[Fic] Swallow You Whole (part 2)

[lindentreeisle]

Continued from Part One


Back at Baker Street, Sherlock went to the sofa and cracked open a book. This time he didn't give John an order to stay awake, but John still wandered about the room for a few minutes, hesitating. He could feel Sherlock giving him half his attention in a way that made the hairs rise on the back of his neck. "Well," John said finally. "I'm for bed."

Sherlock flipped a page in his book. "Go to mine," he said.

John froze, halfway through his first step towards the stairs. There it was, the thing he had been fearing since Sherlock first roped him in.

Sherlock licked his finger and turned another page. "Problem?" he said, still not looking up.

John had to clear his throat to ensure his response would not come out as a croak. "I'm straight," he said.

"I don't see how that's relevant," Sherlock said, because of course it wasn't, all that was relevant was what Sherlock wanted. John wasn't even worthy of his gaze, was he? He stood for a moment, clenching his fists at his side, and tried to muster a response. Words wouldn't come. So John didn't answer; just started walking towards the stairs.

John brushed his teeth, washed his face, used the loo, all numbly and expecting any minute to hear Sherlock's tread on the stairs. He stripped his clothes as usual, without thinking about it, then paused as he reached into the drawer for clean pajama bottoms. He was furious at himself for considering whether Sherlock might want him to stay undressed. This...creature...had taken over his life, forced him to move in, ordered him about, told him to go wait in bed as if he was some kind of whore. Who gave a shit what he thought?

John gritted his teeth and snatched the pajamas. His steps were hesitant and as quiet as he could make them when he was dressed and couldn't think of any other stalling tactics he could add to his nightly routine. Sherlock's door was ajar very slightly, and John pushed it open further. The act of stepping into Sherlock's room for the first time was so impregnated with significance that John almost expected something to mark it, the door creaking dramatically perhaps, but the hinges were utterly smooth and silent and nothing startled or jumped out at him. John felt on either side of the door for a light switch, and found one. The single bulb that lit in response was very dim, maybe 40 watts at most. It illuminated a room that was surprisingly bare, given the mess Sherlock maintained in the sitting room and kitchen. Suits and shirts were hung in precise alignment in the closet. The desk held one neat stack of books. The top of the dresser was entirely bare. The only other piece of furniture was a double bed opposite the desk, made up neatly by civilian if not military standards.

Sanctuary, John reminded himself. It was one of the staples of vampire lore, that to vampires the idea of an ordered and private hiding place was extremely important. The main purpose of this room was not for working, or relaxing with a book, but for sleeping, and it showed. The window at the back of the room was covered by blackout curtains. When John walked over and checked behind them, he saw that there was a shade as well, already pulled down to cover the panes. Sherlock wasn't cautious by any stretch of the imagination, but there were some things no vampire could afford to be blase about.

John paced anxiously around the room for five minutes before he could suppress his nervousness enough to get into the bed. He eschewed the covers, simply sitting down on the duvet and crouching there with his knees pulled up to his chest and arms wrapped around them. Then there was nothing to do but wait, and anticipate, and fear.

Sherlock was going to bite him. Would it hurt? How much? No question that it would be uncomfortable, but how uncomfortable? John had given blood before of course, every citizen over the age of 18 had to make bi-annual deposits at the National Food Bank, but he imagined that a vampire putting his teeth in your throat was a far cry from a sterile needle in the arm. And then there was the sex. It wasn't something that was talked about, not even among kids in lavatories and locker rooms, the way ordinary sex was. Nobody really knew details because even if you met a thrall, what would you ask exactly? "Hello, I know we're barely acquaintances, but would you mind telling me what it's like when your patron gets his blood up and fucks you? Is it as rough and violent as the rumors say? Does it hurt? Does he hold you down and put marks on you and make you scream yourself hoarse?"

John dug his nails into his palms and listened for Sherlock to come up.

Of course, when he did, John didn't hear anything at all. Sherlock acted so human at times that even now John was forgetting what he was capable of. Silent movement, preternatural speed. He appeared in the doorway like a wraith and John jumped. Sherlock ignored it, simply shut the door behind him and turned to secure it. The door was white-painted metal, not wood, and it had multiple locks. They were operated by simple sliding levers, not keys; the point was not to keep anyone in the room, but to keep people out. John hadn't looked at the window glass before, but he was willing to bet that it was shatterproof and also elaborately locked. Vampires needed safety during their daily sleep; that was the point of sanctuary, after all.

Sherlock crossed to the desk and set his Blackberry on the surface. He undressed, dropping his clothes into a hamper between dresser and desk, except for the suit itself which he hung neatly on a hangar on the opposite side of the closet from the clean garments in their plastic cleaner's bags. He moved without any self-consciousness, as if John was not there, watching. His skin underneath his clothes was unsurprisingly pale, and his body as well-muscled as John would have imagined from seeing him move. He moved as casually and gracefully nude as he did fully clothed. John couldn't help feeling another irrational pang of alarm as Sherlock came directly to the bed without dressing in nightclothes, and began to pull the covers back. He gestured at John to move, and he shifted so that Sherlock could pull down the duvet and sheet on his side of the bed as well.

Sherlock crawled onto the bed and knelt at an angle, facing John. John's whole body tensed, although he managed to stop himself from flinching when Sherlock reached out and grasped his chin in one hand, moving it so that John was looking into his face. "Don't be so nervous," Sherlock said. "It's off-putting."

"Fuck you," John said a bit hoarsely. "If you wanted enthusiasm, you picked the wrong person." At nearly forty-eight hours awake, he was losing his ability to dissemble, and even his motivation to try. He just wanted to sleep.

"It won't hurt," Sherlock said calmly. "You'll enjoy it, in fact."

"That's not the point," John said. The vampire was so calm. It made him seem more alien than ever, this total lack of emotion. Even gloating or anticipation would be less unnerving, because they'd at least show he had some investment in what he was doing. "Do you not care about this at all?"

"Not especially," Sherlock said. "It's just biology. Feeding causes my energy level to spike, the energy needs to be expended, and sexual intercourse is a much more efficient method than tearing apart my room or murdering the food source. And of course, it's a bit more enjoyable."

"So rape is marginally more enjoyable than murder," John said. "That's fantastic. Very reassuring."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, then used his grip on John's chin to push his upper body back, so that he was reclining against the pillows. Sherlock crawled across the bed after him, leaning down to press his nose against the side of John's neck and inhale deeply.

John shivered, and this time he wasn't able to prevent flinching away. "Be glad I've restrained myself this long," Sherlock said sharply. "This could have been on the street, in a restaurant, in the back of a cab. Do you think anyone would have batted an eye? Luckily for you I do see the value of discretion in some arenas." He opened his mouth against John's neck and bit him, suddenly and hard.

And it did hurt. It felt...like an animal had taken a bite out of his neck. Not only that, but it activated something in John's primitive hindbrain, so that he was seized by a deep and primal terror that he couldn't control. He was being murdered. Fuck what he knew about vampires, an unnatural, predatory creature had bitten John and was sucking his blood out and he was going to actually fucking die. He jerked desperately in an abortive attempt at struggle, but Sherlock's hands had closed around his wrists at the same time he had bitten, holding them immoveable on the bed. His body pressed down onto John's, so that he couldn't throw himself sideways or attempt any such escape maneuver.

John had no ability to count in this state, so he couldn't say how long he felt that horrible fear and pain, but as Sherlock pulled away from his neck it kicked over into something else. Instead of throbbing with pain, as he would expect, the bite wound felt pleasantly numb, like the injection site for anesthesia. And rather than pain and fear, John now felt rather drunk: a bit dizzy, a bit detached, a bit uninhibited, a bit happy. And a lot aroused. Sherlock leaned down again, but this time it was simply to kiss John on the lips. He pried John's mouth open, and John let him employ his tongue. He tasted his blood in Sherlock's mouth, coppery and thinned with saliva.

Sherlock made a satisfied noise as he pulled back. "Better?" he asked, almost solicitously. John nodded agreeably. The tension had melted out of his limbs, and instead of fearful anticipation he now felt a sort of dull acceptance. Sherlock made a satisfied humming noise and began to undress him. John obligingly moved his arms and his hips when needed to allow Sherlock to tug off his t-shirt and trousers. When his pajama bottoms cleared his thighs, his prick sprang up, already hard. He lay back, still feeling that unnatural relaxation, and let Sherlock examine his body with his nose and fingers, pausing to taste briefly at various points: armpits, nipples, groin. His touch was almost clinical, and the close examination did not make John anxious. Dimly, in the back of his mind, he realized that whatever chemical Sherlock had injected into him was what was causing this reaction, but in this state it was mightily hard to care.

Sherlock finally sat back a bit. He groped with one hand under a pillow and emerged with a tube of lube. He tapped it pointedly on John's right thigh. "Spread your legs," he said, when John failed to read his mind and obey the gesture. John barely hesitated before he spread his legs and let Sherlock kneel between them. His fear and hesitation were pretty much gone, and without them the only one of his emotions left from before was resignation. This was happening; he couldn't stop it. It was more sensible to do what he was told than to fight the inevitable.

Sherlock prepared him slowly and carefully, feeling out the inside of his arse with slender fingers which he considerately stroked against John's prostate, wringing out strained gasps and an abundance of pre-come. The sensations were novel, peculiar, rather than panic-inducing as they might have been if John had been in a normal frame of mind. Finally Sherlock pulled his fingers fully free, and used another handful of lube to slick his own long and curving cock, which John only now noticed had become fully hard during some point in the prep.

Some deeply ingrained instinct made John mumble, "Condom," as Sherlock aligned his cock with John's arsehole. Sherlock leaned forward and pinched one of John's nipples with slippery fingers, making him gasp and jerk back slightly.

"Hush," Sherlock said sharply. "I'm being exceedingly obliging. Don't test my patience." And he lined up again and slid himself in. It was smooth and easy, for all that John could feel Sherlock's prick fantastically deep inside once he was fully seated. John still felt that preternatural acceptance, as if it didn't matter at all that a vampire was balls deep in his arse or that John didn't want this, even though he was feeling a low and gentle buzz of arousal and pleasure at the sensation.

Sherlock leaned forward and bit him again, an inch or so above the first site. And this time it didn't feel at all like someone ripping open his neck. He still felt the pressure of Sherlock's mouth, even fancied he could feel the steady suck of blood being withdrawn, but it didn't hurt and it didn't fill him with panic, either. Instead he felt mildly euphoric, and his arousal spiked higher still, making him want to wiggle against Sherlock's body as it pressed against his. He made a noise of protest that was stifled by Sherlock's hair, when he realized that between Sherlock's cock spearing him and his teeth piercing him, he was unable to move. But he still didn't panic at being pinned; he was just annoyed because he was convinced that moving would intensify the sensations, and he couldn't move. Sherlock's hips were damnably still against his.

Finally, Sherlock gave one last long, sucking pull and withdrew his fangs from John's neck, leaning back a bit. His pupils were wide, and there was something wildly manic in his expression. His movements were abrupt and jerky, and John fancied he could almost see the suppressed energy crackling off Sherlock's limbs. If he had moved like a hunting cat before, now he moved like a bird of prey, quick and darting and ready to pounce.

Sherlock's first thrust was sudden and fierce. He pulled his hips back quickly, almost completely withdrawing his cock in one jerky movement before he slammed back in to the hilt. John gasped at the suddenness of it, but it didn't hurt. Rather the opposite, as the thrust back in grazed his prostate and send an answering slap of pleasure arcing up through John's body.

The sex was absolutely nothing like the long, slow exploration or the thorough preparation: it continued as it began, with Sherlock simply pounding away. It was hard and rough but- thanks to the prep- not painful, and certainly not mindless. Sherlock pushed John's knees up into his chest, so that his hips rolled up and cupped his arse against Sherlock's groin. Sherlock's cock fucked deep into him, and the way it hit his prostate on every single stroke could not possibly be an accident. John was soon beyond the capacity for analysis as he was battered over and over again by the stabs of pleasure. They came so close together that he he was overwhelmed by sensation almost to the point of discomfort. He couldn't have said later whether he was grunting or screaming or saying actual words or whether he was absolutely dead silent, because he had no awareness or control of what his own body was doing outside of the overwhelming sensation of Sherlock driving into him repeatedly.

Sherlock was making noise if John wasn't, no real words, just grunting and growling. His eyes were still dark and lost, and his movements hard and jerky. It was fierce and demanding and over in a matter of minutes, with Sherlock shuddering and jerking through climax with his eyes closed and his chest heaving, body hovering so close over John's that he could feel the heat radiating from Sherlock's skin. Sherlock withdrew abruptly, his cock already going soft, and John whimpered, still half out of his mind with an almost ecstatic pleasure because he was so fucking close. Sherlock glanced at his face with hooded eyes and wrapped a hand around his cock. Five rapid strokes, a tug at John's balls with his free hand, and John was coming hard, gasping with the strength of his orgasm.

Sherlock released him as soon as he started to come, and when John had come back a bit from the white-out bliss, he saw Sherlock wiping off his own groin with John's t-shirt. He folded the cloth over and mopped up John's come as well before tossing the t-shirt off the side of the bed. Sherlock's movements were smooth and measured again, the jerkiness gone from his muscles and the mania from his eyes. Apparently whatever excess energy had been generated was now expended, and Sherlock was yawning. It must be close to dawn, although John had no way of knowing with the blackout curtains and the room's lack of timekeeping devices.

"I forgot a cloth," Sherlock said as he slid under the covers. "Put your trousers back on, I don't want any more of a mess in the bed than there has to be."

John couldn't help feeling somewhat stung by the dismissiveness. "I could go get-"

"No," Sherlock said, flipping to his other side so that he could look at John's face. "You don't touch the door once I've locked it, understand?"

"Yeah, okay," John said. He got up briefly to slide back into his pajama bottoms and shut off the light, and hesitated before he crawled under the covers. The euphoria had faded, leaving his arse somewhat sore, and he could feel his natural panic emerging from beneath the stifling blanket of acceptance that Sherlock's intervention had laid over John's mind.

Sherlock grunted in annoyance. "Sleep now," he said. "Have your identity crisis this evening, I'm tired." The command seemed to shift a lever somewhere in John's head, and he felt almost immediately overwhelmed by his own exhaustion. It was no trouble at all to put his fears aside and drift into sleep.

* * *

John awoke a good bit before Sherlock, checking the time on the Blackberry to find that it was about four in the afternoon, well before sunset. He used the glow of the phone's screen to find the light and turn it on, but quickly grew bored, finding that the books were a mix of chemistry texts and dry technical treatises. He finally sat back on the bed and quietly finished having his freakout while he watched Sherlock sleep.

Okay, so it hadn't been terrible. If you used strength of orgasm as a measuring rubric it was probably the best sex John had ever had. But the fact that despite his reluctance and his fear, Sherlock had been able to make him lay back and accept it calmly; that was terrifying. John didn't like having his thoughts tampered with, whether directly or chemically, and it seemed that was the vampire's specialty. Excellent sex was hardly worth it if he had to give up that level of control over his own body and mind.

But then, why was he weighing it as if he even had a choice? He was a thrall now, well and properly. If he tried to leave, Sherlock would find him and bring him back. John harbored no illusions, he knew that it really would be as simple for Sherlock as coming and fetching him. He remembered how easy it had been last time. If he tried to protest or to fight, Sherlock could overcome him by brute force, or he could simply order John to do what he wanted, and John would have to obey. Now that Sherlock had bitten him, filled him full of whatever chemicals his body produced, John was compelled to obey. The way he had gone to sleep this morning the moment Sherlock ordered him to, despite stress that should have kept him awake all day, was proof of that.

So he waited until Sherlock woke up and let him out of the room, and he got dressed and followed him to a jeweler's at the end of Marylebone Road without a word of protest.

The jeweler knew and greeted Sherlock by name, and he let his assistants take care of the other customers in the shop while he waited on them personally. It took the man less than ten minutes to engrave Sherlock's name on the simple stainless steel band he selected, and a matter of seconds to fasten the bracelet on John's right wrist using a hand-squeezed riveting tool.

It wasn't a brand, but it was as good as: a mark that told anyone who looked at John who he belonged to.

Sherlock took him home after that- apparently crimes to solve didn't crop up every night- and lost himself in some kind of experiment. John paced awkwardly for a while, looked through Sherlock's books, but he couldn't seem to settle down. Finally it occurred to him that Sherlock hadn't said he needed to stay in the flat. “I'm going out,” he said experimentally, but there was no response from the kitchen other than the soft clinking of glassware. So he got his jacket and took a couple bills out of Sherlock's wallet, which was still in the pocket of his coat.

Being out by himself felt reassuringly normal; John was able to forget the thing on his wrist, and the vampire skulking back in the flat, and just feel like a person. The girl who took his order at the coffee shop smiled at him, and John couldn't help smiling back. This was what he had been missing when he followed Sherlock about. With the vampire in the room, John was an incidental figure, an accessory that no one paid attention to. The girl was a decade too young for John at least, but he was happy enough to exchange a bit of banter with her anyway, it felt so deliciously normal and right. He got about sixty seconds to bask in the warm glow of human contact before he reached to hand over his money and it went to pieces.

In an instant, her open expression slammed shut and her eyes slid away from John's. He didn't understand what was happening at first, but when he reached for his change she jerked her hand back as if she'd been burned, letting the money fall to the counter. That's when John realized that she'd seen the bracelet. The fucking, fucking bracelet that was instantly recognizable because nobody wore anything like it except a thrall. John clamped his lips shut and picked up the coins one by one in silence.

He sat in nearby Regent's Park sipping the coffee until the nausea receded. He tried to tamp down his shame and anger. It wasn't his fault his life had been co-opted by a vampire, and he didn't see why anyone should look at him as if there was something wrong with him. The girl at the coffee shop was young though, just a uni kid. Maybe she knew someone who'd been taking for training as a kid, maybe she had a younger sibling, maybe she'd had a bad experience with a vampire. By the time he had finished drinking his coffee, John had managed to persuade himself that it was a one-off.

It wasn't.

He went to a cafe, a supermarket, a chemist. Everywhere people glanced at his wrist and then refused to meet his eyes. Even on the street, John noticed people giving him a wide berth, darting furtive looks at him, or simply staring at him only to glance away when he caught them at it. John stared back at them, and he glared at the ones who whispered behind their hands when he passed. But it was exhausting to be so aware of people staring at him like a freak, averting their eyes like his existence was somehow embarrassing, avoiding him as if he might be contagious.

Something in him broke when a woman trailing a little boy crossed the street to avoid him. John walked back to Baker Street with his hands crammed as deep into his pockets as they would go.

He went to bed when he got in, in the room Sherlock had told him was his, but he was still lying sleeplessly on his back when Sherlock came up to bed. His soft footfalls paused outside John's open door, and after a long moment John rolled over to face the vampire.

You miserable fucker, you've made me almost as inhuman as you, he didn't say. But John didn't doubt that at least some of his unhappiness was written in his expression. Sherlock's nostrils flared.

"Do you need me?" John asked, his voice as flat as possible.

There was another pause. "No," Sherlock said.

John rolled over to face the wall. After a moment, he felt the bed dip as the vampire's weight settled next to his hip. John viciously stomped on his urge to cringe away, but he still felt the muscles tense all along his back and shoulders. At first Sherlock didn't do anything, but then John felt gentle fingers brush through his hair. John huffed out a breath, but otherwise didn't react.

Sherlock began to stroke his head, massaging his scalp with deft fingers. John found himself relaxing into the soothing touch. It made him feel grounded and connected, where everything else today had made him feel alone and adrift. It's almost enough to make John feel grateful- despite Sherlock's inhumanity, he could still give John this bit of kindness when he so desperately needed it.

But it suddenly occurred to John: if his day was hard, if he missed human contact, it was Sherlock's fault. Sherlock had done this to him, had taken his life away and tried to turn him into this pliant, quivering thing lying on the bed, feeling thankful for its master's touch. No, damn it, John was not going to be grateful. He refused to be grateful, like a starving dog begging for table scraps.

John's had all the training. He'd taken classes in psychology, he'd dealt first-hand with survivors of kidnap and capture: men and women so overwhelmed and confused by their ordeal that they were ready to believe whatever their captors told them. It was just plain embarrassing how long it had taken John to realize what was happening.

“You're brainwashing me,” John said aloud.

Sherlock didn't answer him, which was confirmation enough; he would have delighted in telling John he was wrong, if that was the case. It was almost insulting that Sherlock was so confident of his ability to warp John's mind that he didn't care if John caught him out. John pulled away and turned back over, sitting up and backing up against the wall to get away from Sherlock's touch.

“Come back here,” Sherlock said petulantly. He reached for John, who shuffled even further away. Sherlock hesitated slightly before he continued reaching forward and put his hand on John's belt buckle.

John's mind was moving very fast now, parsing what he had seen of Sherlock and making conclusions. John had thus far done whatever he was told based on the threat of being caught if he ran and the implicit threat of force. He'd had an actual demonstration of that force, even, when Sherlock sprang on the vampire who'd touched John last night. Although now that John seriously thought about that encounter without the haze caused by two full days awake, the whole thing seemed awfully peculiar. Sherlock had led him past countless restaurants before suddenly picking that one. He had looked directly at that vampire, and there was absolutely no way that with all his observational power he hadn't anticipated what might happen. He had recognized the vampire and deliberately left John alone with him. But why?

The answer was obvious: so that he would have an opportunity to rescue John, and at the same time demonstrate his strength and ability to fight. More manipulation, more brainwashing. John's anger was steadily stoking itself into rage.

Still, Sherlock had shown no real inclination to hurt John. So if he refused to submit to Sherlock- what then? Would Sherlock hold him down and fuck him anyway? John had just assumed he would...but he was quickly realizing that between exhaustion and outright manipulation, most of his prior assumptions were suspect. The very attempts to persuade and maneuver Sherlock kept engaging in, and his hesitation just now when John resisted, suggested that John was wrong, that Sherlock wouldn't force him.

"Don't touch me," he snapped. He stiffened his back and raised his chin, but Sherlock didn't move to penalize him, just paused for a long moment while John grew more and more tense, waiting for the coin to drop.

Sherlock scrutinized John's face, his expression radiating surprise for a moment before it abruptly shuttered closed. He finally said, "All right," and stood up. He left the room, and John heard the door to the vampire's sanctuary thunk closed and the bolts slide home. John just sat for a moment, suffused with relief and a rising sense of triumph.

John was up again when Sherlock woke- the vampire slept from sunrise to sunset, and John didn't need that much sleep- and sitting in the living room with yesterday's newspaper. To his surprise, Sherlock went directly to his coat and took it off the hook, then left without a word.

Victory was sweet, but John quickly found himself bored. Following Sherlock because he had to was emasculating, but watching him work had been really interesting. Still, John had plenty of experience keeping himself entertained; he was an adult after all. He did some tidying in the living room and the kitchen- not servile, he told himself, just common sense. It's my home too, after all. He went out to the shop to lay in some supplies, and resolved to glare down anyone who looked at him funny because of the bracelet. He kept his back straight and his head up and felt like he was beginning to cope.

Sherlock returned just before dawn and went to bed without acknowledging John's presence at all. When he woke at sunset, John was sitting on the sofa eating eggs and bacon that he had cooked himself, reading a newspaper he had bought down at the corner. Sherlock swanned in wearing a fresh suit and deigned to address John directly. “Move over,” he said, and flung himself onto the sofa without pausing. “Give me your wrist,” he said.

John's heart sank. Of course, it couldn't have been as easy as all that to put off a vampire. “Why?” he asked, stalling.

“Well it's a bit less intimate than the neck, so I thought-” Sherlock only then seemed to notice John's expression of revulsion and dismay. “Really, now, I still have to eat, John. I've not nearly the altruism required to starve myself for the sake of your sensibilities.”

John frowned. “I thought you couldn't feed without sex or violence. Am I going to have to choose between being raped or being murdered?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes in a surprisingly human gesture. “It's biology,” he said. “An appetite can be controlled. Now give me your wrist. Unless you're suggesting I go out and pick up someone else?”

A small part of John insisted yes, God yes. The rest of him thought, you bastard. Because he didn't doubt for a moment that Sherlock would. He should tell Sherlock to fuck off, that what he did was his own affair and he could go to the Food Bank if he was that starved. If he went and victimized someone else, that wasn't John's fault any more than it was his fault if a homeless man he didn't give spare change to went and robbed somebody. Sherlock was responsible for his own damned decisions. The argument was cold and clean and logical in John's mind, but he opened his mouth and couldn't produce it. Because at the end of the day, John knew the consequences his decision would have, and that would make him partially responsible. Even the thought of suggesting Lestrade, who was already a thrall and presumably used to it, made John's stomach churn with shame and guilt.

John knew he was being manipulated. But he couldn't trade his own safety for someone else's. He just couldn't.

He proffered his wrist.

Sherlock fed quickly, impassively. Unlike the previous feeding, so intimate and thick with emotion, this was nearly as impersonal as a Bank donation. Sherlock was clearly doing something, because the pain and fear from the first time was almost entirely absent, but so was the pleasure and arousal. It was very nearly bearable in the end. When Sherlock pulled back, his eyes were alight with mania and his movements were quick and jerky. It was clear he was feeling the same preternatural energy as before, but he looked away from John and swallowed once before standing up from the sofa.

John huffed a sigh of relief when the vampire was out the door.

***

The following days were like something out of the sixth circle of hell.

John straightened the flat, he shopped, he cooked, he read the paper and watched the telly. He watched Sherlock whirl in and out of the flat on his way between work and sleep without giving John a word or a glance. He tried not to care, and he was too proud to ask Sherlock what he was working on, or if he could come along. It was as if he'd had a window into some bizarre and fascinating other world, and now it had slammed shut and left him trapped in boredom and mediocrity.

When he first came to Baker Street, if Sherlock had told John he would be ignored except on the rare occasions when Sherlock needed to feed, and otherwise left to go about his business, John would have been pleased. He didn't want the vampire's attention, he didn't care what the arrogant bastard thought of him, and he would just as soon be left alone. But that didn't seem to be the case now. Somehow he felt...slighted when Sherlock looked past him. Offended, because he had been set aside like a toy bought on a whim that had now ceased to be entertaining. He hadn't felt this useless since he'd first been discharged.

Except it was worse than that now, because wearing Sherlock's bracelet cut him off from the whole damn human race into the bargain. People treated him as if his very existence was a disability or deformity, something that shouldn't be looked at directly or commented on. He could stand in a crowded shop but feel totally isolated from everyone there. It was as if he wasn't the same species any more; he wasn't human, he was a thrall.

He went on a job interview, just once. Dr. Sawyer, who ran the surgery, was frank, smart and had a good sense of humor. She would have been John's type even if she wasn't extremely pretty. They didn't flirt, they were professionals, but they teased one another a bit. John had a feeling that somewhere down the road, he could be in with a chance.

Locum GP wasn't the most exciting job. But it was work, useful work. And a way to be independent, to do something out of Sherlock's sphere of influence, even if the vampire would still control his paycheck. Dr. Sawyer didn't have to know that. Dr. Sawyer didn't have to know about Sherlock at all.

But when she reached over her desk to shake his hand, he forgot for just a moment. His sleeve rode up, her eyes locked onto his wrist, and both their smiles died. He sensed the rejection coming and released her hand quickly, already turning away.

“John, wait a second,” she said. The look of open pity on her face was almost as repellent to him as disgust or fear would have been, but he tamped down his shame and anger. She was trying to be kind. “I would have found out anyway,” she said quietly. “It'll be in your NHS file now.” He hadn't thought of that.

His face burned. “I'm still a doctor,” he said. “I'm a damned good doctor.” There was no heat in it; she was shaking her head, not really listening.

“There's too much of a conflict- time, loyalties, everything. It wouldn't work,” she said. “I'm sorry, truly.”

John wasn't sure how long he spent wandering the streets after that. It wasn't as if he had anywhere to go or anything to do. It wasn't as if it mattered. In the end he found himself leaning over the guardrail on Waterloo Bridge, staring blankly at the murky waters of the Thames until well after sundown.

“You all right, sir?” John was so deep in his reverie that the voice made him start. He turned his head and saw that the speaker was a cop, young and uniformed and frowning.

John managed half a smile at him. “I'm fine, yeah,” he said, and looked back at the water.

“How about you come away from there now, sir?” The new voice belonged to another beat cop, who was standing in front of the first. He was older than the first officer, older than John, with hair well into gray.

“I'm fine,” John said in clipped tones.

“You must be cold, at least,” the man said, smiling slightly. “Constable Edwards says you've been standing there hours, not moving, and you're certainly not dressed for it.” John had to allow that this was true. The light jacket he was wearing had been fine for 3 in the afternoon, but was less so for the middle of the night, especially with the breeze that had blown up. He hadn't been aware that he was shivering slightly.

“Why don't I give you a ride?” said the older constable. “Or maybe there's someone I can call for you, someone that would be worried?”

Not likely, John thought, suppressing the urge to laugh. “I'll be all right,” he said.

The constable still didn't cease his pleasant smiling, but there was a hint of firmness in his voice. “Please. Only I shouldn't like to have it on my conscience, sir.”

John suddenly realized the kind of picture he must make: a lone man, inappropriately dressed, leaning on the bridge rail for hours in the middle of the night. John tucked his hands, which he now realized were ice cold, up into his armpits and turned away from the rail. “I'm fine, honestly. I can walk from here.”

“I'm sure, sir, but the car would be much more comfortable, don't you think?” John shrugged. What the hell did he care, anyway? Potential suicide wasn't the worst someone had thought of him today. He let the constable usher him into a marked car, and leaned his head against the cool glass once he was ensconced inside. He found himself playing unconsciously with the bracelet, and looked up to met the constable's eyes in the rearview mirror. John narrowed his lips and looked back out the window.

It did not come as a surprise to him when he ended up at Scotland Yard instead of back at Baker Street. What did surprise him was who sat down across from him in the interview room where the constable left him warming his hands on a styrofoam cup of coffee.

“Are you my personal police officer or something?” John asked Lestrade.

“Just the presumed expert on thralls,” Lestrade said wearily. “Mason said you were on the Waterloo Bridge, looked to be nerving yourself for a jump.”

John shrugged at his coffee. “I don't think I'd thought that far,” he said honestly. “I was just...there.”

Lestrade cracked his knuckles. “Then he saw the bracelet and he thought- well.” Lestrade set the folder he was carrying on the table and slid it across to John. “Have a look.”

John flipped it open, and only his previous experience with battle medicine kept him from cringing. The man depicted in the photos had lacerations and bruises across the face, clearly caused by fists. There was an abundance of long, upraised white scars across the back and legs, overlaid with fresh, bloody marks. The genitals and anus were marked and torn, the clear target of violence. But the worst damage was to the neck and to the forearms, which were covered by large bite marks, one laid over another. Many of the cuts were puffy and inflamed, clearly infected. John turned over each photograph carefully, and looked up at Lestrade when he had closed the folder on the last.

“That's what it looks like when a vampire abuses a thrall,” Lestrade said.

John smiled bitterly. “Would you even believe me if I said he was abusing me?” They locked eyes, and John tried to stare Lestrade down; it quickly became obvious that he was not going to look away.

“Yes.” Lestrade's tone was one of absolute conviction: a reminder that this was not just Sherlock's thrall that he was talking to, but an experienced detective.

John believed him. He lowered his eyes and pushed the folder back across the table. “He's not.”

“I know it's hard,” Lestrade said haltingly, his voice low. John wanted to snap back, but he restrained himself because Lestrade did know what it was like, he knew exactly. “It's an adjustment. It changes how you think, how you look at the world.” It. Him. Sherlock.

“It's not right.” John found to his shame that his eyes were pricking with angry, frustrated tears. He blinked them back, furious at himself.

“No, it's not right. But it's the way things are.” Lestrade picked up the folder and sat silently for a moment. “You don't have to stop being yourself,” he said finally. “He won't punish you for disagreeing, for resisting, for asserting yourself. And he'll treat you like a person, not like a doll or a dog.” Lestrade's lip curled, as if he was thinking of something unpleasant. “Most vampires don't even do that much.”

“But?” John asked, his voice harsh.

“But you have to accept that he's the boss.” Lestrade scratched the back of his head. “Try thinking of him as your commanding officer, if it helps. You've got to follow his orders, but you don't have to like it, and you don't have to like him.”

“But you like him.”

Lestrade looked away. “Not all the time.”

They sat in silence for another minute, while John thought it through. He wondered if this could be him in five years- grudgingly accepting, occasionally bitter, but generally content with his life. He wondered if he wanted that.

“He's-” Lestrade began again, then stopped. “Fuck. I'm not going to tell you what to think, Watson. You have to get there on your own.” He stood up and opened the door, holding it open and gesturing at John with the folder in his other hand. “Go home, all right?”

* * *

Sherlock didn't say anything when John came back. He lounged on the couch: first thinking, then answering his e-mail, then watching video clips with the sound turned so low that it was barely a murmur to John's ears. John pretended to read the newspaper, but he was really just watching and thinking. Sherlock was undoubtedly aware of John's gaze, but he gave no sign that he noticed.

At four, Sherlock snapped his laptop shut decisively and left the sitting room. Sherlock's step was very light, but John could still hear the settling of the floorboards overhead as Sherlock moved about his room. Then, silence. John felt unnaturally tired. There was something oddly exhausting about spending an entire day- or night, as it were- idle. Without Sherlock in the room, there was no point in pretending to read the paper, so he gave it up and went to bed. He lay in the dark for a long time, unable to stop thinking.

He wondered if this was how Sherlock felt, his brain constantly set on something so that he was unable to just pull the lever to shut it off. Dawn must be a relief, shrouding him with exhaustion so that he could settle into sleep. Or did Sherlock find it irritating, the long sleep a waste of time that could be better spent solving puzzles? Probably the latter. Probably any minute not spent on his work was wasted space. Maybe that's why he didn't bother with John unless he was hungry. He probably couldn't abide the waste of time.

John curled on his side, twisted in his sheets, and tried again to be glad to be ignored. Glad his life was much the same as it was after his discharge, before Sherlock. But it really wasn't the same, was it? It was harder and lonelier here in Sherlock's flat that in had been in that wretched little bedsit. Even though there was another person ten feet away, on the other side of the wall.

John was out of his bed and in the hall before he fully realized what he was doing; had knocked a hollow, clanging cadence on Sherlock's door before he thought about why. When he heard the bolts slide back and the door opened on Sherlock, entirely and unselfconsciously nude, John curled his bare feet against the floor and fisted his hands in his pajama bottoms. He opened his mouth without having the faintest idea what to say. "Please," he found himself saying. "Please, Sherlock."

Sherlock looked him full in the face and stood aside without saying a word. John stepped into the room, faltering when the door shut behind him and the room plummeted into near-total darkness. Then Sherlock's hand was on John's lower back, guiding him forward until his knees bumped against the bed and he could lean down and maneuver his way onto it by feel. The bed dipped and the springs squeaked a bit as Sherlock settled behind him, stretching out his legs to cradle John between them. He bent forward, his naked torso touching John's from neck to waist. The wet press of lips on his ruined shoulder almost undid him; the feel of Sherlock's hand stroking gently through his hair did undo him.

A deep gasp shivered his body against Sherlock, and he closed his eyes and relaxed into the petting. Like his fucking dog, something hard inside John whispered cruelly, but John viciously kicked the thought away because he didn't care, he didn't care, it felt too wonderfully gentle and reassuring to be shameful. John was nearly humming with pleasure by the time Sherlock sat up and his hand dragged John's head back to rest against his shoulder, then went on to rub broad ovals across his chest and stomach. John settled into a haze of sensation. The firm, but gentle, presses of Sherlock's hands were intense points of sensation, lighting up his nerves. Their effect was all the more pronounced in the total darkness, where all John could do was hear and feel the slide of skin on skin.

John had no idea what Sherlock was thinking, what he was planning, but he had somehow dropped into an almost zen-like state of mind, a place where he could calmly accept Sherlock sliding his pajama bottoms down his hips and thighs without a single concern. He even kicked them off when they were down to knee level and Sherlock could no longer reach, and he let Sherlock's gentle touches urge him to slide backward on the bed and lie down on his left side with his back still pressed along Sherlock's chest.

When Sherlock pulled away momentarily, John nearly panicked: he didn't think he could bear to be abandoned in the locked and darkened room that way. But Sherlock's hand on his hip anchored him, steadying his breathing as Sherlock guided John's upper leg forward and bent it at the knee, then slotted back into position behind him. John knew what to expect after that, and Sherlock's fingers probing at his anus did not surprise him in the slightest.

There was no hard, rough efficiency to the prep work as there had been in the past. Instead Sherlock opened him with slow and gentle strokes, as if he had no more pressing business and no ultimate end goal beyond sliding his fingers into John as deeply as possible, with feather-light brushes against his prostate. By the time Sherlock had worked him up to three fingers, John was hard as flint and leaking pre-come, pressing himself back onto Sherlock's fingers and making small and ridiculously needy noises. When he tried to bring up his hand to muffle them, Sherlock immediately withdrew his hand and seized John by the wrist, guiding his hand back to its default position, resting against his belly.

John had somehow got so caught up in his own world of sensation that he hadn't noticed Sherlock becoming hard as well. That changed when Sherlock withdrew his hand again, and replaced his fingers with his cock, filling John with one long, achingly sweet slide. Sherlock stretched a bit when he was fully seated, so that John could feel every inch of him spooned up against his body. He brought his right leg up along the outside of John's thigh, cradling him as he had when they were sitting on the edge of the bed, and deepening the angle of penetration. John could not hold back a groan.

It was the first time John had been fucked by Sherlock without the mania of feeding, without the haze of drugged pleasure clouding his own sensations, and it was absolutely incomparable. Sherlock's thrusts were slow and smooth, with a slight pause after each so that both of them could savor the feeling of being so absolutely physically close, nearly every possible inch of exposed skin touching. Every movement felt sharp and clear, and John couldn't see Sherlock in the dark but he could feel how absolutely he was the center of Sherlock's attention, and every second of it was such a fucking gift that John almost teared up over it.

His orgasm was almost an afterthought in the face of that generosity, but John took it gratefully when Sherlock started to stroke him in time with his gradually-quickening thrusts. When Sherlock had coaxed him through the aftershocks, John lay quietly while Sherlock finished, tilting his head down to press his cheek against Sherlock's left arm, stretched out beneath his neck. When Sherlock slipped out of him, he didn't move for some time, simply stroking his free hand along John's side.

There was no epiphany, no blast of crystalline thought, no "aha," but John realized that he had discovered something: a need or a desire that he hadn't known about before, and that he felt obscurely grateful to Sherlock for helping him uncover. He sighed softly, relaxed in Sherlock's hold, and thought that if he could, he would live in this moment forever.

"Good, John," Sherlock murmured, less than an inch from the shell of his ear. "That's very good."

* * *

Corpses had the annoying habit of being discovered during daylight hours, so it was a couple weeks before John saw Lestrade at a crime scene.

"All right?" Lestrade asked as John joined him under the streetlight. John nodded, and they stood companionably close and watched Sherlock flit excitedly around the body.

John could feel Lestrade watching him, too, out of the corner of his eye, but it didn't bother him. He felt open, relaxed. There was a freedom that came in not caring what anyone thought, because you knew where you stood with the one person whose opinion actually mattered.

"John, come have a look at this!" Sherlock hadn't fed from him in a couple days, so the imperative was weak; just a warm, gentle tug at John's center that he was coming to quite like. A reminder that he was useful. Needed. He took a step toward Sherlock, but turned back when Lestrade put a gently restraining hand on his arm.

For a moment, Lestrade just looked closely at his face, as if studying him. "You seem- happier," he said finally.

"You know," John said as he gently shook Lestrade's hand off. "I think I am."