Summary: He hasn't met a puzzle he couldn't solve, and she hasn't met a riddle she wouldn't unravel with her teeth and fingernails.
Rating/Warning: Adult, sexual situations, etc, etc.
Genre/Pairing: Crossover, Luther (BBC) and Sherlock (BBC). Sherlock/Alice. Sherlock/John & Alice/Luther.
Word Count: ~650
Note: This was supposed to be an entry for the
Porn Battle, but I just missed the deadline, so here it is.
Alice kisses him in a pale imitation of intimacy. She bites his lips and draws blood. Sherlock's fingers dig in harder, blunt nails leaving marks on her pale arms, and she gasps aloud and grinds herself on his lap.
He hasn't met a puzzle he couldn't solve (all except one), and she hasn't met a riddle she wouldn't unravel with her teeth and fingernails (all except one). In an experiment of the highest order, they come together, the soft curls of her brilliant red hair spilling out over his shoulder and his arms tight around her slick body. Her skin is hot to the touch, bellying the exterior of her cold, unfeeling nature, and he enjoys the discovery of this contradiction, even if in itself it is predictable, yet another puzzle easily solved, just like how his heartbeat increases in crescendo with every exertion, and decreases with every breath he takes.
She is idly licking the trail of blood, from his lips to his neck, when her mobile vibrates on the cheap, plastic table of the motel room. Her pause is slight, but it's there in her face, a previously unseen crack to explore.
"Ah," says Sherlock, just as they return to their leisurely rhythm, "Detective Inspector John Luther, was it?"
"Ah," says Alice, in the same tone, "Doctor John Watson, was it?" She bares her teeth. "I would simply love to meet him one day."
Sherlock isn't concerned. Alice kills whenever her mood strikes, like how one would squash a fly on a whim, but she selects her flies within a predictable boundary, one Sherlock has easily learned to recognize. John isn't a fly to her. John isn't anyone's fly.
Still, John's life is perhaps the only thing Sherlock is disinclined to safeguard merely with likelihoods and probabilities. "You won't touch him," he says, firmly.
"Oh, you know I wouldn't dream of it," she says, her eyes dancing in mocking amusement. "I like your John. He's too worthy. Too loyal. Too," she pauses, and smiles a red, wide-teeth smile, "good."
He hums in agreement, and she murmurs at his ear, "Frustrating, aren't they? How they insist to be bound by the conventions of morality, as if they don't long for freedom from its manacles with every fiber of their beings. So illogical."
"And yet," Sherlock supplies, "endlessly fascinating."
"Yes," she breathes, and kisses him again. "Exactly. Ever want to claw his heart out and listen to its beating, just to uncover the mystery of the heart?"
No, because Sherlock wants John in his entirety, as a whole. "No, but you do."
"Constantly."
"There's nothing like it, is there?" he asks, almost sympathetic. "To be bound."
"See?" Her smile is sharp and cutting. "We understand each other perfectly. We'll make a great team together, you and I. We simply just...fit."
Sherlock returns a kindred smile of his own. "Ah, but then where's the fun in that?"
"Well, it is rather all so unfortunate, isn't it?"
She slinks off to the bathroom, and when she returns, she's a perfect picture of a temptress in a red dress that matches the colour of her hair. "And when, dear Sherlock, will you ever let me tempt you away from your John?"
He raises an eyebrow. "Just as soon as you leave your John--that solid, brilliant, thoroughly lost inspector of yours--behind."
"Touché." She leans in to plant a lingering kiss on his lips. "Goodbye, Sherlock."
"Goodbye, Alice."
Afterward, Sherlock returns home, settles on his sofa and reaches for his violin. Sitting across from him in a god-awful gray jumper and fully occupied with tea and post, is the only puzzle in the world Sherlock cares enough not to unravel.
Perhaps he never will.
John looks up from his post and blinks at him. "What, Sherlock?"
"Nothing, John." He feels a smile curling up his lips. "Just the simple mystery of the heart."
End