Fic: Stranger at the Gate - 4/11 (BBC Sherlock)

[bendingsignpost]

Title: Stranger at the Gate
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 8.7k this part, 81k overall
Beta: seijichan
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: As far as initiation rites go, kidnapping a human doctor from a defended town ought to seem extreme. When James Moriarty offers him the challenge, Sherlock never considers saying no. (Fantasy vampire AU)
Warnings: Vampires, blood, explicit sex, glamour (as in mind control/hypnotism), dubcon.

Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five -  Chapter Six - -  Chapter Seven -  Chapter Eight -  Chapter Nine -  Chapter Ten -  Chapter Eleven

“You ought to eat something,” John tells him, and not for the first time.

Distraction tactics have kept John’s good intentions at bay for perhaps an hour, each more creative than the last. Asking after the tune John had been humming that morning led to a spot of singing, followed by an impromptu dancing lesson.

With John’s willingness to be led about the cramped gatehouse exhausted, there’s no deterring him. Sherlock’s stomach makes needful noises that increase John’s concern. It is hardly the first time John has taken issue with his eating habits or with the prominence of his ribs, but it is by far the worst. Glamour doesn’t stick here, not when John is presented with audible evidence of Sherlock’s hunger. Once John actually sets out a plate for him, there is no room to deceive him.

Sherlock does the best he can, nibbling and nibbling. He refuses the salted beef and the accompanying mug of water by virtue of not eating meat. While true, this aversion is hardly as relevant as the ill effects of cool water.

John makes the typical jokes about Sherlock living on the edge of starvation. Sherlock grinds a hard substance similar to bread crust between his teeth. A wheat cake, John calls it, though Sherlock has always been informed that cake possesses positive qualities. His mouth feels vile, filled with grit and lumps. The addition of cheese only worsens the sensation.

“That’s enough,” he says twice, forcing John to relent upon the second telling.

It’s only a matter of time until he vomits.

From an early age, Sherlock detested vomiting. He has few significant memories of his father, fewer still of his father unaccompanied by Mummy, but the most important of these occurred when he was four and vomiting cat blood.

His father had wiped his trembling mouth, ruining a handkerchief, and scented the cloth. “Fleas” had been the pronouncement. Boots had an infection, his father explained. She was very sick. Sherlock should have fed on one of the calicos, not his tabby.

Though of course he remembers everything, what Sherlock remembers best is not his father’s steady hand or his careful instructions. The mortification overpowers them both, and the shame covers over the three entirely.

When Boots died, Sherlock refused to feed for a week.

At the end of the week, Angelo had gathered him up from his second-best hiding spot and sat him on his knee. Drained from hunger, Sherlock had sagged into the side of the one adult he knew would never glamour him into behaving.

“I know,” Angelo had told him. “I know how sad it is.”

Sherlock had looked up at him with the mournful eyes of a child. “You do?”

“Unless he begins eating again, I will also lose my kitten. He’s dark and curly, and he’s always hiding in places he doesn’t belong.”

“Kittens aren’t curly.”

Angelo, tapping him on the nose: “This one is.”

Sherlock had giggled, saying something about feeding on mice, and Angelo had sternly put his foot down. Several times. Ultimately, he fed from one of Mycroft’s goats.

In the end, the recollection is more about Angelo than it is about his father, or vomiting, or even about Boots.

Most recollections are.

This is what Sherlock typically thinks of after vomiting. This time, he thinks don’t look don’t look don’t look.

Bent over the chamber pot, its removed lid under his hand, Sherlock retches up wheat and dairy, the sludge accompanied by his own stomach acid and John’s blood. For now, John’s hand is steady on his back, a firm presence meant to reassure.

It does anything but.

“I’m fine,” Sherlock rasps. “Ignore it, I’m fine.” His command is in Anglic to be better sure John understands it.

“Liar,” John chastises lightly, unmoved by Sherlock’s redirection. “Hold on, I’ll get you some water-”

“No,” Sherlock negates sharply. He catches himself. “Could I have tea instead?”

John kisses the back of his head before going through his tea making business. He returns, kneeling at Sherlock’s side. The positioning of his sturdy legs is half embrace, half enclosure. His hand rubs circles into Sherlock’s back. “What brought that on?”

“It’s not catching. You’re perfectly safe.” The reassurance is difficult to muster when another wave of nausea threatens to overcome his control. His throat burns.

John squeezes his shoulder. “Good to know, but what is it?”

“I have difficulty keeping most food down,” Sherlock replies, entirely honest.

The arm about his shoulders is warm, its weight as steady as the thumb pressing patterns through his shirt and into his skin. “The more I learn about you,” John says, “the more I’m amazed you haven’t died yet.”

“Luck and Angelo,” he attempts to reply. His body interrupts him with a painful, foul-tasting belch. He groans. It’s vile in his mouth and he spits into the pot. He spits again, and again, and retches once more.

The light must be low for a human in the gatehouse, but it does seem to be enough.

“You’re vomiting blood,” John announces. “This can’t be normal, even for you.”

With that, John’s hand leaves his back. He hears John rise, hears his footsteps and the sound of fabric against fabric. John has put on his coat. Why?

John returns to him. Sherlock feels the man’s presence at his side before he feels the weight of his own coat draped over his shoulders.

The effort strenuous, Sherlock turns his face enough to see John, to look at him. He furrows his brow into a question.

“When you’re ready,” John tells him, “we’re going into town. Mike’s a good doctor. He knows what he’s doing.” Kneeling at Sherlock’s side, John’s hand rests upon his own thigh. The touch sends a twitch of pain across John’s features.

Sherlock shakes his head. It’s still raining outside. His feet can’t yet endure the holly path, let alone stand upon wet wood. He’ll freeze as he burns.

“Sherlock,” John chastises, so much like Angelo, so much like Mrs. Hudson and every member of the Lestrade family. “You’re not eating, you’re vomiting blood. I know for a fact you haven’t had anything to drink in a day. Nothing about this is good.” Sherlock wonders, vaguely, if all humans of quality perfect this exact tone of voice.

While he ponders this, the touch on his shoulder becomes inordinately still. The contact isn’t removed, it doesn’t break or waver, but it abruptly becomes deliberate. It’s a touch designed to neither alert nor alarm, not to comfort.

This is the full extent of warning he receives.

A slap of motion pins him to the floor, arms twisted behind his back and secured by a rough grip and a blunt knee. Winded, Sherlock makes the mistake of struggling. It isn’t a mistake he makes for long.

“You bit me,” says a voice from above him, a voice so terribly like John’s and yet utterly incongruous. This is the sound of controlled rage and absolute conviction. “I’m not worn out, this is blood loss, and you’re not in enough pain to be vomiting that much blood. It was my leg, that’s why it turns. It’s not acting up again - you bit me.”

“John,” he tries to respond.

He is interrupted by the cold press of a blade against his neck.

“Not one word,” John orders. “Not one. I won’t be bewitched.”

Cheek against the matted thresh, his breathing quick and shallow, Sherlock knows better than to nod.

Instead, he cries.

Pinned as he is, he can feel the hesitation slip into John’s limbs. The hand with the knife remains steady all the same.

Sherlock continues to cry. He’s good at it, letting his expression twist into fear before snapping it back into a controlled panic. It’s all in the breathing and the expression, entirely without tears. He blinks a great deal, as if bent on maintaining his pride even while terrified.

“Stop that,” John tells him. “Don’t....”

Sherlock takes a shaking gulp of air and lets it shudder out. He closes his eyes and forces his limbs to tremor.

The blade at his throat neither cuts nor pulls away.

After an eternity of their harsh breathing, Sherlock risks a look upward.

For all it travels his face, John’s gaze is steadier than his knife. Remarkable. The signs of a mind rebelling against glamour are clear in the light of the hearth. John’s pupils dilate and contract rapidly, as if facing into lightning. If John were like Angelo, he would be shaking. Or, perhaps, if Sherlock’s glamour were anything like his mother’s, John would be shaking.

Instead of trembling, John bites his lip. He bites it hard while breathing tight, controlled breaths through his nose. The pain must focus him. The pain in his leg must have focused him. His grip on Sherlock’s pinned limbs unrelenting, he removes the blade in order to... what?

Sherlock hears pressure against fabric and sees a flicker of pain across John’s face. Testing the tenderness of his thigh. Confirmation of reality, the fatal blow to any glamour.

John curses, the word a stunned rasp. “I can feel you in my head. Get out. Now.” His voice is the voice of a soldier.

A soldier. A soldier can believe in pain. A soldier once shot by crossbow must believe in pain, just as he must know the sensation of blood loss.

But that’s only the body. What of the mind? What does John believe in?

John is - Sherlock jerks as the blade returns to this throat - John is a good man by his own standards. Sherlock is in no position to alter those standards. John is, John is loyal. Sherlock is in no position to convince him he hasn’t been betrayed.

John’s behaviour, what is the cause? No fear in those eyes. Betrayal is kept at bay by professional detachment. Despite their dalliance, John is professional. He behaves accordingly. He follows protocol. Protocol. Yes.

Sherlock mouths one word, a calculated risk.

The blade digs against his skin, not quite enough to cut. It’s not the pressure that will wound him but sideways motion. If John slips. If John twitches.

Sherlock forces himself to stop considering it.

He mouths the word again.

“Holly?” John repeats.

Sherlock gives the tiniest nod, a careful scrape of his cheek against the floor. He notes, distantly, the speed of his heart. He can feel it hitting the floorboards, its pounding against wood muffled by cloth and straw. This is absurd. This is ridiculous. John won’t kill him. John wouldn’t kill him.

Once Sherlock reminds him of this, the human had best ready his apologies.

If only Sherlock could control his own breathing.

“You want the holly test?” John asks.

John’s breathing is steady. As are his voice and hands. His tone is controlled and professional. This must be what being restrained by a golem is like.

“There’s a problem with that,” John tells him. “Whatever you did to pass the test the first time, you could do again. If it’s a lasting glamour, I can’t trust anything.”

Sherlock’s sound of distress is unplanned, yet effective. John’s hold doesn’t relent but there’s a pause in his breathing.

“All right,” John says. “All right, I can- Look. Don’t move. Don’t speak. I’m going to be fair about this, but if you do anything, you forfeit your life. That’s how this works. Do you understand?”

Sherlock remains very, very still.

“All right.” That eternal refrain. “All right.” John’s grip loosens.

The knife remains in place.

John climbs off his back. Each motion is steady. Each shift of his body leads to a stable stance.

The knife is removed.

Sherlock remains in place.

He closes his eyes tightly.

John’s footsteps on the floorboards. The rain on the roof. The kettle coming close to screeching. The scrape of leaves on wood as the sprig is taken from its shelf.

John returns. John kneels over him, drives the sprig against his palms and forces his fingers into desperate fists.

Sherlock clings to pricking leaves and thin twig. He’s crushing them. His heart continues to rattle between the floor and his spine. John’s hands are closed over his, verifying the reality of Sherlock’s grip.

The longer it lasts, the slower his breaths become.

When John’s fingers tremble, Sherlock shakes as well, exhausted from tension. It’s acceptable for Sherlock to tremble when John does it first. When John manually unfurls Sherlock’s fists, the touch is hesitant. His thumbs inspect Sherlock’s palms as the kettle screams.

“I....”

John releases him entirely.

Sherlock doesn’t move. He doesn’t adjust his arms or open his eyes. If he doesn’t maintain this position, he isn’t certain what he’ll do.

The shriek of the kettle mercifully dies. John abandons it the moment he silences it. “I am so- God, I don’t.... I thought....” John verbally flounders, unmoored. His struggles are evidenced in the broken pattern of his breathing.

The sound is oddly comforting. It pushes back the rain.

“I’m so sorry,” John tells him. “God, I- Talk, move, you can- It’s fine, I won’t, oh god, I’m sorry.”

Sherlock adjusts his arms. They ache. The muscles between skin and bone seem to vibrate. Unsettling.

“I was convinced,” John tries to explain. “You know I would never, unless I thought- unless I was sure that....”

The vibration seems to have spread into his head, a low, inaudible hum. Something inside him won’t stop shaking.

“Does-” Sherlock’s voice breaks on the word. He swallows. “Does this happen often?”

“No,” John promises. “I’ve never- No.”

Sherlock’s lower lip is trembling. What is wrong with him? He squeezes his eyes shut tighter, bidding John not to see. “Why now?” he manages to ask.

“Blood in the chamber pot. You not eating. I thought- I don’t know what I thought. I’ve been feeling off and my leg- It’s been better for years, I thought....” John sighs. “I’m sorry.”

The time it takes to devise a suitable reply is spent ostensibly recovering his composure. Gingerly, his arms aching, he turns himself over. The thresh comes with him, stuck to his clothing with damp and mildew. He pulls up his legs, feet flat on the floor, setting his high knees between them like a mountain range.

John gazes across that fabricated, inconsequential boundary. His tongue dampens his lips, the playful quirk turned nervous. His mouth itself is a tight line, sterner than even his eyes. The force of this man has turned inward, self-directed and self-damning.

“Do you often have waking nightmares?” Sherlock asks. “It’s not uncommon with soldiers exposed to carnage.”

“I used to,” John says, giving a jerk of surprise. Sherlock has correctly guessed his thoughts. That’s good. Useful. The start of a plausible story.

To continue, Sherlock looks at the chamber pot. “That isn’t particularly bad,” he remarks. Where this lie will go, Sherlock has yet to determine, but he needs something to keep John with him, something simple. Whatever Sherlock accepts as normalcy, John will as well.

“‘Not particularly bad’,” John echoes.

“It’s certainly been worse,” Sherlock allows, speaking to his own knees. “I’m fine. I told you, my circulation is poor.”

“How does that....”

Sherlock shakes his head, a tremor of sideways motion. “I bleed into my stomach. Not that much,” he hastens to add, exasperated rather than reassuring. “It sounds much worse than it is. I’m fine.” Justification, he needs justification for not telling John sooner. “Don’t you dare start coddling me for this. My mother made it well into her sixties and no one coddled her. It barely hurts.”

Sitting on the floor before him, John is guilt personified. He presses his palm to his brow as if to a wound. He needs forgiveness to bandage this hurt. Without it, he is oddly small and wholly ashamed.

Sherlock draws up his knees further, hugging the barrier to his chest. “John,” he says.

“Tea,” John answers abruptly. “I was making you tea. I’ll- Yes.”

Curled into the smallest shape he knows, Sherlock remains as he is while John jerks his body into motion. When John at last offers him the cup, Sherlock’s hands won’t move to take it. The cup is set by his foot.

John gathers himself back, leaving a respectable distance between them.

Handling cups makes his fingers feel conspicuous. He knows how to handle cutlery, how to arrange the contents of a plate for a lessened appearance, but cups are forever strange. He takes scalding liquid into his mouth. The clumsy act leaks tea between the lip of the cup and his own pair. He spits the mouthful into the chamber pot before it can cool and harm him. Finally, he wipes at his mouth with his sleeve, the way he’s seen men do in bars. It’s strange to think the cloth won’t stain.

“That’s the taste gone,” he says quietly. “I’d rather not risk any digestion for some time, however.”

John nods. “Do you want a doctor?”

“No. It’s a poorly lined stomach, not an illness. My mother was the same way.” He won’t go outside in the rain. He won’t have anyone brought in to touch him with water-wet hands. He can’t have anyone convincing John to attack him.

“All right,” John says.

Neither quite dares to move.

“You said something about your leg,” Sherlock prompts.

“Forget it,” John replies. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any of it.”

“Yes you did,” Sherlock counters. He doesn’t intend the accusation it becomes. “What about your leg made you decide to kill me?”

John flinches.

“It’s a reasonable question,” he insists.

“It is,” John agrees. “And it’s a stupid answer.”

Sherlock waits.

John sags with a sigh. “The marks. They’re a bit-” He turns his head to the side. He turns his growing frustration inward. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Sherlock replies. “It’s....”

“It isn’t. It’s not close to fine.”

Sherlock bites his lip, unable to contradict. He wasn’t about to say it was. Even so, he wants to hold his hand out. He wants to touch and forgive and go back to before.

His heart won’t stop shaking and John looks miserable.

“I feel very poorly,” Sherlock announces, hugging his knees. “I propose we delay this conversation until all danger of vomiting has passed.”

“Yes, right,” John says. “Of course.”

Sherlock rests his cheek upon his knee. His head is light. His stomach murmurs vaguely of further rebellion.

“When you feel steady enough, I can show you into town,” John tells him. “I’ll explain to Harry and you can stay in the backroom.”

Sherlock feels his brow furrowing, confusion ploughing his mind and turning over unwanted thoughts. Anglic is difficult to understand. Did he mishear? Mistranslate?

“There’s a bed there,” John adds as if this will lend credence to his plan.

“I don’t follow,” Sherlock tells him.

“Somewhere for you to wait out the rain,” John says.

“But it’s still raining.” He can hear it.

“Somewhere else,” John clarifies.

“No.”

“What?”

“No.” He hugs his legs tighter, chin in the gap between his knees.

“All right,” John assures him. “All right, whatever you want to do.”

“I don’t know,” Sherlock realizes, as startling and terrible as the sudden press of sharpened steel. He wants... he wants to be safe. He wants John. He wants to complete the task at hand and get his lessons and fix Angelo, but all of this is so far removed when his new friend is duty-bound to kill him. He’d thought John would have at least hesitated.

“Are we still friends?” Sherlock asks abruptly.

“What?” John asks.

“Do you want to still be friends?” he rephrases.

John hesitates, mouth open, breath in-drawn.

“Oh,” says Sherlock. “Um.”

“That’s not- No,” John corrects. “We’re friends. I mean, of course you don’t want to keep- We can be friends.”

“All right,” Sherlock replies.

“We’ll do that,” John assures him. Apologies cloud his eyes as tears might for a lesser man. Only the urgency of them reaches his voice. “Whatever you want is fine.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” The response is instant.

Sherlock considers his earnest face, then nods.

The awkwardness which follows excruciates, unrelenting in the slow slide of minutes. They pick themselves up from the floor. Sherlock packs his pipe at the table with nervous hands. Seated on the chest beneath the window, John watches the fire. He drinks Sherlock’s abandoned tea and keeps touching his leg with concern.

They do a very bad job of not looking at one another.

Twice over the course of the afternoon, John is called outside for gate duty. He returns shivering and sodden from the first excursion, and Sherlock can only watch his cold, dripping form.

The second time John is called outside, Sherlock pilfers what he marks as a reasonably small portion from John’s so-called edible supplies. He hides this in his satchel wrapped in a handkerchief and scatters crumbs across the table’s surface. A small, systematic spread.

When John returns the second time, he is drenched yet again. How fortuitous they are no longer touching.

John assumes he ate a meal. Sherlock asks belatedly for permission, which John hurriedly grants. John makes further inquiries after Sherlock’s health. Compared to the past few hours, this is almost pleasant.

Unwilling to relinquish conversation entirely, Sherlock chooses a topic at random and begins to elaborate upon it. By the time John finishes his own evening meal, the atmosphere is almost companionable. They pretend they won’t soon need to sleep.

Instead, they talk. Soon, talking, they laugh. The strain hurts. It’s as if they’re walking upon a sprained limb, simply trying to cover the distance back to normalcy before they collapse. Sherlock hopes they make it. They begin to draw close.

Sherlock tells him a history, the formation of societies around the gulf. For all John’s family originates from the southern coast, John knows so little of it. He makes Sherlock want to explain the world and teach more than language. John has never heard of the divide in Sherlock’s people, of the difference between southern leech and eastern flea, between reformed and traditionalist. All he knows are the traditionalists from the east, occupying the lower mountain paths and raiding into human territory.

Only the fleas are called draughtsmen, in this history. The leeches are land-sirens, which is vaguely fact.

“I don’t think that’s true,” John responds to the thought of sirens inland. “I think you’re making that up.”

“I’m not,” Sherlock promises. “I’ve met a few.”

John only grins. “And you haven’t drowned?”

That old stereotype. “Obviously not. Irene’s tastes run more towards women.” Ship captains, in general, as tradition dictates. The rest of it is mere bad luck. Storms and pirates on top of politics: a poor combination.

John shakes his head, still grinning. “Go on, then,” he says. “Have you heard her sing?”

“It’s possible to beg a song from her,” he admits. “Personally, I’ve only known her to give in when skilled accompaniment is available. They love instruments, but she more than most. I was fortunate to have my violin with me at the time.”

“You’re a bit mad,” John remarks, as if commenting upon the weather or a new hole in his shirt. It’s far from the first time he’s said this. “It’s sort of brilliant.”

“You mean I’m brilliant.”

“Sort of brilliant, I said.”

Their knees bump beneath the table and they both freeze.

John must not realize the way his tongue touches his lips. It isn’t like him to be so cruel.

Sherlock adjusts his legs, tucking them under his chair. “What does your family believe about sirens, then?”

“Um,” John says, eyes momentarily gazing through Sherlock’s chest. “Well, my dad’s side of the family - the Watson side - they’re from down on the coast. Down south across the water, originally, near the lip of the gulf.”

That is approximately where Irene lives, yes. “All the way west?” he asks, baiting John into correcting him.

John nods. “At least, to hear my grandda tell it.” Not Irene’s family, then, but a neighbouring power. “He was the one to sail out here. Even in those days, land travel to the east was dangerous at best, even before you got to the mountains.”

“Dangerous?” Sherlock echoes. He thinks of the safety of home and knows John has the facts wrong.

“You haven’t heard the stories?”

“I’ve heard lots of stories,” he replies. “Being from the south, I believe few of them.”

“Well,” John says, “one of the stories I’ve heard the most is that some of the nobs over there aren’t human.”

Once the words are out, John obviously realizes the misstep. It’s painful to watch him in pain.

“I believe that accusation is levelled against most of the nobility,” Sherlock replies calmly, not defensively. His voice is remarkably steady. Commendable, he applauds himself. Commendable enough not to be stabbed over. “But that’s right. Some of them are leeches. The political system is rather interesting for the mix, particularly across the southern mountains.”

“Oh,” John says.

“Anyway,” Sherlock says.

“Anyway,” John agrees and clears his throat. It’s almost reassuring, the way he so easily follows Sherlock’s lead. He’s a skilled follower, capable of anticipating where he’ll be led, and he complies so well. Sherlock has no idea what to do with him.

That night, as they edge around the subject of sleep, John forfeits his mattress. Sherlock declares him an idiot. There is a debate about the probability of John attacking him in his sleep. Sherlock wins. All sharp objects are left downstairs and they share the loft. It’s cold and Sherlock needs the heat. And, as Sherlock now knows well, lying on the thresh is disgusting.

They barely remove more than their footwear. John grants him the pillow, brooking no discussion. They lie apart, head to toe as strangers sleep, listening to the rain.

In the small hours of the morning, silence registers in his ear.

His mind jerks awake while his body holds stock still. No more rain.

He extricates himself from the blankets as smoothly and silently as he can. John is on his side, facing Sherlock. His eyes are closed. Beneath their lids, there is no movement. The air is cold.

Sherlock climbs down the ladder. He ties on his boots and puts on his coat. He pauses at a sound from above. There are no further sounds. He picks up his satchel.

He opens the door.

He closes it behind him.

Dawn approaches through a grey sky and he does his best not to run.

He takes a risk on the return to Montague. His hunger is a dull hurt and his limbs turn cold in the passing fog. Standing at the edge of the empty road, doing his utmost to keep his feet out of the worst puddles, he sings. His voice is low and deep with glamour and he is afraid of how far the sound might carry. The song is Irene’s, as much as any song can be said to belong to a single person.

The rabbits are first, as rabbits always are. Next come the birds. Useless squirrels follow. At last, a doe emerges. Then more, three deer in all. He beckons the largest closer, dropping into a private murmur, and the animal comes to nose at his hand. The other wildlife begins to stir, no longer frozen in mesmerized ranks. Some flee. Others remain, venturing closer as he inspects the doe for signs of illness.

Finding the animal in reasonable heath, no ticks or wounds visible, no discolouration around the eyes, he soothes her into absolute compliance. She butts her head against his side, pressing for contact, choosing the position. He permits it. Lowering his glamour to a mere hum, he places his mouth against short fur, high on the neck and just below the jaw. She permits it.

The puncture is smooth. His teeth extend and retract with a motion as fluid as any stroke of the bow upon his violin, as piercing and commanding. But not, without John, as sweet.

He drinks his fill and releases her.

For the next quarter mile, she follows alongside him as he walks. When he rests his hand upon her back, she presses close. Until he shouts at her to leave him, the animal believes herself tame. Even then, the doe slinks away with slow, unwilling steps. Irene was nothing if not an excellent teacher.

Dear Angelo, he writes.

I was particularly glad to receive your letter this week. Upon recent reconsideration, my ability to establish friendship is notably subpar.

The ink dries upon his pen twice before he determines how to continue.

John and I have experienced cultural differences. It was unsettling. Despite his other merits, he is unfairly biased against my way of life and I can see no way to strip him of these delusions. I’ve obfuscated around the subject as you instructed me to, but that has led to increasing obfuscation.

I find hiding who I am loathsome, but his disapproval is very forceful. All the same, I don’t want to lie to John. John is very honest. When he thought I’d lied to him, he responded very negatively. I didn’t obfuscate the facts to avoid the topic or convince him otherwise, but I did lie. He dropped the matter because he trusts me.

Written down, even parsed for Angelo and coded for any unwanted readers, it looks a bit worse than Sherlock remembers it being at the time. With John’s attempt on his life excluded, Sherlock’s behaviour is what appears unsavoury. This is markedly unfair. How was he meant to get through that first night without feeding? How, when John’s response to the softest growl of Sherlock’s stomach is to make an attempt only slightly removed from force-feeding?

The obfuscation began out of necessity, he concludes. It had to continue when John wanted to be friends. John is a very good friend. He is also an engaging storyteller. I would write his stories for you, but they lose all their vitality upon the retelling without John to support them. It seems unlikely that a boy with his background would laugh as often as he does, but John has a way of taking good humour and focusing it, as mirrors do the light of a candle. He laughs at me on occasion, but not the way the Anderson boy does.

I would describe him better for you, but my vocabulary is proving frustratingly inadequate and inaccurate. We don’t appear to have the necessary words in Franc and no one in the area has had the decency to write an Anglic dictionary. The oversight is egregious. You would have to meet him to understand fully.

I warn you, however, such an instance would be doomed to failure. When he asked after my family, I mentioned you. He believes you to be my father in more than the metaphorical sense. I hope you don’t mind. It was the better truth. I didn’t want to discuss Mummy or Father.

He stops for long minutes to watch his candle gutter.

There may be no point to any of it. After today, I’m uncertain as to whether John and I remain friends. He claims we do. It’s possible he merely feels too guilty after his outburst yesterday to say otherwise. And it was an outburst worse than even my sense of the word. (At least, I believe it was. Have you ever been frightened by my outbursts? Not for me, but for your own sake?)

Even if we are no longer friends, I have to keep seeing him. It is literally impossible to avoid him and if we are not to be friends, I would rather not see him at all. He lives in the town where Jim (he has invited me to call him Jim) has asked me to perform an errand. I should be able to complete it soon, at which point my lessons will begin.

I know it sounds as if I have become distracted through my association with John, but I have been as quick as feasibly possible in accomplishing my task. I haven’t forgotten, nor have I forgotten you. I am responding to your letters promptly and will date this example to prove it. The fault belongs with the post.

In regards to your concerns:

1. I am eating regularly enough.
2. I am staying as dry as possible and as warm as expected.
3. I still have my own room at the inn, though a small one.
4. I am not technically unarmed as John has given me one of his knives to bluff with. You know how effective my bluffs are.
5. Jim and I have agreed that the lessons will be exchanged for this errand. After the first lesson, I’ll know whether it will be worth pursuing in full. Presently, I am hopeful.
6. I don’t mind the work. It’s hardly as stimulating as picking up after Lestrade’s mistakes (never tell him this - in fact, burn this page) but at least the Anderson boy is nowhere in sight. I am meeting new, not terribly boring people and having valuable experiences.

In short, I’m fine. Everything is normal. Please stop worrying.

Unrelated: writing to Mrs. Hudson is the same as writing to Mycroft. She saves all of her letters and will show them to him before he asks. We’re still not speaking with him. I’m quite fond of my current lifestyle and wouldn’t mind continuing it in a safer area. You could find work at a bakery and I could continue on as a courier. We don’t have to go back. At least consider it.

Ever your dear boy,

Sherlock Holmes

The wax seal of the letter bears the imprint of Irene’s signet rather than his own. Where this letter is going, her mark is far more influential than his. He hands the postman the letter and a coin in the morning.

Envying the human his horse, he only feels marginally better.

Walking with dried, ground holly leaves in his socks has done wonders for the resistance in his feet. Irksomely, the progress has been slower than it ought to have been by approximately two weeks. There’s a chance Victor is right after all and resistance is more difficult to gain as a full adult. Rather, impossible to gain as a full adult.

Fortunately, that is something Sherlock decidedly isn’t. It takes months of fulfilling these cravings for them to settle. Even at home, humans have been known to die from the process when those involved are left unsupervised. Though Mycroft’s laws are more civilized than to allow it, there are other southern lords who have been known to give over their criminals to youths coming of age. It isn’t the typical method of executing a murderer or a horse-thief, he’s been led to believe, but it is as effective a crime deterrent as it is distasteful.

It’s been weeks, growing into months. Writhing each night and struggling each day, knowing that release waits beneath the skin of every passerby. He’ll drink eventually, he knows. He’ll plan it out, nice and neat. He’ll drain his prey, come to his full, and feel as empty and humiliated as he did the first time.

Unless it were John.

Except it can’t be John.

But it has to be John.

And yet it can’t be, not for months on end, not enough to satisfy him, not so little as to leave John alive.

John has to live. The thought of anything else is absurd.

The thought of drinking from any other is anathema.

Supposing, theoretically, if he should he do the unthinkable and surrender to temptation, then what? Masturbate in front of a stranger?

Does that count as cheating on John?

It might. It would. It certainly would when the reverse is cheating. The mere concept of someone else watching John come is horrendous beyond description. Someone else touching John. John wanting someone else to touch him, or to kiss, or to tell his stupid, marvellous stories to.

John can’t.

Idiocy. Of course John can. Of course John will. If Sherlock doesn’t secure John permanently, of course John will.

What would that take? Sherlock must first stabilize his own condition. Once stable, Sherlock would need so very little from John’s veins. Small nips, now and then, quickly made and soon forgotten. They could have each other, regularly, and John would suffer nothing more than minor anaemia. This is nothing more than a fantasy when he knows he’s far from a full transition. He has but the slightest trace of stubble, and only on one side of his face.

Supposing he did cheat on John enough to stabilize, what then? What of living with him? Arriving in the evening is well and good, as is leaving early or midmorning, but how long could he manage the illusion of consuming solid meals? Humans use their food as a social bonding device. John is always offering tea and water, always seems disappointed or even concerned when Sherlock abstains.

Being tied down to the area within a half-day’s walk of Bart’s Crossing would have dire results on his hunting as well. Time and time again, the same weakened deer, allowing in illness and infection he refuses to risk into his own body. And what when the marks on the deer are seen? A partially drained animal is an easy target for any hunter, even a human one. Someone is bound to notice eventually. They’ll suspect his presence and begin to hunt for him as well.

With his acquired resistance, he could pass over the bridge and live in the town. That would alleviate some suspicion but limit hunting even further. There would be more humans offering him solid sustenance and wondering when he never partook.

No, he would have to convince John to come away with him. Somehow. Say it would only be for a short while and then convince him to stay through piecemeal efforts. Which would end terribly over the solid food issue and the little matter of John’s sister remaining in Bart’s.

Possibly, very carefully, Sherlock could convince John to come away and teach him that this species war is pure idiocy. The humans back home may grumble now and again, but none of them have ever tried to kill him. In fact, Mrs. Hudson and Molly adore him. A pity how difficult it would be for John to meet them, the pair situated months away by ship and horse.

There’s also the matter of Angelo. Dear, sweet Angelo who hasn’t noticed Sherlock aging for the past decade. Seeing the former soldier as twice Sherlock’s age, Angelo will not approve of John. John will not understand Angelo’s objections. Attempting to explain the unexpected ramifications of his mother’s poor wording - no harm will come to my child - will reveal Mummy’s ability to use glamour and, in conjunction, the family dietary requirements.

Supposing Sherlock masters Moriarty’s glamour techniques and successfully creates layers of self-monitoring and command in Angelo’s mind beneath Mycroft’s influence. Supposing Angelo recognizes Sherlock as an adult, realizes the past twenty-two years as the farce they were and yet sees how Sherlock knew nothing of it for all too long. Supposing Angelo chooses to remain with Sherlock, Angelo would approve of John but never accept Sherlock’s deceit.

Deceit, not glamour. Though an unclaimed human such as John has no legal protection against glamour, Sherlock has only used it sparingly. He’s not enough of a hypocrite to fight for Angelo’s freedom while enthralling another man.

In any case, the situations are entirely different. Angelo’s mind has been warped with imposed parental concerns; the veracity of his love has yet to be proven, but will be soon. John is deceived on one fact. His attack on Sherlock’s life was professional, not personal, and taking the action clearly devastated him. The issue with John is not whether or not Sherlock is cared for, but whether John will choose duty or Sherlock.

Duty, obviously. Just look at the man’s shoulder. Therefore, Sherlock cannot conflict with it.

Therefore, Sherlock cannot compete with it.

John would never come away with him. There’s no way to continue.

The entire matter is unfeasible.

He has a bedfellow in Brixton, a stout man who smells of tallow. The trundle in the room is occupied by the man’s brother and two nieces. Their scents suffuse the cramped quarters. The inn is packed with humanity and humanity filled with the warmth he needs.

Lying very still, ignoring the body beside his, he suffers through the night.

Each lapse into sleep is a lapse into dreaming. He startles awake anew enough times to lose count. Certainly enough times for the man to jab an elbow into his side.

“Will you stop twitching? What’s wrong with you?” the man eventually demands in a whisper.

“How do you know if you’re in love?” He’s never bothered to ask before.

“By going the fuck to sleep.”

Sherlock does.

John opens the door. He smiles, then restrains himself. He squares his shoulders and says, “Hello. Passing through or coming in?”

“Can I- Both?”

Inside, John keeps his distance until Sherlock crosses it. Words are exchanged, are lost between desperate eyes and open, pressed mouths. John trips over a chair leg and Sherlock pursues him back, presses him down to the floor. John tugs him closer, lower. His heels dig against the small of Sherlock’s back.

John takes him inside his body, tight and deep, and he moves. His face flickers in the firelight, a creature dark of eyes and gold of hair. “More,” John pants.

“There is no more,” Sherlock tries to explain.

“More.”

“John.”

“More.”

John bites him across the throat, as a wolf does, and Sherlock jerks awake. His cock is soft, his body boiling, and his heart fights the restraints of his ribs. His mind drips down, returning to traces of restless dreaming.

He’s elbowed in the side, hard, and reality resumes.

He slips back into sleep before he can retaliate. “He hit me, John,” he complains. “You should hit him back.”

“All right,” John replies amiably. “Later, though.”

“Obviously.” He’s not at all in the mood to lift his head from John’s lap, let alone permit the soldier to move.

“Will you cut your hair?” John asks, running his fingers through the same. “You’re an adult. You should cut it.”

“Do you dislike it?”

John twines a curl between his fingers and slowly, gently tugs. It separates smoothly from his scalp. “I’ll put it in a locket. What sort of ribbon should I tie it with?”

“This,” Sherlock replies, slipping thin twine into John’s hand. Their textures are the same, coarse twine and rough fingers.

John ties twine and hair into a necklace. He slips it over his head and black curls hang next to the bleeding mess of his shoulder. Thick red drops leak down his skin, trailing towards Sherlock’s upturned face. John smiles down at him contentedly, never noticing the slow chill of his own ashen face.

“You’re going to die,” Sherlock warns him mildly.

“Hm?” John smiles on, eyes blank.

“Your shoulder,” Sherlock prompts, sitting up. “You’re bleeding.”

John glances to his broken skin, to the pulsing red path staining his chest and trousers. “Oh that. That’s just a kiss.” His fingers curl beneath Sherlock’s chin, drawing him in. “I wouldn’t mind another.”

Sherlock pulls away and forces his eyes open. Unmoving, he stares into the dark until it gives way to light.

Since meeting John, he has worn the knife on his hip. The hilt is blunt, the blade sharp, the effect plain and the result oddly soothing. The style of the sheath is simple enough to fit the foreign cut of his jacket and familiar enough to the area to make him appear almost local of origin.

He wears it to blend in, to normalize himself. Knives are practicality-turned-fashion in this barbaric place. He seldom sees them used: when the locals aren’t elbowing him in the side, they’re tolerable enough. He’s begun to acquire consistent clients. Some of them are even likeable in a limited way. All the same, every man wears a warning at his hip. Sherlock hasn’t investigated the folds of any skirt, but he imagines there to be little difference between implied and blatant threat.

While he walks, he tries not to touch the hilt. He tries not to think of how the weight has grown familiar and comforting.

While he walks, he tries not to think about a lot of things.

John opens the door without touching his hand. He opens the door, wide. More widely than he typically does and certainly more than any guard should.

His eyes are blue. Alert, clear, pupils expanded and whites on display. His eyebrows pull downward together. His hands are confused, fingers tapping against door and doorframe. His lips are particularly chapped and red. He’s been biting the bottom one, perhaps chewing on it.

“Afternoon,” Sherlock says.

“Sherlock,” John says, as if startled. Which he shouldn’t be, as he recognized Sherlock’s voice before opening the door. His left hand leaves the doorframe. “You’re back.”

“Obviously.”

John’s smile devastates and Sherlock comprehends nuance a moment too late.

“Ah,” he says. “Not that I- Deliveries. In Bart’s, per usual.”

“Oh,” John says. “Right. I can....” He offers his hands.

“In person today,” he corrects. “I’ll be crossing.”

“All right,” John says, but doesn’t move.

Sherlock still wants to bite him. It’s there, the want, demanding his mouth against the soft vulnerability of neck. He’s never had John there, never properly made him his. Two weeks away, and Sherlock’s body demands that he reclaim what is his. Sherlock drops his gaze instead.

“I talked to Mike,” John says, as if this is intended to mean something.

Sherlock looks at the gate door, the one John ought to be opening. It is much easier to look at than John is. The wood and metal display little warmth in the waning sunlight. They are forbidding, obstacles to recognize and overcome and forget.

“About the nightmares,” John continues. “And the- Well, the relapse. I hadn’t had a spell like that in over three years. I thought.... It doesn’t matter what I thought. But it doesn’t seem likely to happen again soon and Mike has a few ideas what to do if it does.”

“What happened three years ago?” Sherlock asks.

John’s stance straightens. The man grows from having Sherlock’s gaze upon him. “Nervous fever. Relapses happen sometimes. That was the first time I had the delusions without the fever, but I- Sherlock?”

“What is that? Nervous fever, how does it spread?” Stupid, stupid not to ask first. All manner of mayhem could hide in a soldier’s blood. He should have known his reactions to John weren’t normal.

“You’re fine,” John says quickly. “You can’t catch it, it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” he demands.

“It’s not the clap, Sherlock!”

“Oh yes, forgive my asking,” Sherlock snaps. “I’m sure no one would mind if I started trying to stab them.”

“I-!” John forces his face away, reining in his temper as sharply as he might an unruly horse. His jaw sets. “It’s day terrors.” he says, voice tight. “There’s this kind of... not a real fever, but it can feel like it. I asked Mike because I never want that to happen again. You know I didn’t mean what I did.”

“Of course you meant it,” Sherlock disparages. “You thought I wasn’t human and decided to kill me. You obviously meant it. If you’re going to lie, you’d best do it better.”

John doesn’t flinch. What he does is lower his voice and say, “It’s more complicated than that.”

More than you know, Sherlock can’t reply.

“Will you talk to him?” John asks. “I’m not asking you to- Well, yes, I am, but. Will you?”

“Fine,” Sherlock replies. It won’t matter either way and he lets his tone show it. “Who is this Mike?”

“Mike Stamford, he’s the doctor,” John tells him. “A good one, used to work out further west.”

“Farther,” Sherlock corrects very much automatically, his mind entirely elsewhere. The target. John has handed him the target. A few talks with this man, a simple command of follow where I lead and Sherlock is finished here. “Where could I find him?”

“His place is by the meetinghouse,” John supplies. “That’s the big brick one. He’s the house with the brick front wall and the rest wood. Black shutters, and there’s a sign out front.”

“Is he expecting me?”

“More like he’s hoping to see you, but yes.” John makes no attempt to hide the double-applicability of that description.

“All right.”

“All right?”

“Yes.” Before John can carry on in his echoing, Sherlock turns to the side and kneels to work on the laces of his boots. It’s time to walk the holly path and he’d be a fool to let this opportunity at Stamford pass by. “Do you have to open the gate from the other side, or...?” he prompts.

“Hm? Oh, yeah.” Staring at him. Sherlock doesn’t need to look to know it.

Sherlock is barefoot before John moves. He straightens with both boots in one hand, his socks with their powdered holly tucked into the footwear. Dirt feels strange beneath the skin of his feet, a childhood sensation long since turned foreign.

The expression across John’s features ought to be just as strange, yet is readily recognized although Sherlock has never before seen it. For all John wears it well, pain doesn’t suit him. Neither does guilt.

“Stop that,” Sherlock tells him without thinking. John shouldn’t look like this. John isn’t a man awaiting his fate or meeting his doom. That he should appear to be for Sherlock’s sake is absurd, reality made unrealistic.

“Sorry,” John says. The word is so terribly serious on his lips. His tongue nudges out to taste it. “I’ll get the gate, only be a moment.”

The gatekeeper disappears inside, shutting and bolting the door. He opens the gate to the bridge and beckons Sherlock onto the wood. The soles of his feet prickle but do not burn as John closes the way behind them. The holly path is deliberately marked by wooden edging, as if the sheen were not enough to prove the difference between the main bridge and the defensive portion.

The rail on the right side is thick and sturdy. On the left, by his side, the rail is noticeably newer, slightly thinner and less weatherworn. Replaced in the last five years. Sherlock’s eyes are trapped on the edge of the bridge as he walks, John at his right. The water below rushes white over grey rock.

Too many years of playing the child bid his hand to reach, to take John’s sleeve and hold tight against his fear. His hand brushes over the hilt of the knife instead, a poor decision in his current situation.

“You still have it,” John notes quietly, much too quietly. The river attempts to drown his voice.

“Do you want it back?”

John says, “No. I want you to keep it.”

At the other side, John calls up to Bill. Bill opens the door, a small one, not the one for livestock and carts.

“Thank you,” Sherlock says to Bill, stepping through, leaving John on the other side. He stops to put his boots on. Bill utterly fails to close the door.

“You’ll talk to Mike?” John checks, speaking in Franc. Such an obvious bid for privacy.

Having been standing a bit between them, Bill awkwardly moves out of the way.

“I won’t leave without speaking to him,” Sherlock confirms in like tongue, kneeling to tie his laces.

Bill looks between him and John. He wears a question on his face and it’s obvious he already knows the answer.

“Not now, Bill,” says John with Anglic words, sounding positively harassed.

Bill laughs.

Footwear restored, Sherlock stands. And John is... John is more John. Just for an instant, just for the remnants of an irritated grin. His eyes on Sherlock’s face are warm before they remember to be apologetic. They haven’t seen each other in a fortnight and John thinks he knows why.

“Will I see you later?” John asks.

“Eventually,” Sherlock answers. He walks away without a kiss, without a touch, without anything more than a knife at his hip and lies behind his teeth.

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