's able to as a wolf, jaw dropping and tongue lolling out playfully. He stands and shakes, sending fur flying all over the place; Sherlock shoves him in the shoulder, laughing too. “You'll be the one to clean that up, then,” he says. “Because I spent so much of my valuable time grooming you.”
John flattens his ears and tries his fiercest growl, but the effect is rather ruined when Sherlock ruffles his ears and John finds his tail wagging involuntarily.
--
Greg joins them for the full moon, and Sherlock leaves the window open. Before they strip, Sherlock tosses a shopping bag at John. “You'll need this,” he says.
It's a collar made from plain brown leather, roughly the same color as John's fur. It smells new (it is new, the receipt's still in the bag), and at the wolf's nudge, John brings it to his mouth and gives it an experimental chew. There's no tag. “So no one causes a panic about wolves escaped from the zoo?” He guesses.
Lestrade nods, and pulls his collar from the pocket of his coat -- his is blue, and made of fabric, and has a shiny metal tag attached to the buckle. “I spend a lot of time in wolf form around humans,” he explains, slightly sheepishly, as he closes it around his neck. “It comes in handy if I ever need to go somewhere I can't as DI Lestrade, or need to track someone.”
“He pretends to be a dog,” Sherlock says, and there is a sneer that is really a snarl in his voice, because of course Sherlock would never pretend to be a dog. He barely pretends to be tame.
“Thanks,” John says, and buckles the collar around his neck. He doesn't miss the way Sherlock's eyes track the movement of his hands, or the way he licks his lips. John memorizes that for later, when they are human again and alone together.
This time, when the change comes, everything's different. He's caught up in the wolf's glee, welcome to share its joy when it bounds to Sherlock, nuzzles his neck and gets an answering lick in return. The collar around their neck feels strange, and the wolf scratches at it with one of his hind legs until John stops them.
He recognizes Greg, and when the wolf becomes wary (our territory, interloper?), John soothes it (friend, trust). The wariness recedes.
He approaches, and Greg rolls onto his back, exposes his stomach. Your territory, he agrees. Not mine, and John mouths his throat agreeably, wolf pleased. They sniff each other -- male, healthy, wolf, familiar. The closest to pack a werewolf gets.
Reintroductions over, the open window beckons to them. Greg jumps out first, and Sherlock follows. He looks back at John before he leaps, cocks his head and twitches his ears. Ready?
Yes, John thinks.
Yes, the wolf agrees, and they slip out into the night.
The outside world is a cacophony of scents and sounds and prey, and John follows Greg and Sherlock ecstatically, stopping every few feet to investigate something new -- the paths marked out by dogs, a scrap of food tossed to the floor, a human who had walked by, not twenty minutes ago, carrying takeaway. He detects the signs of pain too -- dried bloodstains, fear smeared across a wall or a lamppost.
Greg leads them to a park, where John rolls on his back in the grass and scratches deep grooves into the bases of the trees. Sherlock is a bit of a prat, no matter what form he's in, and he seems to take great delight in bullying stray dogs out of the park.
John tackles Greg, because he wants to, because he can, because his wolf is playing, and they wrestle and paw and bite until Sherlock tries to join them. They both gang up on him to hold him down, until he gives up and bares his throat with a happy wag of the tail.
They don't mark their territory, because neither Sherlock nor Greg will respect boundaries if they're on a case. But there are other werewolves who do. When Greg leads them across the city, the wolf maps the territories out in their mind, laying them over the map John's got in his head.
A patch, here and there, belonging to a lone wolf. And the rest, theirs. All of it theirs, because there are three of them, and the others are alone.
John interrupts a mugging by walking into the middle of it and pawing at the attacker, and is rewarded with quick pat on the head, followed by the would-be victim's hasty retreat, stinking of fear. Sherlock takes them on a run, through little-used parts of the city, places John's never bothered to go before. Greg brings them to the butcher shop that has a soft spot for dogs, where an employee tosses them scraps.
And at the end of their night, John raises his head in a howl and they join him, singing their claim to the moon.
Mine, mine, mine.
Part 1