Malta Bright (Four Corners of the Western World Part 2) Chapter 4
Title: Malta Bright (part two of Four Corners of the Western World) Chapter 4 of 7
Author: pennypaperbrain
Fandom Sherlock BBC
Betas: Chloe, eldritchhorrors
Rating: NC-17 for this chapter and the fic
Warnings for this chapter: BDSM, figging, depictions of bipolar disorder
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Wordcount: 6,265
Spoilers: All six episodes
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters. I couldn’t be trusted with them. There’d be kinky slash everywhere.
Fic Summary: Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock and John are hunting down the remains of Moriarty’s network. It’s a dangerous project, but they have each other to rely on… except that Sherlock is losing his mind.
Chapter Summary: There is something wrong with Sherlock. John doesn’t know what yet, but he knows they have to face it before it destroys them both.
Also on AO3
Each fic in this series is self-contained, and they can be read separately with the help of the intro summaries, but for the best experience they should be read in order.
Four Corners of the Western World
1: Vegas High (complete): LJ, AO3
2: Malta Bright (in progress): LJ, AO3
3: Piter Raw
4: Always London
MB Chapter 5 is currently out at beta, but fingers crossed it will be sorted in time to post on Monday 22 October.
Sherlock
On and off, Sherlock sleeps.
Mid-morning he wakes properly and sits straight up, feeling as if cobwebs are falling away inside his head. There is no reason to be lying around, so he jumps out of bed and calls for John on his way down to the cellar. John’s biology background will make his input useful for a theory Sherlock has developed concerning the effect of Maltese fauna distribution on the content of certain local mud types.
John however is not here. Probably because Sherlock told him to get out. In retrospect, that does not seem entirely helpful. But Sherlock had needed to sleep. He remembers feeling utterly bleak and flat, recalling Graf’s death while trying to shut out everything. Exaggerated sensations possessed him. Again, he was overtired. Perhaps, with age, he is coming to require more sleep.
John will return in due course. And in the meantime, Sherlock opens his laptop to record the overnight dissolution rate of the compounds he has ranged in beakers on the kitchen counter.
The operation is extremely simple, and yet it causes him difficulty. Images so vivid as to arrest his motion mid-keystroke possess his mind. A large proportion are highly sexual and either replay yesterday’s programme or develop follow-ups. Others are apparently random - some unwanted, deletion-resistant memories from childhood - and then there is this morning’s brief, unpleasant encounter with John. Sherlock felt, then, almost too empty to move.
Now his energy could crack his skin and overflow the room, and at the same time he cannot concentrate.
He realises he has actually confused one beaker with another.
A spike of rage surges up inside him, forcing him to push back from the table and start to pace the cellar room before he grabs the experiment and damages it, because this is not him. He does not behave like this. He is not like his mother. He does not make trivial errors. Above all, he is master of his own thoughts. Always, even during depressions, he has been able to utilise an override switch that brings the functional part of his mind to the fore to interact with the world, and this is not even depression, it is...
Ten seconds later, Sherlock realises that his thoughts have squirrelled off into a pleasant reverie about John cuffing him to his own bed at Baker Street. It is innocuous and sentimental. It is humiliating and deadly because he cannot think. Like in Vegas. Something was terribly wrong in Vegas; he thought it had passed. It hasn’t passed. Moment by moment he can remake himself as rational, but what if the moments will not cohere? Think.
Sherlock registers that he is gripping handfuls of hair on both sides of his head as he paces. He acknowledges the thought I am going insane and holds it inside him, not endorsing it, not rejecting it. Clearly it is untrue because he is thinking perfectly clearly, right now. Clearly it is true because the direction, tone and structure of his thought is beyond his control.
He is grateful John is not here to see this. He wishes John were here to treat it. Sherlock will not take pills, will not let his mind be blunted, but nor is this tolerable and there must be some recourse before he shatters. Does he simply need rest?
Yes, maybe that is still true. After ten minutes’ pacing, he finds he has calmed himself a little. There is no point in panicking; he simply needs a change of activity. He sits at the kitchen table making phone calls that follow up on last night’s information-gathering expedition. Fooling various idiots as to his identity and purpose through the use of fictions and rhetorical flourishes is a satisfying exercise. His head is fuzzy but willpower triumphs. He’s fine. Soon John will return. They will continue with business. Everything is fine.
John
John buys an imported copy of The Times and sits for a long time at a table in the dark back of a Valletta café, nursing his hangover, at first trying not to think and then giving up and getting on with it.
Last night they were incredibly reckless, even by Sherlock’s standards. John let himself get drawn in cock-first because he was, and is, so very glad that Sherlock’s alive. But John’s going to have to raise his game, if he wants them to both to stay that way. And so is Sherlock - if he can.
John’s only been here for a day, but it is blatantly obvious something is wrong. He knows reactive trauma inside and out, and what he’s been seeing since yesterday evening is something else. As for whether he can do anything about it... that will require him to figure out what it is. Always assuming Sherlock will admit there’s a problem in the first place.
John pays for his coffee and goes home to find Sherlock in the kitchen making calls and texting, all trace of torpor completely gone. He breaks off for long enough to tell John that some of the info from last night has led through a chain of contacts to a matriarch in what passes for the local mafia, whose speciality is using her encyclopaedic local connections. They are going out to find her in twenty minutes, Sherlock says. He’s so pleased about his morning’s work that he does one of his little twirls of excitement and his arm catches the slate chopping board from the kitchen island and sends it clattering to the floor.
‘Great,’ says John as he reaches to open the fridge, resigning himself to the fact that now is probably not the time for a little chat about feelings. At least nobody’s either shouting or comatose with despair. And Sherlock...
Sherlock is whirling around in the direction of the fallen board, face twisted with rage. For a moment his eyes catch John’s, then he grabs up the board and heaves it full-force across the room. It smashes against the far wall, shards of it dropping down or pinging out to fetch up against metal dining furniture with a silly tinkle. Sherlock slams his palm into the corner of the worktop, yells ‘SHIT!’, then he raises both hands and holds them a few inches from the sides of his head as if trying to control himself with an invisible force. Beads of blood seep from his damaged skin.
There is fear in his eyes.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he snarls. ‘You do not have the slightest idea, not the slightest idea, do you?’
John swallows. This is not good, this is very not good, but he has to remain calm, and try to influence Sherlock in that direction as well. They can’t call 999 here, can’t even risk walking into a hospital. Battlefield medicine, then. Try to stabilise the patient.
‘No, I probably don’t,’ John says. ‘So how about you tell me?’
Sherlock moves forwards. He looms aggressively into John’s personal space and there is such compacted vitriol in his glare that John winces. He could take this skinny civilian down in seconds, but the thought of doing so is wretched.
‘Is this like shooting the wall?’ John persists, still calm and quiet.
At that, Sherlock spins away, laughing like a hyena, although the joke eludes John.
‘The wall was boredom, Doctor Watson, the initial stages of brain rot. Said malady afflicts me on occasion, and at present appears to be alternating with cerebral holocaust. Perhaps the effect escapes your detection, but inanities interpolate themselves between myself and the object of study and I - I - am distracted. I forget, John. Moment by moment. I become mesmerised by sex, or even random visual detail. Can you imagine what it costs me to report this? If only it were cocaine, and the dosage under my control! What a tender world that would be. But it is not cocaine, Doctor Watson; so what the fuck is wrong with me?’
Sherlock wheels around again, glaring, but he doesn’t come closer to John. He leans against a dining chair as if it is simply supporting his weight, except John can see the chair is trembling. Sherlock is trembling.
John’s instincts are screaming: fight, protect. The trouble is working out what and how, particularly with other distractions dragging at his attention ( ‘Mesmerised’ by sex, is that why you shagged me?!) But he holds his ground and his mind ranges over the surreal extremes of the past week. The incoherent message from Vegas, and its chipper, not to mention horny, successor calls and texts; Sherlock’s ecstasy of last night, his numb immobility this morning, his sourceless anger now. Sherlock is talking about concentration problems, albeit extreme ones; so how does all that match up?
John needs time, and more data. As a GP, albeit one who refers psychiatric patients swiftly onwards, he knows that mental health conditions are more treatable than is often supposed. He also knows that ‘treatable’ is not ‘curable’, and that some conditions are degenerative. His overwhelming reaction to that idea with regard to Sherlock is please god, no. But John is not one to back away from trouble.
‘Mental health isn’t my field,’ he says. ‘But if you’ll tell me more about what you’ve been experiencing, and for how long, I can look into it.’
Sherlock seems to think for a lengthy moment. Then he releases the chair. He stands up straight and gropes with his hands around shoulder level as if he were trying to adjust the lapels of one of his exquisitely tailored jackets - only there is no suit, he’s wearing a cheap-looking tee-shirt that says ‘Tenerife sun’. John feels a nervous smile start to quirk up one side of his face, until Sherlock catches him with a glare which says quite clearly that Sherlock knows perfectly well he just made a slight error and only an imbecile would bother drawing attention to it.
‘What I am experiencing, doctor, resembles in figurative terms an attempt by my mind to wrench itself apart at the seams,’ explains Sherlock. He’s staring straight ahead now, and sounds like he might be orating the Yellow Pages. ‘I contra...’ - there is a tiny bob of Sherlock’s Adam’s apple - ‘I contradict myself. The external world and my own thoughts appear alternately or even simultaneously intolerable and distorted by exaltation, which should not be possible. I am also excessively irritated. While my intellect remains quite capable of rising above the discord, the effort this requires is increasing. I may have lapsed in Las Vegas.’
Sherlock’s voice cracks unmistakably on the last word. A good chunk of John just wants to take his lover in his arms, but first and foremost here he needs to be a professional. Psychiatric jargon seeps up from his memory, making him feel a little more on top of things. Yes: Sherlock seems to be in unbroken contact with reality, and that, in tandem with the absence of other markers such as chaotic speech, would seem to rule out thought disorders. Thank God.
‘Which is to say - John, I am losing my mind.’
Sherlock breaks down. Only momentarily, but his head drops and his shoulders jerk visibly before he pulls himself together and stiffens up again. John hesitates, now unsure if comfort would be appropriate or wanted. After a second, he settles on keeping his distance. Sherlock may not actually be his patient, but John has to treat him that way right now because nobody else is going to.
‘OK,’ he says, settling into doctor mode. ‘You don’t seem to have any trouble with things like where you are and who you’re talking to, so we can probably rule out any kind of schizophrenic process. Other than that, I honestly don’t know what might be wrong with you, but I can probably come up with some ideas if you let me keep an eye on you for a while, and also take a family history. Maybe not right now, but when you can face it. So while I can’t give you an instant diagnosis, if you’re willing to keep talking to me about this and not shut me out we can probably start treating the symptoms. There’s a good chance they’ll respond to medication.’
Sherlock glares at John. ‘I said no pills,’ he states very clearly.
‘Right,’ John agrees, and bites back on adding for now. Presumably Sherlock is worried they’ll dull his faculties and to be honest John shares that concern. It would still be better than Sherlock going off the deep end... but now is not the time to argue.
For the present, Sherlock has apparently recovered himself enough to settle in one of the dining chairs, so John decides that Dr Watson’s done his job for now, and goes over to put a hand on his lover’s shoulder. When Sherlock reaches up to cover the hand with his own, John is surprised and touched.
‘All right,’ John says. ‘You tell me your theory about all this. I bet you’ve spent the last couple of weeks chewing through more psych journals than I’ve ever heard of, and diagnosed yourself already. I always get the patients who do that.’
The grip on John’s hand tightens a little, and Sherlock looks up into his eyes. He’s giving John the classic you’re-a-moron stare, but there’s something bewildered about it as well. John suddenly realises that the genius who dragged him out of depression by sheer force of personality is so terrified by the chaos in his own head that he actually hasn’t thought to research it.
‘Sherlock... I’m here to fight your enemies with you,’ John says. That includes the invisible ones. John has experience with those bastards.
Sherlock nods, and seems to wake up a little.
‘I knew that your being psychologically damaged would come in useful one day,’ he says. ‘I am unwilling to tolerate ever-increasing impairment, and am open to medical recommendations.’
So long as they don’t include pills, apparently. But still, Sherlock’s words are a concession, and the accompanying insult comes as a relief to John. Sherlock seems to be back to some version of normal: he stands up, visibly pulling himself together.
‘All right,’ he goes on, nodding curtly. ‘We can continue with this later. Now, if you insist on eating merely because it is the middle of the day, I suggest you do so quickly. We are going out as soon as I have memorised the street map and salient statistics of our destination.’
Sherlock
This little old woman, running a hole-in-the-wall vegetable shop in Mosta as a cover for her real business, is delightful. Sherlock’s mood has switched again in the snap of a moment and the fires in his head are banked and laced with inspiration, slightly drunk with possibility. If he’s not entirely himself, then he’s utterly replete with potential; as ever he has the mastery of all he sees.
He can tell from her covert, assessing look that the woman fancies herself observant, although she doesn’t even know her daughter is embezzling from her. Sherlock considers telling her later on just as a flourish, but then he’d have to deal with the tiresome denials.
Instead, he selects a hand of ginger from a tub. John, who is wearing a transcendently ridiculous sunhat by way of disguise and has been keeping an endearing if tiresomely obsessive watch on Sherlock since their conversation at the house, and is now pretending to browse fruit boxes behind him, inhales sharply. That makes Sherlock grin, but they’ll have time to discuss - if that is the correct verb, which he hopes it isn’t - his choice of root vegetables later.
As he makes his purchase he murmurs to the old woman, ‘I’m also looking for proper Maltese peaches.’
It’s the code for real business, and it gets her attention. She squints up at him, taking in his silly tourist clothing and giving him a sceptical look.
Sherlock almost groans. For god’s sake, woman, he wills her. You’ve heard of the concept of disguise?!
‘Then I’m looking for money,’ she says.
Ah. Better. So she’s at least bright enough to figure him for serious.
‘I have a job for Philip Zagami,’ he says. ‘I believe you can find him?’
The shopkeeper raises her eyebrows and wraps her hands in the lap of her floral print dress. ‘Many Zagami here,’ she says. ‘South Italian name, many move here.’
‘I think you know who I mean,’ says Sherlock. Then he hazards it: ‘And you know the name Moriarty.’
The old woman goes still. Then she turns her back on Sherlock and sells a melon to a local man with a string bag. When she faces Sherlock again, her dark eyes narrow.
‘You threaten me with a dead man?’ she says.
Sherlock lets his expression harden to match hers. ‘You think the Moriarty syndicate is just one person? Philip Zagami is a competent sniper and we have further work for him. You may as well profit from it.’
The old woman doesn’t answer for a moment. Instead, she glances at John, whose bearing has been gradually stiffening as Sherlock tells lies. ‘That one, with his face hidden. He is military,’ she says.
‘How perceptive of you. I can assure you, obstructing us is not worth the inconvenience it will bring.’
The old woman gives him another long, assessing look. Then she waves her hand before leaving it suspended, palm up, in front of Sherlock. ‘I contact Senor Zagami. He meets you if he wants.’
Sherlock writes one of his mobile numbers on a piece of paper, then extracts two hundred-dollar bills from his tourist bumbag and places the little pile in the outstretched hand before him.
The transaction is completed in moments, and Sherlock and John are on their way back past the spindly trees and bowed railing window grilles of the quiet, sunny residential street. John looks uneasy and harrumphs, but if he wants something he’ll have to ask for it, because Sherlock is basking in information; even this tiny place is rich and replete with data, and he swivels his head smoothly, scanning the crumbling yellow houses around him, computer sharp, infallible, memorising and storing. One of the buildings is inhabited by a policeman; another is occasionally used to by the local youth to smoke cannabis. A hundred other tiny details cascade through Sherlock’s mind and are marked for storage or deletion. He registers efficiency, intellect, the dominion of facts: better than sex. And there will be sex, later, too.
‘All right, how do you know Zagami won’t just ignore the message?’ complains John after a minute. ‘Or research us and come after us? Anyway, why would the old woman even contact him now you’ve paid her?’
Ah. Sunlight warms Sherlock’s face as they turn a corner. He determines the medical history of an old man sitting on a wooden chair outside his front door. His brain hums at a perfect pitch of satisfaction.
‘Because, John, he’s that woman’s nephew or son or cousin.’
Sherlock pauses. On cue, John gives him the respectful I’m-about-to-be-amazed-aren’t-I look, and Sherlock continues: ‘Criminal networks are often family-based in this part of the world, and our vegetable-selling matriarch is married to an Italian immigrant herself. You must have seen her wedding ring, an engraving of a woman facing a man with a flower bouquet between them? An Italian tradition. And she tried to cover her hand. Why bother unless there is some connection? That rules out the possibility that she won’t tell Zagami of our interest and leaves only the question of whether he will contact us, or attempt to seek us out and neutralise us. While the former is most desirable, the latter would be acceptable as we have a defensible residence and we will be ready to kill him instead.’
As deductions go it’s quite a minor one. John absorbs it in a stolid, thoughtful way; Sherlock is slightly disappointed not to get an exclamation of amazement, but it’s fine. Everything is fine really, though it is puzzling that John doesn’t look entirely happy. The sun beats down. Because he can, Sherlock deduces the number of bicycles which have passed across a particular patch of dirt since yesterday.
‘This is one hell of a dangerous game,’ says John testily at last, as they turn out of the narrow street and stroll towards their rental car, just a pair of tourists gone slightly off the beaten track. ‘Yes, I suppose putting the ball in Zagami’s court probably is necessary, if we don’t want to stay here forever. I just wish you’d ask me before you do things that affect both of us, Sherlock, is all. I just wish you’d ask.’
Good; John is isn’t refusing to co-operate. ‘Sorry,’ says Sherlock, because he’s learnt that John likes that, and he really does need John on board with this. The concession earns him a grudging half-smile.
That evening, under John’s direction, they fortify the house from the inside. It’s remarkably easy, as defence against military incursion was considered a priority when Valletta was built, and metre-thick stone walls plus small, few and deeply recessed windows were in vogue. That’s why Sherlock chose this house; he thinks of everything, and he knows John is aware of the fact. Sherlock has left the ginger on the table downstairs with the peeler next to it, as well. He has ostentatiously washed himself.
Towards the end of the process of obstructing the house’s two windows, Sherlock’s phone rings. It is, or the Italian-accented voice claims to be, Zagami. He sets the terms of a meeting: both parties are to come alone for a rendezvous at a cove in the south of the island. The man sounds relaxed and slightly intrigued as, pulling faces for John’s benefit all the while, Sherlock hams up his earnest criminal voice and drops references to operations by Moriarty’s network that only a trusted aide - or a detective genius who’s spent three months researching the matter - could know about.
‘It could be a decoy,’ says John after the call is over and he’s gone back to cleaning the guns they stole yesterday.
‘Naturally,’ says Sherlock. He’s relaxing on the sofa now, and the sight of John bare-chested and focused, breaking a light sweat as the muscles work smoothly in his arms, may be the most compelling thing he has ever seen in his life. ‘But the chances of an interruption tonight are decreased.’
John looks up for a moment and wipes his forehead. Sherlock spreads his legs wider, because subtlety is not currently of interest, and notes with satisfaction the responding hunger in John’s expression, although there is also a doctorish overtone to it.
‘You’re OK to do this, are you?’ John asks. ‘I mean, after... this morning.’
That was not what Sherlock wanted to talk about. He snaps his legs shut and leans forwards.
‘While our scene yesterday was high diverting, I suspect that my reason will not actually disintegrate under the sheer pressure of your attentions. Yes, please tie me up and violate me. You may have noticed that I enjoy it.’
At that, John quirks a slight smile.
‘Yes, I did,’ he says. ‘All right, but we stay in this room. No bondage that I can’t undo in seconds.’ Then he goes back to cleaning
The process takes a further four and a half minutes. Sherlock runs through a breakdown of the island’s geology, as studied online in the early hours of this morning, in his head. Then John wipes his hands methodically on a rag, and slowly walks over to stand in front of Sherlock and look him slowly up and down.
‘Can you take pain just because I tell you to?’ John asks.
The question is unexpected. It indicates that John wants a scene based on submission rather than force, and that’s not the way Sherlock usually inclines. However, where John is concerned, Sherlock’s reactions are not always predictable. There is such willpower in John, which he often hints at but seldom actually shows, and it interests Sherlock immoderately.
‘Yes,’ Sherlock says.
He’s barely got the word out before it turns into a cry, because John’s arm has shot out and the side of Sherlock’s head is aflame with pain. John is gripping and twisting his ear, nails digging into the earlobe. Sherlock whimpers and by an effort of will forces his arms to stay at his sides, twisting his head to lessen the discomfort and also to keep staring into John’s eyes, which are sparking with sadistic anticipation. God yes, Sherlock wants this man to hurt him.
‘Are you still in pain from yesterday? Your arse and back?’ John demands, and when Sherlock nods awkwardly John lets go of his ear and straddles his lap. John’s thighs crush Sherlock’s together, and his fingers shove in between Sherlock and the sofa, seeking out the welts through his thin shirt. John thrusts his tongue into Sherlock’s mouth, and his hands range around Sherlock’s upper body as if he was a toy while Sherlock kisses passionately back but leaves his own arms trailing limply on either side of him because as of now he is a toy for John to hurt and fuck and immolate in pleasure. Yes. He wants it, wants to give in, wants to take whatever John metes out.
John pulls back from the kiss.
‘I remembered who we are this afternoon,’ he says a little breathlessly. ‘You take risks, and they’re stupid, and I go along with them because we actually both like it.’
John’s weight has shifted a little; enough for Sherlock to buck up against him, grinding crotch to crotch.
‘And we both like this,’ Sherlock says, hearing the hitch in his own voice too. ‘A fine pair of perverts, I believe you said.’
‘God, yes.’
John’s hand goes up to Sherlock’s neck and pushes his head back so it bangs against the wall. Sherlock’s throat is constricted; not enough to suffocate but enough to stop speech and make his breathing harsh and noisy, and he realises he’s also moaning with each breath, a shameless fuck-me sound. Yes yes take me, hurt me, interest me. John.
Abruptly John’s presence lifts away.
‘Get up,’ he orders. ‘Strip, but only from the waist down. I’ve seen the ginger root, and I’ve no objection at all to ramming it up your arse and watching you squirm. It so happens I’ve brought something myself that will go with it excellently.’
Sherlock obeys while John goes downstairs. He’s long since out of his trousers and waiting as submissively as he can manage when John comes back with a bowl of water, a flannel, washing up liquid, a well-carved finger of ginger - and a tube of Deep Heat ointment poking out of his jeans pocket. Sherlock hasn’t played with the stuff in years, but he’s familiar with it from an experimental adolescence.
This situation requires no deductive skill. Sherlock’s not going to just get a bit of ginger up his arse but hot cream on his cock. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to endure much of that, but clearly he’s about to find out.
John puts the soap and water down in the corner. Then he walks up to Sherlock and pulls his tee-shirt over his head, but instead of removing it completely he leaves it around Sherlock’s neck and biceps and knots up the base, forming a kind of loose bag that contains Sherlock’s head and arms. ‘Sit down on the floor,’ he orders. ‘Get this under your bum, and lie back.’
Sherlock does as he’s told and finds that ‘this’ is a sofa cushion, positioned to angle his sensitive areas upwards for John’s convenience. He wriggles, settling into position, and feeling the tee-shirt bag settle loosely on him. All he can see is light, and vague shapes filtered through the material. John kicks him to make him spread his legs wider, then he looms between Sherlock and the light, gathering up folds of tee-shirt.
‘Open wide,’ John instructs, then he stuffs the wodge of material into Sherlock’s mouth. ‘If you have anything to say from now on, well, I am not fucking interested.’
John’s shadow withdraws. Sherlock’s sight and power of speech are gone, he’s let them go; he thinks of how he must look like this and he groans into the moistening gag because yes, yes, yes, he is a thing now, dick, balls and a hole splayed out for John’s amusement. Sherlock never cared before how much he affected a partner, but he does tonight. And John is pleased with him. Sherlock hears it in John’s breathing, senses it in the way he moves.
John is starting to stroke him, gentle fingers up and down his perineum and around his balls. The message is clear enough, that there’s plenty of time for pain and John will inflict it when he feels inclined to do so. Sherlock is in no hurry either, as he’s starting to float just from lying here abandoned to John, but eventually one stroking hand lifts away and a forefinger begins to play around Sherlock’s arsehole. It drags gently at the raised rim, then winkles in for a moment as if testing. Soon after, the blunt tip of the peeled ginger root bumps against sensitive membranes and then, with a gentle push, slides in, slick with its own juice. John eases it gently backwards and forwards until it settles. Sherlock feels his muscles clenching tidily around the carved indent at the base of the ginger, leaving the stopper outside.
Everything goes still. Sherlock squirms just a little, because this doesn’t really hurt yet, it only mildly stretches... then it starts, the slow build of pain inside him. John caresses Sherlock’s hip and he twines his hands together inside the tied tee-shirt, feeling his body refocus around the intimate violation that connects him to John. John settles a hand on his stomach and Sherlock presses gently up into it, wanting the touch, communicating the shudder that runs through him as the pain intensifies then settles as a consistent burn, dragging him further into headspace, anchored by John. I love... Sherlock thinks, and a whimper escapes through the gag.
‘You took that beautifully,’ says John after another minute. ‘Now I’m going to put Deep Heat on your cock and balls. Not all at once, and if you do need to safeword I can mostly wash it off, but I’m going to cover you in it. Let’s see what you can take.’
Sherlock groans into the makeshift gag, wanting John to understand how very much he’s up for this. It’s going to be intense. He’ll try to endure, but that will get harder, and he’ll start to squirm, and then he’ll lose control, and maybe John will have to wrestle him down as the cream burns hotter, deeper... god please yes. Briefly it crosses his mind that there is a still a risk of hostile visitors. Well, if so, he’ll have enough adrenaline to wipe out an army.
Something cold swipes along the side of one of his bollocks. The same thing happens on the other side, and a few seconds later, the burn starts up, fiercer than the ginger though so far spread over a smaller area. Immediately Sherlock’s cock stiffens further, as if expressly to show how much he gets off on this, on John’s sadistic pleasure and his own physical pain. ‘Ah,’ he hears John exhale, overhead.
And that’s when it begins. The drifting and the change.
First, it’s just a moment of distraction. It occurs to Sherlock that, for no currently definable reason, all is not well. He’s in pain of course, but that’s hardly the issue. He tries to search his mind for the problem, and at the same time his thoughts lurch downwards.
God no no no. This cannot happen now.
Sherlock fights. Ten seconds ago his mind was different, and logic dictates that its previous state is reattainable. There was rich sensation, himself splayed and ready, his lover over him, John. John. Sherlock fights to hold these things, and blackness swirls in anyway, drowning meaning, seeping into every thought and leeching it null.
Sherlock’s balls and arse hurt. Somewhere overhead John is breathing in a manner suggestive of excitement. Things exist.
‘Sherlock, are you all right?’ says John uncertainly. ‘You don’t want to safeword?’
Sherlock forces access to a part of himself that has eluded the darkness. This fragment is insistent that John must not see him like this. John must not know.
He shakes his head inside the tee-shirt. John seems to withdraw, then there’s a dab of smoothness on Sherlock’s glans and, a few seconds later, the inevitable burning. At the same time, he feels his cock starting to soften.
There is a lack where impulse of any kind would normally reside.
Sherlock’s head lolls to the side and the sodden tee-shirt drops out of his mouth. The self-fragment is screaming at him, and he is empty of response. He was this way in the morning when John woke. He has been this way before in Malta.
It is becoming more frequent.
The air hurts his limbs.
‘OK, there’s clearly something wrong. Magnesium. I’m stopping,’ says John. Within seconds the tee-shirt has been pulled right over Sherlock’s head and he sees worried eyes above him for a moment before John moves away to tug the ginger out of him and apply a moist flannel to his throbbing balls.
‘Now, do not just tell me what you think I want to hear,’ John says. ‘And yes, I do know you’d never do that, but anyway... the point is, I don’t think I bodged that scene up. Did I?’
Sherlock listens to John with detached interest. It seems that words from John are not subject to the darkness. His intervention allows Sherlock to say ‘No,’ and with that the despair is weakened slightly, and he sits upright against the sofa base.
‘All right. I was selfish to start a scene knowing you’re not yourself,’ John goes on. A current of frustration is running counter to the sympathy in his voice. ‘Yesterday it seemed to help, but today... well clearly not. What’s going on in your head, Sherlock? You have to let me in.’
Sherlock constructs sentences from willpower, then releases them whole.
‘The scene was highly enjoyable.’ Pause. ‘I am getting worse.’
That admission should surely shake the building. Sherlock watches John for a suitable reaction, and instead sees his statement fall by the wayside as superfluous, an accepted fact. He has fallen so far that his sickness is a given.
He cannot remember the light. A spark of himself is adrift in the blackness. John puts his arm around him. The gesture fails.
Sherlock can feel himself speaking: ‘Please stay with me.’
John sighs.
Sherlock believes that John hates him. This belief is duly screened by logic and ejected, but only by violent effort. That such mental exertion should be required simply to reach obvious conclusions is an abomination.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ John says.
For hours they sit together on the sofa. John has the laptop and is reading medical pages: endogenous, affect, severe. What is left of Sherlock is curled up in the watchful core of his self, running through the periodic table by way of grasping at a consistent reality, awaiting the lurch that will plunge him into the next arbitrary amalgam of rage, darkness, fear, exaltation. Gradually suffusing them all is confusion: he cannot remember parts of the previous days, the names of the streets he memorised earlier are blurring together, and he cannot recall word for word his conversation with Zagami. It is like Vegas, except then he was too focused to care. Now he sees that his mind is unmaking. Worse than the worst of the drugs, because it is beyond his control.
The face of his late mother surfaces again.
Sherlock rests his head on John’s shoulder. The night wears on, and John stays beside him. They both sleep at some point, and Sherlock wakes around five.
He continues at first the way he has been, churning and blank, until at 5.47, as he is staring at dust under the TV unit, all the lights in his head go on at once. It feels like levitation, a rush of bubbles riding up his mind: everything is all right. He scrambles to his feet. The infinite possibility, infinite depth, infinite texture of his surroundings enfold him... and he is aware, through and beyond the moment of transition, that this is wrong. The walls of reality have grown thin, and somehow he has come to spend his life punching through them from one windowless chamber into another and another. Some chambers are dark, some are blindingly lit, and all of them are empty of anything real. This is unsustainably wretched. He will starve here.
This is glorious. He flourishes again. The paradox exhilarates and appals.
Careful not to wake dear, snoring John, Sherlock skips lightly over his partner’s jutting feet and hurries downstairs with the laptop. He must check in with certain contacts before the meeting later, as his plan - to convince Zagami that he is in fact ‘Moriarty’, the fake death at Bart’s having been a ruse to stop the authorities from identifying him - will benefit from completely up-to-date information.
He doesn’t really need to do this; the world can only go the way that Sherlock wills it to. John doesn’t fully understand that, however, so for his sake Sherlock will cover all angles.
On to chapter 5
Author: pennypaperbrain
Fandom Sherlock BBC
Betas: Chloe, eldritchhorrors
Rating: NC-17 for this chapter and the fic
Warnings for this chapter: BDSM, figging, depictions of bipolar disorder
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Wordcount: 6,265
Spoilers: All six episodes
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters. I couldn’t be trusted with them. There’d be kinky slash everywhere.
Fic Summary: Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock and John are hunting down the remains of Moriarty’s network. It’s a dangerous project, but they have each other to rely on… except that Sherlock is losing his mind.
Chapter Summary: There is something wrong with Sherlock. John doesn’t know what yet, but he knows they have to face it before it destroys them both.
Also on AO3
Each fic in this series is self-contained, and they can be read separately with the help of the intro summaries, but for the best experience they should be read in order.
Four Corners of the Western World
1: Vegas High (complete): LJ, AO3
2: Malta Bright (in progress): LJ, AO3
3: Piter Raw
4: Always London
MB Chapter 5 is currently out at beta, but fingers crossed it will be sorted in time to post on Monday 22 October.
Sherlock
On and off, Sherlock sleeps.
Mid-morning he wakes properly and sits straight up, feeling as if cobwebs are falling away inside his head. There is no reason to be lying around, so he jumps out of bed and calls for John on his way down to the cellar. John’s biology background will make his input useful for a theory Sherlock has developed concerning the effect of Maltese fauna distribution on the content of certain local mud types.
John however is not here. Probably because Sherlock told him to get out. In retrospect, that does not seem entirely helpful. But Sherlock had needed to sleep. He remembers feeling utterly bleak and flat, recalling Graf’s death while trying to shut out everything. Exaggerated sensations possessed him. Again, he was overtired. Perhaps, with age, he is coming to require more sleep.
John will return in due course. And in the meantime, Sherlock opens his laptop to record the overnight dissolution rate of the compounds he has ranged in beakers on the kitchen counter.
The operation is extremely simple, and yet it causes him difficulty. Images so vivid as to arrest his motion mid-keystroke possess his mind. A large proportion are highly sexual and either replay yesterday’s programme or develop follow-ups. Others are apparently random - some unwanted, deletion-resistant memories from childhood - and then there is this morning’s brief, unpleasant encounter with John. Sherlock felt, then, almost too empty to move.
Now his energy could crack his skin and overflow the room, and at the same time he cannot concentrate.
He realises he has actually confused one beaker with another.
A spike of rage surges up inside him, forcing him to push back from the table and start to pace the cellar room before he grabs the experiment and damages it, because this is not him. He does not behave like this. He is not like his mother. He does not make trivial errors. Above all, he is master of his own thoughts. Always, even during depressions, he has been able to utilise an override switch that brings the functional part of his mind to the fore to interact with the world, and this is not even depression, it is...
Ten seconds later, Sherlock realises that his thoughts have squirrelled off into a pleasant reverie about John cuffing him to his own bed at Baker Street. It is innocuous and sentimental. It is humiliating and deadly because he cannot think. Like in Vegas. Something was terribly wrong in Vegas; he thought it had passed. It hasn’t passed. Moment by moment he can remake himself as rational, but what if the moments will not cohere? Think.
Sherlock registers that he is gripping handfuls of hair on both sides of his head as he paces. He acknowledges the thought I am going insane and holds it inside him, not endorsing it, not rejecting it. Clearly it is untrue because he is thinking perfectly clearly, right now. Clearly it is true because the direction, tone and structure of his thought is beyond his control.
He is grateful John is not here to see this. He wishes John were here to treat it. Sherlock will not take pills, will not let his mind be blunted, but nor is this tolerable and there must be some recourse before he shatters. Does he simply need rest?
Yes, maybe that is still true. After ten minutes’ pacing, he finds he has calmed himself a little. There is no point in panicking; he simply needs a change of activity. He sits at the kitchen table making phone calls that follow up on last night’s information-gathering expedition. Fooling various idiots as to his identity and purpose through the use of fictions and rhetorical flourishes is a satisfying exercise. His head is fuzzy but willpower triumphs. He’s fine. Soon John will return. They will continue with business. Everything is fine.
John
John buys an imported copy of The Times and sits for a long time at a table in the dark back of a Valletta café, nursing his hangover, at first trying not to think and then giving up and getting on with it.
Last night they were incredibly reckless, even by Sherlock’s standards. John let himself get drawn in cock-first because he was, and is, so very glad that Sherlock’s alive. But John’s going to have to raise his game, if he wants them to both to stay that way. And so is Sherlock - if he can.
John’s only been here for a day, but it is blatantly obvious something is wrong. He knows reactive trauma inside and out, and what he’s been seeing since yesterday evening is something else. As for whether he can do anything about it... that will require him to figure out what it is. Always assuming Sherlock will admit there’s a problem in the first place.
John pays for his coffee and goes home to find Sherlock in the kitchen making calls and texting, all trace of torpor completely gone. He breaks off for long enough to tell John that some of the info from last night has led through a chain of contacts to a matriarch in what passes for the local mafia, whose speciality is using her encyclopaedic local connections. They are going out to find her in twenty minutes, Sherlock says. He’s so pleased about his morning’s work that he does one of his little twirls of excitement and his arm catches the slate chopping board from the kitchen island and sends it clattering to the floor.
‘Great,’ says John as he reaches to open the fridge, resigning himself to the fact that now is probably not the time for a little chat about feelings. At least nobody’s either shouting or comatose with despair. And Sherlock...
Sherlock is whirling around in the direction of the fallen board, face twisted with rage. For a moment his eyes catch John’s, then he grabs up the board and heaves it full-force across the room. It smashes against the far wall, shards of it dropping down or pinging out to fetch up against metal dining furniture with a silly tinkle. Sherlock slams his palm into the corner of the worktop, yells ‘SHIT!’, then he raises both hands and holds them a few inches from the sides of his head as if trying to control himself with an invisible force. Beads of blood seep from his damaged skin.
There is fear in his eyes.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he snarls. ‘You do not have the slightest idea, not the slightest idea, do you?’
John swallows. This is not good, this is very not good, but he has to remain calm, and try to influence Sherlock in that direction as well. They can’t call 999 here, can’t even risk walking into a hospital. Battlefield medicine, then. Try to stabilise the patient.
‘No, I probably don’t,’ John says. ‘So how about you tell me?’
Sherlock moves forwards. He looms aggressively into John’s personal space and there is such compacted vitriol in his glare that John winces. He could take this skinny civilian down in seconds, but the thought of doing so is wretched.
‘Is this like shooting the wall?’ John persists, still calm and quiet.
At that, Sherlock spins away, laughing like a hyena, although the joke eludes John.
‘The wall was boredom, Doctor Watson, the initial stages of brain rot. Said malady afflicts me on occasion, and at present appears to be alternating with cerebral holocaust. Perhaps the effect escapes your detection, but inanities interpolate themselves between myself and the object of study and I - I - am distracted. I forget, John. Moment by moment. I become mesmerised by sex, or even random visual detail. Can you imagine what it costs me to report this? If only it were cocaine, and the dosage under my control! What a tender world that would be. But it is not cocaine, Doctor Watson; so what the fuck is wrong with me?’
Sherlock wheels around again, glaring, but he doesn’t come closer to John. He leans against a dining chair as if it is simply supporting his weight, except John can see the chair is trembling. Sherlock is trembling.
John’s instincts are screaming: fight, protect. The trouble is working out what and how, particularly with other distractions dragging at his attention ( ‘Mesmerised’ by sex, is that why you shagged me?!) But he holds his ground and his mind ranges over the surreal extremes of the past week. The incoherent message from Vegas, and its chipper, not to mention horny, successor calls and texts; Sherlock’s ecstasy of last night, his numb immobility this morning, his sourceless anger now. Sherlock is talking about concentration problems, albeit extreme ones; so how does all that match up?
John needs time, and more data. As a GP, albeit one who refers psychiatric patients swiftly onwards, he knows that mental health conditions are more treatable than is often supposed. He also knows that ‘treatable’ is not ‘curable’, and that some conditions are degenerative. His overwhelming reaction to that idea with regard to Sherlock is please god, no. But John is not one to back away from trouble.
‘Mental health isn’t my field,’ he says. ‘But if you’ll tell me more about what you’ve been experiencing, and for how long, I can look into it.’
Sherlock seems to think for a lengthy moment. Then he releases the chair. He stands up straight and gropes with his hands around shoulder level as if he were trying to adjust the lapels of one of his exquisitely tailored jackets - only there is no suit, he’s wearing a cheap-looking tee-shirt that says ‘Tenerife sun’. John feels a nervous smile start to quirk up one side of his face, until Sherlock catches him with a glare which says quite clearly that Sherlock knows perfectly well he just made a slight error and only an imbecile would bother drawing attention to it.
‘What I am experiencing, doctor, resembles in figurative terms an attempt by my mind to wrench itself apart at the seams,’ explains Sherlock. He’s staring straight ahead now, and sounds like he might be orating the Yellow Pages. ‘I contra...’ - there is a tiny bob of Sherlock’s Adam’s apple - ‘I contradict myself. The external world and my own thoughts appear alternately or even simultaneously intolerable and distorted by exaltation, which should not be possible. I am also excessively irritated. While my intellect remains quite capable of rising above the discord, the effort this requires is increasing. I may have lapsed in Las Vegas.’
Sherlock’s voice cracks unmistakably on the last word. A good chunk of John just wants to take his lover in his arms, but first and foremost here he needs to be a professional. Psychiatric jargon seeps up from his memory, making him feel a little more on top of things. Yes: Sherlock seems to be in unbroken contact with reality, and that, in tandem with the absence of other markers such as chaotic speech, would seem to rule out thought disorders. Thank God.
‘Which is to say - John, I am losing my mind.’
Sherlock breaks down. Only momentarily, but his head drops and his shoulders jerk visibly before he pulls himself together and stiffens up again. John hesitates, now unsure if comfort would be appropriate or wanted. After a second, he settles on keeping his distance. Sherlock may not actually be his patient, but John has to treat him that way right now because nobody else is going to.
‘OK,’ he says, settling into doctor mode. ‘You don’t seem to have any trouble with things like where you are and who you’re talking to, so we can probably rule out any kind of schizophrenic process. Other than that, I honestly don’t know what might be wrong with you, but I can probably come up with some ideas if you let me keep an eye on you for a while, and also take a family history. Maybe not right now, but when you can face it. So while I can’t give you an instant diagnosis, if you’re willing to keep talking to me about this and not shut me out we can probably start treating the symptoms. There’s a good chance they’ll respond to medication.’
Sherlock glares at John. ‘I said no pills,’ he states very clearly.
‘Right,’ John agrees, and bites back on adding for now. Presumably Sherlock is worried they’ll dull his faculties and to be honest John shares that concern. It would still be better than Sherlock going off the deep end... but now is not the time to argue.
For the present, Sherlock has apparently recovered himself enough to settle in one of the dining chairs, so John decides that Dr Watson’s done his job for now, and goes over to put a hand on his lover’s shoulder. When Sherlock reaches up to cover the hand with his own, John is surprised and touched.
‘All right,’ John says. ‘You tell me your theory about all this. I bet you’ve spent the last couple of weeks chewing through more psych journals than I’ve ever heard of, and diagnosed yourself already. I always get the patients who do that.’
The grip on John’s hand tightens a little, and Sherlock looks up into his eyes. He’s giving John the classic you’re-a-moron stare, but there’s something bewildered about it as well. John suddenly realises that the genius who dragged him out of depression by sheer force of personality is so terrified by the chaos in his own head that he actually hasn’t thought to research it.
‘Sherlock... I’m here to fight your enemies with you,’ John says. That includes the invisible ones. John has experience with those bastards.
Sherlock nods, and seems to wake up a little.
‘I knew that your being psychologically damaged would come in useful one day,’ he says. ‘I am unwilling to tolerate ever-increasing impairment, and am open to medical recommendations.’
So long as they don’t include pills, apparently. But still, Sherlock’s words are a concession, and the accompanying insult comes as a relief to John. Sherlock seems to be back to some version of normal: he stands up, visibly pulling himself together.
‘All right,’ he goes on, nodding curtly. ‘We can continue with this later. Now, if you insist on eating merely because it is the middle of the day, I suggest you do so quickly. We are going out as soon as I have memorised the street map and salient statistics of our destination.’
Sherlock
This little old woman, running a hole-in-the-wall vegetable shop in Mosta as a cover for her real business, is delightful. Sherlock’s mood has switched again in the snap of a moment and the fires in his head are banked and laced with inspiration, slightly drunk with possibility. If he’s not entirely himself, then he’s utterly replete with potential; as ever he has the mastery of all he sees.
He can tell from her covert, assessing look that the woman fancies herself observant, although she doesn’t even know her daughter is embezzling from her. Sherlock considers telling her later on just as a flourish, but then he’d have to deal with the tiresome denials.
Instead, he selects a hand of ginger from a tub. John, who is wearing a transcendently ridiculous sunhat by way of disguise and has been keeping an endearing if tiresomely obsessive watch on Sherlock since their conversation at the house, and is now pretending to browse fruit boxes behind him, inhales sharply. That makes Sherlock grin, but they’ll have time to discuss - if that is the correct verb, which he hopes it isn’t - his choice of root vegetables later.
As he makes his purchase he murmurs to the old woman, ‘I’m also looking for proper Maltese peaches.’
It’s the code for real business, and it gets her attention. She squints up at him, taking in his silly tourist clothing and giving him a sceptical look.
Sherlock almost groans. For god’s sake, woman, he wills her. You’ve heard of the concept of disguise?!
‘Then I’m looking for money,’ she says.
Ah. Better. So she’s at least bright enough to figure him for serious.
‘I have a job for Philip Zagami,’ he says. ‘I believe you can find him?’
The shopkeeper raises her eyebrows and wraps her hands in the lap of her floral print dress. ‘Many Zagami here,’ she says. ‘South Italian name, many move here.’
‘I think you know who I mean,’ says Sherlock. Then he hazards it: ‘And you know the name Moriarty.’
The old woman goes still. Then she turns her back on Sherlock and sells a melon to a local man with a string bag. When she faces Sherlock again, her dark eyes narrow.
‘You threaten me with a dead man?’ she says.
Sherlock lets his expression harden to match hers. ‘You think the Moriarty syndicate is just one person? Philip Zagami is a competent sniper and we have further work for him. You may as well profit from it.’
The old woman doesn’t answer for a moment. Instead, she glances at John, whose bearing has been gradually stiffening as Sherlock tells lies. ‘That one, with his face hidden. He is military,’ she says.
‘How perceptive of you. I can assure you, obstructing us is not worth the inconvenience it will bring.’
The old woman gives him another long, assessing look. Then she waves her hand before leaving it suspended, palm up, in front of Sherlock. ‘I contact Senor Zagami. He meets you if he wants.’
Sherlock writes one of his mobile numbers on a piece of paper, then extracts two hundred-dollar bills from his tourist bumbag and places the little pile in the outstretched hand before him.
The transaction is completed in moments, and Sherlock and John are on their way back past the spindly trees and bowed railing window grilles of the quiet, sunny residential street. John looks uneasy and harrumphs, but if he wants something he’ll have to ask for it, because Sherlock is basking in information; even this tiny place is rich and replete with data, and he swivels his head smoothly, scanning the crumbling yellow houses around him, computer sharp, infallible, memorising and storing. One of the buildings is inhabited by a policeman; another is occasionally used to by the local youth to smoke cannabis. A hundred other tiny details cascade through Sherlock’s mind and are marked for storage or deletion. He registers efficiency, intellect, the dominion of facts: better than sex. And there will be sex, later, too.
‘All right, how do you know Zagami won’t just ignore the message?’ complains John after a minute. ‘Or research us and come after us? Anyway, why would the old woman even contact him now you’ve paid her?’
Ah. Sunlight warms Sherlock’s face as they turn a corner. He determines the medical history of an old man sitting on a wooden chair outside his front door. His brain hums at a perfect pitch of satisfaction.
‘Because, John, he’s that woman’s nephew or son or cousin.’
Sherlock pauses. On cue, John gives him the respectful I’m-about-to-be-amazed-aren’t-I look, and Sherlock continues: ‘Criminal networks are often family-based in this part of the world, and our vegetable-selling matriarch is married to an Italian immigrant herself. You must have seen her wedding ring, an engraving of a woman facing a man with a flower bouquet between them? An Italian tradition. And she tried to cover her hand. Why bother unless there is some connection? That rules out the possibility that she won’t tell Zagami of our interest and leaves only the question of whether he will contact us, or attempt to seek us out and neutralise us. While the former is most desirable, the latter would be acceptable as we have a defensible residence and we will be ready to kill him instead.’
As deductions go it’s quite a minor one. John absorbs it in a stolid, thoughtful way; Sherlock is slightly disappointed not to get an exclamation of amazement, but it’s fine. Everything is fine really, though it is puzzling that John doesn’t look entirely happy. The sun beats down. Because he can, Sherlock deduces the number of bicycles which have passed across a particular patch of dirt since yesterday.
‘This is one hell of a dangerous game,’ says John testily at last, as they turn out of the narrow street and stroll towards their rental car, just a pair of tourists gone slightly off the beaten track. ‘Yes, I suppose putting the ball in Zagami’s court probably is necessary, if we don’t want to stay here forever. I just wish you’d ask me before you do things that affect both of us, Sherlock, is all. I just wish you’d ask.’
Good; John is isn’t refusing to co-operate. ‘Sorry,’ says Sherlock, because he’s learnt that John likes that, and he really does need John on board with this. The concession earns him a grudging half-smile.
That evening, under John’s direction, they fortify the house from the inside. It’s remarkably easy, as defence against military incursion was considered a priority when Valletta was built, and metre-thick stone walls plus small, few and deeply recessed windows were in vogue. That’s why Sherlock chose this house; he thinks of everything, and he knows John is aware of the fact. Sherlock has left the ginger on the table downstairs with the peeler next to it, as well. He has ostentatiously washed himself.
Towards the end of the process of obstructing the house’s two windows, Sherlock’s phone rings. It is, or the Italian-accented voice claims to be, Zagami. He sets the terms of a meeting: both parties are to come alone for a rendezvous at a cove in the south of the island. The man sounds relaxed and slightly intrigued as, pulling faces for John’s benefit all the while, Sherlock hams up his earnest criminal voice and drops references to operations by Moriarty’s network that only a trusted aide - or a detective genius who’s spent three months researching the matter - could know about.
‘It could be a decoy,’ says John after the call is over and he’s gone back to cleaning the guns they stole yesterday.
‘Naturally,’ says Sherlock. He’s relaxing on the sofa now, and the sight of John bare-chested and focused, breaking a light sweat as the muscles work smoothly in his arms, may be the most compelling thing he has ever seen in his life. ‘But the chances of an interruption tonight are decreased.’
John looks up for a moment and wipes his forehead. Sherlock spreads his legs wider, because subtlety is not currently of interest, and notes with satisfaction the responding hunger in John’s expression, although there is also a doctorish overtone to it.
‘You’re OK to do this, are you?’ John asks. ‘I mean, after... this morning.’
That was not what Sherlock wanted to talk about. He snaps his legs shut and leans forwards.
‘While our scene yesterday was high diverting, I suspect that my reason will not actually disintegrate under the sheer pressure of your attentions. Yes, please tie me up and violate me. You may have noticed that I enjoy it.’
At that, John quirks a slight smile.
‘Yes, I did,’ he says. ‘All right, but we stay in this room. No bondage that I can’t undo in seconds.’ Then he goes back to cleaning
The process takes a further four and a half minutes. Sherlock runs through a breakdown of the island’s geology, as studied online in the early hours of this morning, in his head. Then John wipes his hands methodically on a rag, and slowly walks over to stand in front of Sherlock and look him slowly up and down.
‘Can you take pain just because I tell you to?’ John asks.
The question is unexpected. It indicates that John wants a scene based on submission rather than force, and that’s not the way Sherlock usually inclines. However, where John is concerned, Sherlock’s reactions are not always predictable. There is such willpower in John, which he often hints at but seldom actually shows, and it interests Sherlock immoderately.
‘Yes,’ Sherlock says.
He’s barely got the word out before it turns into a cry, because John’s arm has shot out and the side of Sherlock’s head is aflame with pain. John is gripping and twisting his ear, nails digging into the earlobe. Sherlock whimpers and by an effort of will forces his arms to stay at his sides, twisting his head to lessen the discomfort and also to keep staring into John’s eyes, which are sparking with sadistic anticipation. God yes, Sherlock wants this man to hurt him.
‘Are you still in pain from yesterday? Your arse and back?’ John demands, and when Sherlock nods awkwardly John lets go of his ear and straddles his lap. John’s thighs crush Sherlock’s together, and his fingers shove in between Sherlock and the sofa, seeking out the welts through his thin shirt. John thrusts his tongue into Sherlock’s mouth, and his hands range around Sherlock’s upper body as if he was a toy while Sherlock kisses passionately back but leaves his own arms trailing limply on either side of him because as of now he is a toy for John to hurt and fuck and immolate in pleasure. Yes. He wants it, wants to give in, wants to take whatever John metes out.
John pulls back from the kiss.
‘I remembered who we are this afternoon,’ he says a little breathlessly. ‘You take risks, and they’re stupid, and I go along with them because we actually both like it.’
John’s weight has shifted a little; enough for Sherlock to buck up against him, grinding crotch to crotch.
‘And we both like this,’ Sherlock says, hearing the hitch in his own voice too. ‘A fine pair of perverts, I believe you said.’
‘God, yes.’
John’s hand goes up to Sherlock’s neck and pushes his head back so it bangs against the wall. Sherlock’s throat is constricted; not enough to suffocate but enough to stop speech and make his breathing harsh and noisy, and he realises he’s also moaning with each breath, a shameless fuck-me sound. Yes yes take me, hurt me, interest me. John.
Abruptly John’s presence lifts away.
‘Get up,’ he orders. ‘Strip, but only from the waist down. I’ve seen the ginger root, and I’ve no objection at all to ramming it up your arse and watching you squirm. It so happens I’ve brought something myself that will go with it excellently.’
Sherlock obeys while John goes downstairs. He’s long since out of his trousers and waiting as submissively as he can manage when John comes back with a bowl of water, a flannel, washing up liquid, a well-carved finger of ginger - and a tube of Deep Heat ointment poking out of his jeans pocket. Sherlock hasn’t played with the stuff in years, but he’s familiar with it from an experimental adolescence.
This situation requires no deductive skill. Sherlock’s not going to just get a bit of ginger up his arse but hot cream on his cock. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to endure much of that, but clearly he’s about to find out.
John puts the soap and water down in the corner. Then he walks up to Sherlock and pulls his tee-shirt over his head, but instead of removing it completely he leaves it around Sherlock’s neck and biceps and knots up the base, forming a kind of loose bag that contains Sherlock’s head and arms. ‘Sit down on the floor,’ he orders. ‘Get this under your bum, and lie back.’
Sherlock does as he’s told and finds that ‘this’ is a sofa cushion, positioned to angle his sensitive areas upwards for John’s convenience. He wriggles, settling into position, and feeling the tee-shirt bag settle loosely on him. All he can see is light, and vague shapes filtered through the material. John kicks him to make him spread his legs wider, then he looms between Sherlock and the light, gathering up folds of tee-shirt.
‘Open wide,’ John instructs, then he stuffs the wodge of material into Sherlock’s mouth. ‘If you have anything to say from now on, well, I am not fucking interested.’
John’s shadow withdraws. Sherlock’s sight and power of speech are gone, he’s let them go; he thinks of how he must look like this and he groans into the moistening gag because yes, yes, yes, he is a thing now, dick, balls and a hole splayed out for John’s amusement. Sherlock never cared before how much he affected a partner, but he does tonight. And John is pleased with him. Sherlock hears it in John’s breathing, senses it in the way he moves.
John is starting to stroke him, gentle fingers up and down his perineum and around his balls. The message is clear enough, that there’s plenty of time for pain and John will inflict it when he feels inclined to do so. Sherlock is in no hurry either, as he’s starting to float just from lying here abandoned to John, but eventually one stroking hand lifts away and a forefinger begins to play around Sherlock’s arsehole. It drags gently at the raised rim, then winkles in for a moment as if testing. Soon after, the blunt tip of the peeled ginger root bumps against sensitive membranes and then, with a gentle push, slides in, slick with its own juice. John eases it gently backwards and forwards until it settles. Sherlock feels his muscles clenching tidily around the carved indent at the base of the ginger, leaving the stopper outside.
Everything goes still. Sherlock squirms just a little, because this doesn’t really hurt yet, it only mildly stretches... then it starts, the slow build of pain inside him. John caresses Sherlock’s hip and he twines his hands together inside the tied tee-shirt, feeling his body refocus around the intimate violation that connects him to John. John settles a hand on his stomach and Sherlock presses gently up into it, wanting the touch, communicating the shudder that runs through him as the pain intensifies then settles as a consistent burn, dragging him further into headspace, anchored by John. I love... Sherlock thinks, and a whimper escapes through the gag.
‘You took that beautifully,’ says John after another minute. ‘Now I’m going to put Deep Heat on your cock and balls. Not all at once, and if you do need to safeword I can mostly wash it off, but I’m going to cover you in it. Let’s see what you can take.’
Sherlock groans into the makeshift gag, wanting John to understand how very much he’s up for this. It’s going to be intense. He’ll try to endure, but that will get harder, and he’ll start to squirm, and then he’ll lose control, and maybe John will have to wrestle him down as the cream burns hotter, deeper... god please yes. Briefly it crosses his mind that there is a still a risk of hostile visitors. Well, if so, he’ll have enough adrenaline to wipe out an army.
Something cold swipes along the side of one of his bollocks. The same thing happens on the other side, and a few seconds later, the burn starts up, fiercer than the ginger though so far spread over a smaller area. Immediately Sherlock’s cock stiffens further, as if expressly to show how much he gets off on this, on John’s sadistic pleasure and his own physical pain. ‘Ah,’ he hears John exhale, overhead.
And that’s when it begins. The drifting and the change.
First, it’s just a moment of distraction. It occurs to Sherlock that, for no currently definable reason, all is not well. He’s in pain of course, but that’s hardly the issue. He tries to search his mind for the problem, and at the same time his thoughts lurch downwards.
God no no no. This cannot happen now.
Sherlock fights. Ten seconds ago his mind was different, and logic dictates that its previous state is reattainable. There was rich sensation, himself splayed and ready, his lover over him, John. John. Sherlock fights to hold these things, and blackness swirls in anyway, drowning meaning, seeping into every thought and leeching it null.
Sherlock’s balls and arse hurt. Somewhere overhead John is breathing in a manner suggestive of excitement. Things exist.
‘Sherlock, are you all right?’ says John uncertainly. ‘You don’t want to safeword?’
Sherlock forces access to a part of himself that has eluded the darkness. This fragment is insistent that John must not see him like this. John must not know.
He shakes his head inside the tee-shirt. John seems to withdraw, then there’s a dab of smoothness on Sherlock’s glans and, a few seconds later, the inevitable burning. At the same time, he feels his cock starting to soften.
There is a lack where impulse of any kind would normally reside.
Sherlock’s head lolls to the side and the sodden tee-shirt drops out of his mouth. The self-fragment is screaming at him, and he is empty of response. He was this way in the morning when John woke. He has been this way before in Malta.
It is becoming more frequent.
The air hurts his limbs.
‘OK, there’s clearly something wrong. Magnesium. I’m stopping,’ says John. Within seconds the tee-shirt has been pulled right over Sherlock’s head and he sees worried eyes above him for a moment before John moves away to tug the ginger out of him and apply a moist flannel to his throbbing balls.
‘Now, do not just tell me what you think I want to hear,’ John says. ‘And yes, I do know you’d never do that, but anyway... the point is, I don’t think I bodged that scene up. Did I?’
Sherlock listens to John with detached interest. It seems that words from John are not subject to the darkness. His intervention allows Sherlock to say ‘No,’ and with that the despair is weakened slightly, and he sits upright against the sofa base.
‘All right. I was selfish to start a scene knowing you’re not yourself,’ John goes on. A current of frustration is running counter to the sympathy in his voice. ‘Yesterday it seemed to help, but today... well clearly not. What’s going on in your head, Sherlock? You have to let me in.’
Sherlock constructs sentences from willpower, then releases them whole.
‘The scene was highly enjoyable.’ Pause. ‘I am getting worse.’
That admission should surely shake the building. Sherlock watches John for a suitable reaction, and instead sees his statement fall by the wayside as superfluous, an accepted fact. He has fallen so far that his sickness is a given.
He cannot remember the light. A spark of himself is adrift in the blackness. John puts his arm around him. The gesture fails.
Sherlock can feel himself speaking: ‘Please stay with me.’
John sighs.
Sherlock believes that John hates him. This belief is duly screened by logic and ejected, but only by violent effort. That such mental exertion should be required simply to reach obvious conclusions is an abomination.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ John says.
For hours they sit together on the sofa. John has the laptop and is reading medical pages: endogenous, affect, severe. What is left of Sherlock is curled up in the watchful core of his self, running through the periodic table by way of grasping at a consistent reality, awaiting the lurch that will plunge him into the next arbitrary amalgam of rage, darkness, fear, exaltation. Gradually suffusing them all is confusion: he cannot remember parts of the previous days, the names of the streets he memorised earlier are blurring together, and he cannot recall word for word his conversation with Zagami. It is like Vegas, except then he was too focused to care. Now he sees that his mind is unmaking. Worse than the worst of the drugs, because it is beyond his control.
The face of his late mother surfaces again.
Sherlock rests his head on John’s shoulder. The night wears on, and John stays beside him. They both sleep at some point, and Sherlock wakes around five.
He continues at first the way he has been, churning and blank, until at 5.47, as he is staring at dust under the TV unit, all the lights in his head go on at once. It feels like levitation, a rush of bubbles riding up his mind: everything is all right. He scrambles to his feet. The infinite possibility, infinite depth, infinite texture of his surroundings enfold him... and he is aware, through and beyond the moment of transition, that this is wrong. The walls of reality have grown thin, and somehow he has come to spend his life punching through them from one windowless chamber into another and another. Some chambers are dark, some are blindingly lit, and all of them are empty of anything real. This is unsustainably wretched. He will starve here.
This is glorious. He flourishes again. The paradox exhilarates and appals.
Careful not to wake dear, snoring John, Sherlock skips lightly over his partner’s jutting feet and hurries downstairs with the laptop. He must check in with certain contacts before the meeting later, as his plan - to convince Zagami that he is in fact ‘Moriarty’, the fake death at Bart’s having been a ruse to stop the authorities from identifying him - will benefit from completely up-to-date information.
He doesn’t really need to do this; the world can only go the way that Sherlock wills it to. John doesn’t fully understand that, however, so for his sake Sherlock will cover all angles.
On to chapter 5