Fill: Bound in Gold 20
Story Type: Prompt Fill
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock/John
Rating: I'm told it's NC-17, but I actually consider it more a hard R.
Spoilers: All of ASiP
Warnings: If you object to arranged marriage, you probably won't like this
WTF is This?: Written for this prompt on the Kink Meme. Condensed summary: Arranged marriage AU. The first time John and Sherlock meet is on their wedding day.
20.
John couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t fucking believe it! Sherlock was getting in a cab! He was ruddy leaving the ruddy flat with all these coppers and a serial killer on the loose and how the bloody, fucking hell was John supposed to deal with this now? Christ, he really had married a sociopath. He was shackled, for the rest of his life, to an unhinged genius with no moral centre. Oh that was...that was bloody brilliant, that was. Of fucking course!
“He left!” He spat. “Sherlock just got in a cab and drove off!”
“Told you.” Donovan said, and John rolled his eyes. Not her again. “Bloody left again.” She strode off and yelled to the squad. “We’re wasting our time!”
Oh God. John thought. Oh God, Clara, I am so sorry. To the police he said, “I’m calling the phone, it’s ringing out.” He pointed to his mobile for emphasis.
“Well if it’s ringing it’s not here.” Lestrade said.
“I’ll try the search again.” John said, resigned, and he picked up Sherlock’s netbook.
“Does it matter?” Donovan demanded, and she looked...frantic. “Does any of it? Yeah, he’s just a lunatic, and he’ll always let you down, and you’re wasting your time. All our time.” She was angry, clearly, but...she also seemed hurt. Her voice broke as though she were on the verge of crying. John blinked at her. She wasn’t vindicated...she was disappointed.
Lestrade sighed, sharing and equalling Donovan’s dismay. “Okay everybody.” He said reluctantly, but in his command voice. “Done here.”
::
Sherlock swept his gaze over the cab’s interior, taking care to miss nothing.
“How did you find me?” Sherlock asked. If he kept the cabbie talking, he could learn something. Anything.
“Oh, I recognised you.” The cabbie said, and though Sherlock was startled, he didn’t move so much as a millimetre. “Soon as I saw you chasing my cab.”
Recognised him? How? He’d always been so careful about keeping his face out of the papers, avoiding photographers at crime scenes and galas, and the footage from the wedding wouldn’t be broadcast for six months. By then, Mycroft’s people would have had plenty of time to digitally and artistically obscure both his and John’s identifying features. The programme would be focussed on Mycroft and mummy, anyway.
“Sherlock Holmes!” The cabbie went on, crowing. “I was warned about you.” Sherlock studied what little he could see of the man from his seat in the back. He couldn’t see all of the dash, but what he could see he memorised, keeping his ears attentive to whatever the cabbie said.
He went on, “I’ve been on your website, too. Brilliant stuff! Loved it.”
Sherlock resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Well, good thing, then, that he’d used John’s phone to make the call. Rather than acknowledge the man’s shammed flattery, he demanded, “Who warned you about me?”
“Someone out there who’s noticed.” The man said. Interesting, but unhelpful.
“Who?” Sherlock asked, and he sat up straighter, letting his eyes roam the cab’s interior. “Who would notice me?” No one interesting, no one worth the time. Sherlock Holmes, as far as London was concerned, was the misanthropic younger son of one of England’s golden families.
“You’re too modest, Mr Holmes.” The cabbie chided with a sly look in the rearview.
“I’m really not.” He had worked damn hard to keep himself unobtrusive despite his high-profile family, thanks so much.
The cabbie smiled, and Sherlock could see the predatory grin reflected in the windscreen. “Got yourself a fan.” He bragged.
“Tell me more.” Sherlock said absently, though he didn’t expect it.
“That’s all you’re gonna know.” Predictable. “In this lifetime.” Trite. Really, he was starting to lose faith in the man.
::
“Why did he do that?” Lestrade griped, slipping into his coat. “Why’d he have to leave?”
John clenched his jaw. “You know him better than I do.” And it hurt to admit. His own bloody husband and he didn’t know the man at all.
“I’ve known him for five years and, no I don’t.” He said.
“So why do you put up with him? Why the bloody hell should I?”
Lestrade sighed. “As for me? I’m desperate. He’s a right bastard but...people don’t die quite as often when he’s about.” He paused. “As for you...” He seemed to mull it over. “Look, you seem like a good bloke, so I’ll be plain with you.” He watched to make sure his officers were well out of the flat. “He’s a sod. He’s arrogant, self-centred, selfish, oblivious where living, non-criminal people are concerned, and he can be downright cruel with very little provocation. But for all that...” he shrugged. “Sherlock Holmes is a great man. And I think one day, if we’re very very lucky, he might even be a good one.” He raised an arm to slap John encouragingly on the shoulder. “Who knows, maybe you’ll be what gets him there.”
As Lestrade was turning to go, John found his voice and managed to ask, “So...that stuff he said before. To Anderson. Was that...?”
Lestrade shrugged again. “I’ve read the psych eval, I’ve interviewed the doctor, and the best I can say is this: Talk to the brother. He’s probably the only one who knows for sure.” And then he was gone.
John sighed. It felt like the world was spinning away from him, but very, very slowly. Just enough to make him slightly nausious. Just then, right then, he was desperate for familiarity, for reality. He tugged the tie from around his neck and set about unbuttoning his rediculously expensive shirt. There was a particularly unassuming cable-knit jumper in his duffel the colour of porridge, and he thought it would do nicely to ground him. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had, at the moment. All he had that wasn’t somehow tinged with Sherlock.
::
In the silence of the cab ride (the cabbie had refused conversation after mentioning Sherlock’s “fan”), Sherlock was slightly unsettled by how many of his secondary thoughts were of John. His primary thoughts, all of them, were focussed on the game, on the killer behind the wheel and the possibilities laid out at the end of their journey. But far too many of his other thoughts, the ones permanently buzzing around the periphery of his brain, were of psychosomatic limps and gentle words in a steady tenor and ash blond hair and lake-blue eyes and that kiss. That beautiful, intoxicating conflagration of a kiss broken way too soon and stolen in the seconds before it all fell apart.
The memory made his lips tingle and ache. It was disturbingly familiar, a low thrum of desire and need that once had him grasping for a sterilised needle and a tourniquet. Now it made him want to reach for slightly brown hands, sand coloured hair and solid shoulders. He could have it. He could have all of it if he survived the night. If he only had the chance to explain, to set it all to rights, to make John forget the horrible things he’d done and said over the course of the night. If he didn’t die in the next few minutes, he decided, that’s just what he’d do.
They pulled to a stop, and the killer got out of the car, walked around to the back, and opened Sherlock’s door.
“Where are we?” Sherlock made a passing effort to make his voice waver uncertainly. The cabbie didn’t so much as blink.
“You know every street in London. You know exactly where we are.”
“Roland-Kerr Further Education College.” Sherlock announced obligingly. “Why here?”
The cabbie didn’t quite shrug, but he tilted his head in a shrug-like manner. “It’s open. Cleaners are in.” He never smiled, Sherlock noticed, or emoted at all physically. It was as though he were reciting this. Like he’d planned it out, to the word. It was a little chilling, to be honest. It made Sherlock feel like he was being manoeuvered, manipulated even down to the words he spoke.
“One thing about being a cabbie,” the man continued. “You always know a nice, quiet spot for a murder. I’m surprised more of us don’t branch out.”
It still wasn’t making complete sense, so Sherlock pressed on with the questioning. “And you just walk your victims in? How?”
The cabbie raised his arm. There was a familiar, mat-black shape in his hand and Sherlock rolled his eyes with a weary, “Oh... dull.”
In that same infuriatingly unemotional tone, the cabbie said, “Don’t worry. It get’s better.”
Sherlock glared at him. The mad bastard was still holding out. “You can’t make people take their own lives at gunpoint.” He accused. This was all too...simple. And boring. The man could surely do better, why was he holding back?
“I don’t.” And finally there was some emotion there besides bland calm. Smugness, something Sherlock knew intimately. “It’s much better than that.”
It sodding well better be. Sherlock thought.
“Don’t need this with you.” The cabbie assured him. “Cos you’ll follow me.” And without a backward glance he turned and walked peacefully toward one of the two identical buildings.
This was it. This was the last, the only moment. He could leave now. He could slip into the driver’s seat, hot-wire the cab and be back to Baker Street and John in less than an hour. He didn’t have to do this. The man was old and out of shape, he’d never reach the cab in time to stop him. He Didn’t. Have. To follow.
Only he did. He had to. He had no choice. He felt the burning need to know stinging his blood. It was like an unbreakable filament connecting him to the killer, and the farther away the man got, the more Sherlock needed to follow. He’d never get this chance again. He couldn’t, honestly couldn’t live with himself if he passed it up. How could he stand to face a lifetime of not knowing?
And it was stupid, and pathetic, and illogical and childish and he didn’t want to do it but he was physically incapable of resisting. With a silent curse, Sherlock got out of the cab and followed the retreating form of his potential murderer.
Or was it assisted suicide?
::
A jumper, a dark shirt, a pair of well-worn jeans and similarly weathered brown boots and John Watson was feeling slightly his old self again. The police were gone, the flat was quiet, and Sherlock was God knew where doing something oh-so-important that didn’t involve him. John decided he didn’t really mind that.
But the adrenaline was ebbing, the confusion was fading and the anger was dying down to a low aggrivation in his chest. He needed to get away, he decided. He should go back to the tiny, depressing flat and get his things. Hell, maybe he should stay there for the night. He didn’t really fancy another night with Sherlock beside him on the mattress. It was too confusing, to incongruous. If Sherlock was a sociopath, then why had he held John through the aftermath of his nightmare their first night? Why had he pressed that gentle kiss to the skin just under John’s ear, then proceeded to hold him through the night? What about all the smiles? His obvious adoration for his mother and Mrs Hudson? What about the dancing and the running and the laughter and that bloody brilliant kiss?
Was it all a lie? Was it all a continuation of his act at the reception? He’d said he could fake it, back at the restaurant. Was that what he was doing now?
He needed to think. He needed space and he needed it to be Sherlock-free. He headed for the door, and his hand gave a tremble. He looked down at it. It hadn’t shaken all night. It hadn’t shaken since they’d arrived at Baker Street. It had barely shaken since the morning of his wedding.
Maybe all that was over now. Probably the limp would come back again, too. He went back to fetch his cane, and in the second before his foot crossed the threshold he heard the insistant beep of the Mephone programme displaying the scan results.
It was pointless, probably, but John went and checked the netbook anyway, already knowing what he’d--
The phone had moved.
The phone. Had moved.
The sodding phone had moved!
And he knew. He understood. Everything, all of it. Sherlock’s weird behaviour, his sudden exit, the cab. The ruddy cab! Sherlock had figured it out and he’d actually gone with the killer! Willingly! That absolute idiot!
He didn’t think. He was bloody well done thinking. He snatched up the computer, made a quick stop at his (unsearched and undisturbed, thanks Lestrade) duffel bag, and bolted out the door, taking the stairs as quickly as he possibly could.
He was going to get his husband back. If anyone was going to kill Sherlock, it was damn well going to be him.
Chapter 21
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock/John
Rating: I'm told it's NC-17, but I actually consider it more a hard R.
Spoilers: All of ASiP
Warnings: If you object to arranged marriage, you probably won't like this
WTF is This?: Written for this prompt on the Kink Meme. Condensed summary: Arranged marriage AU. The first time John and Sherlock meet is on their wedding day.
20.
John couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t fucking believe it! Sherlock was getting in a cab! He was ruddy leaving the ruddy flat with all these coppers and a serial killer on the loose and how the bloody, fucking hell was John supposed to deal with this now? Christ, he really had married a sociopath. He was shackled, for the rest of his life, to an unhinged genius with no moral centre. Oh that was...that was bloody brilliant, that was. Of fucking course!
“He left!” He spat. “Sherlock just got in a cab and drove off!”
“Told you.” Donovan said, and John rolled his eyes. Not her again. “Bloody left again.” She strode off and yelled to the squad. “We’re wasting our time!”
Oh God. John thought. Oh God, Clara, I am so sorry. To the police he said, “I’m calling the phone, it’s ringing out.” He pointed to his mobile for emphasis.
“Well if it’s ringing it’s not here.” Lestrade said.
“I’ll try the search again.” John said, resigned, and he picked up Sherlock’s netbook.
“Does it matter?” Donovan demanded, and she looked...frantic. “Does any of it? Yeah, he’s just a lunatic, and he’ll always let you down, and you’re wasting your time. All our time.” She was angry, clearly, but...she also seemed hurt. Her voice broke as though she were on the verge of crying. John blinked at her. She wasn’t vindicated...she was disappointed.
Lestrade sighed, sharing and equalling Donovan’s dismay. “Okay everybody.” He said reluctantly, but in his command voice. “Done here.”
::
Sherlock swept his gaze over the cab’s interior, taking care to miss nothing.
“How did you find me?” Sherlock asked. If he kept the cabbie talking, he could learn something. Anything.
“Oh, I recognised you.” The cabbie said, and though Sherlock was startled, he didn’t move so much as a millimetre. “Soon as I saw you chasing my cab.”
Recognised him? How? He’d always been so careful about keeping his face out of the papers, avoiding photographers at crime scenes and galas, and the footage from the wedding wouldn’t be broadcast for six months. By then, Mycroft’s people would have had plenty of time to digitally and artistically obscure both his and John’s identifying features. The programme would be focussed on Mycroft and mummy, anyway.
“Sherlock Holmes!” The cabbie went on, crowing. “I was warned about you.” Sherlock studied what little he could see of the man from his seat in the back. He couldn’t see all of the dash, but what he could see he memorised, keeping his ears attentive to whatever the cabbie said.
He went on, “I’ve been on your website, too. Brilliant stuff! Loved it.”
Sherlock resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Well, good thing, then, that he’d used John’s phone to make the call. Rather than acknowledge the man’s shammed flattery, he demanded, “Who warned you about me?”
“Someone out there who’s noticed.” The man said. Interesting, but unhelpful.
“Who?” Sherlock asked, and he sat up straighter, letting his eyes roam the cab’s interior. “Who would notice me?” No one interesting, no one worth the time. Sherlock Holmes, as far as London was concerned, was the misanthropic younger son of one of England’s golden families.
“You’re too modest, Mr Holmes.” The cabbie chided with a sly look in the rearview.
“I’m really not.” He had worked damn hard to keep himself unobtrusive despite his high-profile family, thanks so much.
The cabbie smiled, and Sherlock could see the predatory grin reflected in the windscreen. “Got yourself a fan.” He bragged.
“Tell me more.” Sherlock said absently, though he didn’t expect it.
“That’s all you’re gonna know.” Predictable. “In this lifetime.” Trite. Really, he was starting to lose faith in the man.
::
“Why did he do that?” Lestrade griped, slipping into his coat. “Why’d he have to leave?”
John clenched his jaw. “You know him better than I do.” And it hurt to admit. His own bloody husband and he didn’t know the man at all.
“I’ve known him for five years and, no I don’t.” He said.
“So why do you put up with him? Why the bloody hell should I?”
Lestrade sighed. “As for me? I’m desperate. He’s a right bastard but...people don’t die quite as often when he’s about.” He paused. “As for you...” He seemed to mull it over. “Look, you seem like a good bloke, so I’ll be plain with you.” He watched to make sure his officers were well out of the flat. “He’s a sod. He’s arrogant, self-centred, selfish, oblivious where living, non-criminal people are concerned, and he can be downright cruel with very little provocation. But for all that...” he shrugged. “Sherlock Holmes is a great man. And I think one day, if we’re very very lucky, he might even be a good one.” He raised an arm to slap John encouragingly on the shoulder. “Who knows, maybe you’ll be what gets him there.”
As Lestrade was turning to go, John found his voice and managed to ask, “So...that stuff he said before. To Anderson. Was that...?”
Lestrade shrugged again. “I’ve read the psych eval, I’ve interviewed the doctor, and the best I can say is this: Talk to the brother. He’s probably the only one who knows for sure.” And then he was gone.
John sighed. It felt like the world was spinning away from him, but very, very slowly. Just enough to make him slightly nausious. Just then, right then, he was desperate for familiarity, for reality. He tugged the tie from around his neck and set about unbuttoning his rediculously expensive shirt. There was a particularly unassuming cable-knit jumper in his duffel the colour of porridge, and he thought it would do nicely to ground him. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had, at the moment. All he had that wasn’t somehow tinged with Sherlock.
::
In the silence of the cab ride (the cabbie had refused conversation after mentioning Sherlock’s “fan”), Sherlock was slightly unsettled by how many of his secondary thoughts were of John. His primary thoughts, all of them, were focussed on the game, on the killer behind the wheel and the possibilities laid out at the end of their journey. But far too many of his other thoughts, the ones permanently buzzing around the periphery of his brain, were of psychosomatic limps and gentle words in a steady tenor and ash blond hair and lake-blue eyes and that kiss. That beautiful, intoxicating conflagration of a kiss broken way too soon and stolen in the seconds before it all fell apart.
The memory made his lips tingle and ache. It was disturbingly familiar, a low thrum of desire and need that once had him grasping for a sterilised needle and a tourniquet. Now it made him want to reach for slightly brown hands, sand coloured hair and solid shoulders. He could have it. He could have all of it if he survived the night. If he only had the chance to explain, to set it all to rights, to make John forget the horrible things he’d done and said over the course of the night. If he didn’t die in the next few minutes, he decided, that’s just what he’d do.
They pulled to a stop, and the killer got out of the car, walked around to the back, and opened Sherlock’s door.
“Where are we?” Sherlock made a passing effort to make his voice waver uncertainly. The cabbie didn’t so much as blink.
“You know every street in London. You know exactly where we are.”
“Roland-Kerr Further Education College.” Sherlock announced obligingly. “Why here?”
The cabbie didn’t quite shrug, but he tilted his head in a shrug-like manner. “It’s open. Cleaners are in.” He never smiled, Sherlock noticed, or emoted at all physically. It was as though he were reciting this. Like he’d planned it out, to the word. It was a little chilling, to be honest. It made Sherlock feel like he was being manoeuvered, manipulated even down to the words he spoke.
“One thing about being a cabbie,” the man continued. “You always know a nice, quiet spot for a murder. I’m surprised more of us don’t branch out.”
It still wasn’t making complete sense, so Sherlock pressed on with the questioning. “And you just walk your victims in? How?”
The cabbie raised his arm. There was a familiar, mat-black shape in his hand and Sherlock rolled his eyes with a weary, “Oh... dull.”
In that same infuriatingly unemotional tone, the cabbie said, “Don’t worry. It get’s better.”
Sherlock glared at him. The mad bastard was still holding out. “You can’t make people take their own lives at gunpoint.” He accused. This was all too...simple. And boring. The man could surely do better, why was he holding back?
“I don’t.” And finally there was some emotion there besides bland calm. Smugness, something Sherlock knew intimately. “It’s much better than that.”
It sodding well better be. Sherlock thought.
“Don’t need this with you.” The cabbie assured him. “Cos you’ll follow me.” And without a backward glance he turned and walked peacefully toward one of the two identical buildings.
This was it. This was the last, the only moment. He could leave now. He could slip into the driver’s seat, hot-wire the cab and be back to Baker Street and John in less than an hour. He didn’t have to do this. The man was old and out of shape, he’d never reach the cab in time to stop him. He Didn’t. Have. To follow.
Only he did. He had to. He had no choice. He felt the burning need to know stinging his blood. It was like an unbreakable filament connecting him to the killer, and the farther away the man got, the more Sherlock needed to follow. He’d never get this chance again. He couldn’t, honestly couldn’t live with himself if he passed it up. How could he stand to face a lifetime of not knowing?
And it was stupid, and pathetic, and illogical and childish and he didn’t want to do it but he was physically incapable of resisting. With a silent curse, Sherlock got out of the cab and followed the retreating form of his potential murderer.
Or was it assisted suicide?
::
A jumper, a dark shirt, a pair of well-worn jeans and similarly weathered brown boots and John Watson was feeling slightly his old self again. The police were gone, the flat was quiet, and Sherlock was God knew where doing something oh-so-important that didn’t involve him. John decided he didn’t really mind that.
But the adrenaline was ebbing, the confusion was fading and the anger was dying down to a low aggrivation in his chest. He needed to get away, he decided. He should go back to the tiny, depressing flat and get his things. Hell, maybe he should stay there for the night. He didn’t really fancy another night with Sherlock beside him on the mattress. It was too confusing, to incongruous. If Sherlock was a sociopath, then why had he held John through the aftermath of his nightmare their first night? Why had he pressed that gentle kiss to the skin just under John’s ear, then proceeded to hold him through the night? What about all the smiles? His obvious adoration for his mother and Mrs Hudson? What about the dancing and the running and the laughter and that bloody brilliant kiss?
Was it all a lie? Was it all a continuation of his act at the reception? He’d said he could fake it, back at the restaurant. Was that what he was doing now?
He needed to think. He needed space and he needed it to be Sherlock-free. He headed for the door, and his hand gave a tremble. He looked down at it. It hadn’t shaken all night. It hadn’t shaken since they’d arrived at Baker Street. It had barely shaken since the morning of his wedding.
Maybe all that was over now. Probably the limp would come back again, too. He went back to fetch his cane, and in the second before his foot crossed the threshold he heard the insistant beep of the Mephone programme displaying the scan results.
It was pointless, probably, but John went and checked the netbook anyway, already knowing what he’d--
The phone had moved.
The phone. Had moved.
The sodding phone had moved!
And he knew. He understood. Everything, all of it. Sherlock’s weird behaviour, his sudden exit, the cab. The ruddy cab! Sherlock had figured it out and he’d actually gone with the killer! Willingly! That absolute idiot!
He didn’t think. He was bloody well done thinking. He snatched up the computer, made a quick stop at his (unsearched and undisturbed, thanks Lestrade) duffel bag, and bolted out the door, taking the stairs as quickly as he possibly could.
He was going to get his husband back. If anyone was going to kill Sherlock, it was damn well going to be him.
Chapter 21