Fic: Stranger at the Gate - 6/11 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: Stranger at the Gate
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 6.2k 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
“Could we, erm,” Sherlock begins as awkwardly as he can. It’s not very difficult. “Could we ease into the topic?”
Stamford’s expression is exceptionally professional and the exactly correct shade of compassionate. “Of course.”
Sherlock sits stiffly, hands between his knees. He bites his lip the way John does, distractedly, momentarily, hoping that Stamford will see the similarity. “Thank you, doctor,” he says. “So, erm, um. What sort of things do you usually, ah, see to?”
“All sorts,” Stamford replies. “I’ve always been something of a general practitioner, though I met John during my stint as a field surgeon. Nowadays, things are much calmer, thank god.” His tone is very much designed to put Sherlock at his ease. He’s quite good. Sherlock is reminded of Molly’s late father.
“So you see to patients on Bart’s and on either side of the river? That must be quite the variety.”
“The west side, yes,” Stamford replies, which is what Sherlock has heard. He’s done his share of research and questioning in the east and there is no one from Euston to Montague who has ever known Stamford to make a house call. “Clara takes the east. It’s enough to know that some troubles aren’t so rare as you’d think.”
Sherlock clams up. He becomes excruciatingly awkward. It is a performance he has taken time and effort to perfect over the years.
“Of course,” Stamford continues, “there’s always some kind of illness going around. Accidents, too.”
Sherlock nods a bit, a bobbing of the head while he hunches his shoulders.
“Not much in the way of surgery now. It’s remarkable, the things that can clear up without poking holes in people or leeching them.”
“Is that why doctors aren’t called leeches over here?” Sherlock asks.
Stamford wrinkles his nose at the term of respect. “I wasn’t aware we were called that anywhere.”
“Oh,” says Sherlock. He proceeds to shut down into awkwardness yet again, worse than before. He can always escalate. There, now he also happens to be vaguely apologetic.
“At any rate,” Stamford attempts to resume, clearly intending to approach Sherlock’s stated - well, mumbled - cause for complaint.
“Are you certain Clara can’t hear us?” Sherlock interrupts.
Stamford’s reassuring smile is both practiced and somewhat strained. “Entirely.”
“Does she, um, ever. No, I mean.” He gives himself an ample moment to rephrase. “Does she ever encounter, out east, that, or do men come here and ask, or...?”
“Most choose to stop by while on other business,” Stamford tells him. “That’s very much the usual way of it.”
“You don’t ever, I don’t know, go out on request...? If someone specifically needs to talk to a man. Or does no one actually specify that?”
“I don’t go east,” Stamford says, as if this explains everything. “Now let’s focus on you for a moment, shall we?”
Sherlock is once again nervous with his hands between his knees.
“There are three major categories,” Stamford tells him. “All you need tell me is which category fits you best. You may refer to them by number if that helps.”
Sherlock nods.
“There is rapidity, difficulty, and irritation.”
“To clarify: you don’t mean irritation as in anger.”
“No.”
“Ah,” Sherlock replies. “No, not number three.”
Stamford merely sits there with his squinting eyes, calmly waiting. It’s quite reassuring, the fact that the human can’t fully scrutinize him.
“One and a half,” Sherlock confesses.
“One and two?” Stamford asks.
“Two followed by one.”
Stamford nods at him reassuringly. “Is this a recent development?”
“The, um. Yes.”
“You smoke?”
“Yes.”
“Cut back. Drinking as well. That will help with number two.”
It won’t. Even as a settled adult, a modicum of human blood will be called for. No amount of neglecting his pipe will ever change that. As far as Sherlock knows. Which, in this topic, is admittedly not very far. “Is there anything else?”
There are a few other things. Most of them involve digesting solid foods. The remainder involve relaxing and keeping a positive attitude. Hardly about to work.
“And, ah. Number one?”
This information is actually rather interesting. Sherlock very much hopes it’s cross-species applicable. If it is, this is potentially the most Sherlock has ever learned about his own body in one sitting.
When Stamford finishes speaking, Sherlock thanks him. Soon after, he exits with the remains of his dignity and more valuable information than Stamford realizes he was imparting.
He never goes east? Ever?
“This is strange,” Sherlock announces.
John gives a vague hum. “You mean streets don’t end in cliffs where you’re from?”
“Hardly,” he replies, unable to keep himself from looking over the fence, from looking down the steep and rocky slope toward rock and racing water. The soil at the base of the fence has begun to crumple away, leaving small gaps under the wooden planks. Sherlock can work the toe of his boot under. He can see it on the other side of the fence, looking over. Incredible, how much vertigo one small motion can cause.
“You all right?” John’s hand is warm on his back. Which is impossible with the number of layers Sherlock wears.
It’s true all the same. Warmth blooms where John touches. It unfurls and stretches with an ache.
“I’m fine,” he answers.
They watch the water roar on seventy feet below.
“But that wasn’t what I meant,” Sherlock adds.
“Sorry, what you meant when?”
Sherlock rolls his eyes impatiently. “Being strange.”
John glances up at him, hand sliding from the small of Sherlock’s back to his hip. “Me not being a little man trapped in a gatehouse? That’s not strange, that’s normal.”
“It’s very strange.” Sherlock wraps his arm around firm shoulders. “You’re very strange.”
“Explain to me how I’m the stranger one of this pair.”
“You have a more civilian set of behaviours in town. You’re less alert, but also less distracted. You don’t seem to know which way to stand and attempt to orient yourself in a grid pattern, facing west or east.” He wants to set John in a circular room merely to see how he responds. “You’re easily bored despite the fact that there is even less to do in the gatehouse and you occupy yourself perfectly well in there. On average, you’re more demonstrative here, largely with your hands, though oral contact has noticeably decreased. You like it when people look at us and talk.” As the lighting has changed, his skin tone, hair and eye colour have also shifted slightly.
John considers this. He looks out across the river, perhaps thinking of the man burning beneath his arm, perhaps simply regarding the sunset. At last, John says, “You mind, don’t you?”
“No, I like differences.” He likes John. “Differences are interesting.”
“You don’t like people talking about us.”
“John, I don’t like people, full stop.”
“Sherlock,” John warns lightly.
“I don’t. I don’t like groups. Membership in a crowd changes the behaviours of the individual members. It’s unsettling. You can’t truly know anyone you only know in a group.” Social pressure and expectation are their own kinds of glamour.
“You’ve read things about this, haven’t you?” John asks. “Books and those little pamphlets.”
“I’ve observed.”
John does that thing with his mouth, that thing where he doesn’t move it, but his eyes change every meaning within its gentle curves. John is saddened and determined, neither fiercely but still enough to provoke action. “Did you like the pub last week?”
“It wasn’t terrible.”
“Then come with me tonight.”
“Stamford told me I shouldn’t drink,” he answers, pre-emptively cutting off that avenue toward disaster. “Also not to smoke, but dropping both at once is ridiculous.”
“Why was this?” John asks, watching the side of Sherlock’s face rather than the sunset. His motion more protective than motivated by the creeping chill, John presses a bit closer. “I thought your follow-up chat was about me.”
“Not everything is about you, John.”
John’s eyes widen. “Your stomach?” he asks, body turning to face Sherlock entirely. His free hand brushes across Sherlock’s front to rest lightly over his abdomen. The gesture is one of the utmost care, jarringly reminiscent of a father and his unborn child. John’s thumb circles there on his coat, every motion meant to soothe, subtle movement performed without conscious thought. “Is it getting worse?”
“No, that’s not- No. That’s all diet, I have that well in hand. We spoke about the other problem.”
“The other- oh.”
The intent behind John’s position shifts. Already wrapped in John’s arms, already standing with a deliberate hand hidden against his front, Sherlock feels it instantly. What’s more, he scents it on John. “Stop it,” Sherlock hisses. “We’re in public.”
“You still want to, then?” John asks, voice low. “With me.”
“Not in public.”
“This isn’t inappropriate.” John, terrible John, drops his mouth to Sherlock’s thoroughly clothed shoulder. “If it was inappropriate-”
“Were. If it were inappropriate. Honestly, John, your native tongue-”
“If it were inappropriate,” John continues on, “I would be doing it under your coat-”
“You really ought to stop talking, you have no idea how to do it-”
“Maybe with my hand, maybe on my knees. Probably on my knees-”
“People can hear you speaking poorly, you ought to stop-”
“Could take you in my mouth, I’d stop talking then. Or do you want me to keep talking, I can never remember. I could do either, might be dark enough to hide if we duck behind the woodpile. Can’t pick, though. I love the way you wake up on my tongue, but if I have that, I can’t tell you how much I love the way you tug on my arm when I’m touching you. So should I talk or stop talking? You’re the clever one, I’m sure you can tell me what to do.” He presses against Sherlock’s side, growing hard against his hip, delicious heat.
Sherlock pushes him back. Pushes him directly to the side, one hand firm against John’s chest, wavering on John’s chest. “You should stop. Right now.”
John does.
John holds up his hands and takes a step away and folds his hands behind his back and straightens his jacket and folds his hands behind his back a second time.
“Too much,” John says. “That was too much. That was wildly inappropriate, I’m sorry.”
“Three weeks,” Sherlock replies. He buries his hands deep in his pockets.
“Since I nearly killed you, I know, too soon. I am so sorry.”
“I want to kick your legs out from under you, pin you to the ground and fuck you until you’re hoarse,” Sherlock tells him flatly, cheeks blazing. “And you would go hoarse. Begging, praising, shouting my name; I’m not picky. Not as long as it involves you on your back.”
It takes him a moment, but John does manage to close his mouth.
“All right,” John says as Sherlock tries to duck his head and hide in the folds of his own scarf. “Yes. We can, yes, we can do that. That is a fantastic plan, and I approve of it. Once Harry finishes in her workshop, we can lock her out of there for the night.”
“Three weeks,” Sherlock restates.
“You mean since we’ve had each other,” John reasons. “Because I don’t think Harry would like being locked out for three weeks.”
“I mean,” Sherlock says, dropping his voice low, practically a growl, “it’s been three weeks. Since anything.”
John’s brow furrows. “You mean... at all?”
Facing the fence, his shoulders hunched and his fists pocketed, Sherlock nods.
It’s grown darker as they’ve spoken. Where their shadows once fell, firelight now reaches. The wind is ever colder and the water below continues to roar.
“Oh god,” John realizes.
Sherlock looks at him sharply.
“After the war,” John explains, more concerned than uncomfortable, “for the first while, I, well. Nothing happened. I didn’t want much to happen then, but it wasn’t happening.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that, sometimes, if you’re frightened enough, it just... goes away. I don’t know if that’s what’s happened here, but- You’re smiling.”
Sherlock is, quite widely.
He can’t seem to stop.
“John,” he says, nearly laughing the name, “that is far from the issue. This nuisance I have would greatly prefer to bother you instead.”
John nearly laughs as well. “Don’t call him a nuisance, it’s rude. I’m very fond. And he can bother me whenever he decides to get around to it.”
“‘He’? John, we’ve been over this.”
“Well, he’s definitely not a ‘she’,” John tells him, absolutely serious.
“It’s an ‘it’.”
John purses his lips for a moment, eying him. Finally, he concludes, “I don’t think you’re quite normal, sometimes.”
A noise not unlike a giggle escapes Sherlock’s mouth.
Then another.
And another, this from John.
Sherlock controls himself, is entirely in control, and then John has the poor sense to take a pointed glance at Sherlock’s crotch. All dissolves into laughter.
They settle into sighs and chuckling after a time. It could be a short time, but his stomach hurts and his grin aches. John grins back at him, so inexplicably essential. They each hold the other’s arm in the attempt to remain upright and steady.
“People are staring at us,” Sherlock informs him. It’s true. The few on the lamp-lit street, a few more from windows; there is no such thing as true privacy here. It’s all that keeps Sherlock’s need in check and John’s neck unbloodied.
“I know,” John says, jubilant, and waves at his neighbours with his free hand. “I know what they’re saying too.”
“Oh dear.”
“Mm, yeah. ‘That John Watson and his gorgeous bloke, what happy lunatics.’”
Sherlock can’t breathe. He can’t do anything but smile helplessly, consciously holding his teeth in.
John stands close. His mouth is soft and fond. His eyes are bright in the growing dark. His hand on Sherlock’s arm is not a tether to hold him or pull him near, but the warm assumption that the distance between their bodies could never be relevant.
“I still say your language is idiotic,” Sherlock tells him. Only argument can stand in the way of kisses when John looks like that.
“This from the man who calls his cock a nuisance,” John counters.
“It is a nuisance.”
John shakes his head disbelievingly. “Trust whatever Mike tells you and you’ll soon say differently.”
“Why, is that his area of expertise?”
“No, but he’s a good doctor,” John tells him. “Practically brought me back from the dead.” He wears his little smile, the one that indicates truth and understatement has been made into a joke. It’s possibly the expression of John’s that Sherlock watches for the most. The words it accompanies are unfailingly important, yet imparted as if meaningless.
“He’s really that good?”
John nods.
“Then what’s he doing this close to the edge of Mayhew’s territory?” Sherlock asks, certain to look confused rather than inquisitive. “He said he used to work for the man. A lord like Mayhew doesn’t let a useful tool escape without a fight.”
“Ah,” John says. “That’s one of the local pickles.”
Sherlock frowns. “Is that a food-based idiom?”
“What? Oh, sorry. It’s political manoeuvring on both sides.”
“On Mayhew’s or Stamford’s?”
“Lord Bryant’s,” John answers. “The river’s their border. Still fighting over it, but it’s political now. I mostly ignore it, these days. Not so exciting without anyone getting cut up over it. C’mon, it’s getting cold out. Let’s head in.”
“You mean there are treaties in progress?” Sherlock asks, slipping his gloved hand down into John’s. He follows where John leads him. “I thought those were decided four, five years ago.”
“They were, but it’s still politics with Mike and Clara.”
“Clara services the east and Stamford the west, I know that, but why the divide?”
“Clara’s just got a bit caught up in it, but Mike’s been stationed here deliberately,” John tells him. “And you can call him ‘Mike,’ you realize, that is allowed. The man who saved my life and my, well. You. You two ought to be on a first-name basis.”
“He’s a doctor. It’s respectful,” Sherlock assures him. “But why here? Putting a doctor at a border - why announce his expectations of further bloodshed that way?”
“That’s not it, actually,” John says, sounding surprised. “It’s more like posturing. I mean, Clara’s good, don’t get me wrong, but she’s still learning. The Stamford family has been producing doctors for generations and apparently, the Mayhews have always had one on hand.”
“One of those Stamfords?” Sherlock asks. “Out here?”
“It’s a bit lunatic,” John agrees. “Common enough name, I can see how you missed it.”
Sherlock flaps his free hand at him. “Let me work the rest of it out.”
John’s reply is in the squeeze of his fingers, the circling of a thumb.
“Stamford’s on the edge of Mayhew’s territory to demonstrate Mayhew’s superiority to Bryant’s followers,” Sherlock determines. “He’s better than their own physicians, they come to him, and they see how Mayhew is providing for his own people. A seed of civil unrest for Bryant and no great loss for Mayhew. And that’s why Michael Stamford in particular: send the one with the poorest eyesight, much less a waste of a surgeon.”
“I don’t know about that last part,” John says, “but that’s most of it.” Regarding Sherlock out of the corner of his eye, he looks proud.
Sherlock loves John’s pride in him. He absolutely adores it.
“Shall I tell you the rest of it, then?” Sherlock asks.
“Tell me.”
“Stamford and Clara see to the sides of the river from which they were born, which is ostensibly the reason for the divide. The official reason that everyone knows,” he says, speaking quickly and working it out as he does. “The unofficial but nevertheless real reason is that Stamford is too well-associated with Mayhew, or would be if people trust their urge toward name recognition. For Stamford to venture regularly into Bryant’s territory would smack of infiltration, if not espionage. Mayhew giving protection to those outside his own territory, at any rate.”
It will have to be a quick journey when Sherlock gets the doctor out of Bart’s. The doctor is a good man and Sherlock would rather not force that level of ramification upon him. Besides, it would probably upset John. Which would be quite terrible as John presently looks very pleased indeed.
“I love watching you do that,” John tells him.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. What did I miss?”
John grins a little. “Just the one thing.”
“Oh?” He’s ready for another laugh. The laughing helps diffuse the urge toward public indecency.
John’s grin fades. “It’s not actually very funny.” There it is, the understatement.
Sherlock has no trouble appearing concerned. “How not funny?”
“All that mess you just described? Actually happened about three... three and a half years ago, yeah, it was in the spring,” John says. “Bryant took poorly to it. It was settled fairly quietly. I only know about it because of Clara. She says most people don’t realize how serious it was.”
“Stamford’s been banished from the east,” Sherlock realizes.
“On pain of death,” John confirms. “It’s a bit ridiculous.”
Sherlock stops walking. John’s hand slides out of his before John stops as well and tries to catch at him. Sherlock doesn’t let him.
“A bit,” Sherlock repeats.
“What?”
“How is ‘on pain of death’ a ‘bit ridiculous’?” he demands. “How can that- How can that be normal to you?”
“Well, no, it’s not like it happens often-”
“Who banishes that way? John, there are better ways. Not simply less beheading but no beheading at all. Can you imagine that way of life or is that too foreign a concept?”
“What the hell are you on about?” John asks, staring at him, quizzical and injured around the edges.
“Nothing,” Sherlock snaps. He knows quite well they’re being stared at. He’s always being stared at, a curiosity in front of so many humans who all realize he’s different from them without understanding why. “Nothing, ignore me. My nuisance is making me irritable.”
The lie is bald and plain enough to make the very attempt offensive. John clearly takes it as such. Watching the human force down his anger and frustration is very much a remarkable sight.
“Is that no to the pub, then?” John asks, expression bland. He looks tired enough that it couldn’t be worth fighting him.
Sherlock sighs. “You go.”
John shakes his head. “I see them every day. I see you once a week.” He says the words so simply, so logically.
“Yes, fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yes.” Snippy. Unable to hide it.
John nods, then walks away in a new direction. The way back to Harry’s house.
Sherlock keeps close.
On the next street, he takes John’s arm and holds onto him tightly.
John nods once, just the once, and tucks their hands into his jacket pocket.
When they reach it, the house is empty but still warm, the fire banked. John tends to it.
Sherlock sits.
John watches the fire.
Sherlock stands. Crosses into the backroom and finds his way about by feel. He may nearly stab himself in the dark. He finds his satchel by scent and removes the missive by feel. He can’t take the second page into the other room. John will recognize the diagrams. The gatehouse and the bridge are too plain.
He returns to the front room. John doesn’t look up. He is seated before the fire. He has not moved.
Sherlock crosses to the ring of firelight and stands on the edge. He holds the missive in plain sight. He reads it. The challenge. The dare.
The phrasing and the tone are all correct. A game, the letter tells him. Solve this puzzle and play an even greater one. Go to the town which cannot be entered. Fetch this man. How far can he be brought east? Success will be counted in miles.
This isn’t innocent. This is no joke, no prank. He’d been blinded with eagerness to believe so.
What now?
He rereads the letter, as if the meaning could have shifted, as if words on paper are the contents of a jostled bag.
It remains the same, exactly as he has memorized it.
He folds the paper into thirds and looks into the fire. He waits for John to ask him what is wrong. He formulates several passable lies.
Rather than ask, John quietly tells him, “I’ve never seen paper burn. I’m almost certain of it.”
Sherlock closes his eyes. Light shines red and flickering against them all the same. He opens them.
He takes two steps forward and runs his hand through John’s hair. It shines in firelight: straw and wheat and gold, mingled and woven. No regard for order, not order as Sherlock sees it, but nevertheless neatly cut.
“Shall I indulge you?” he asks.
“Please,” John requests, calm and soft beneath the crackling of fire.
Sherlock steps forward and stoops. The corner of the folded paper catches. Withdrawing it from the fire, he cups his hand around the small flame. He returns to John. Small red flame shrivels the paper, shrivels itself into a blue burning edge. Words vanish letter by letter in small blazes of green, precise flourishes of penmanship and ink truly erased.
The fire fails halfway through and he returns to the hearth to finish it. Again, he holds it before John, showing him the glowing black curves of paper, the thin trail of smoke from its edges. The glow is so very slight. He breathes the scent deep into his lungs. He singes his fingers.
With the ashes gathered in his hands, he returns to the fire and tosses them in. His fingers are sooty. He rubs them together. The soot merely smears.
He sits down where he is and leans back until his shoulders touch John’s knees. He closes his eyes to heat and wavering light.
Steady, ever-steady, rough hands thread through his hair. Strong palms cradle his head. John, leaning forward, slowly crushes curls beneath his lips. A solitary kiss presses true.
“That was very nice,” John thanks him, ordinary words shaped by breath. “Almost like leaves.”
There is no reply that is not false, or inadequate, or entirely too true.
He settles against John’s shins, every inch of him a fool.
“You still haven’t asked.” His words are a quiet utterance into the dark, quiet enough not to wake John should he be sleeping.
A motion as slow as his sigh, John’s arm tightens about his waist. Short legs shift beneath the blankets, not quite fitting behind his. “D’you want me to ask?” John mumbles against the back of his neck. His breath sends a shiver through Sherlock’s skin that is quick to fade. That new piece of Sherlock, that unthinking, needful nuisance of desire, it seems to have died, or vanished. He has no appetite for John’s blood or flesh, merely for his voice and solidity.
Sherlock shakes his head, hair scraping against the pillow, brushing against John’s face.
John presses a kiss to his nape. “Then sleep.”
In the cramped space of the bed, Sherlock rolls over. He’s careful, aware of his elbows and John’s injured shoulder. Though John has never said, the muscle and bone ache when cold. John’s face is little more than a shape in the dark. The curve of the mattress and confident arms keep Sherlock close.
“How are you not curious?” Their noses brush. Breath between their mouths.
“I’m always curious about you. I don’t mind wondering.”
“How can you not mind?” Sherlock demands in a whisper. “That isn’t possible.”
John sighs. “No one sleeps until you stop wondering, is that it?”
“Essentially, yes.”
He listens to John thinking in the dark. If he could draw the thoughts from his mind, he would. If he could open John up and catalogue the innumerable contents, the hidden and the plain, he would.
John’s left hand leaves his back, shifting instead to his shoulder. That palm trails down his arm until fingers thread through his. John brings their hands into the small space between their chests, between their breath.
“The first part of you I saw was your hand,” John tells him. “No one has hands like yours, Sherlock. Not even Andrew - Young Mayhew - he has a swordsman’s hands. They’re a bit like Mike’s, but not much. I see a lot of hands in my job. Yours are different.”
“I told you,” Sherlock insists. “Our second night together.”
“You’re running from some southern lord,” John summarizes. “Or banished. I’d say banished, after tonight.”
They’re quiet for a time.
“What else?” Sherlock asks.
“If I had to run from Mayhew, I know I’d be frightened too,” John answers. “If I had to learn another language while I was at it, I’d be useless. If I ended up unarmed somewhere violent, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Sherlock says nothing. He brushes his thumb across John’s fingers, the motion small yet continuous.
“I’m sure I’d look a bit odd. Doubt I could control my temper. I try, but sometimes it.... I don’t think I’d do it as well as you do. Half the time, you’re the most ridiculously sheltered man I’ve ever come across. You’re constantly living in your head, you have no idea what’s reasonable or safe, and you’re probably going to wind up bleeding out in a ditch somewhere, the way you go on.”
John presses impossibly closer as he speaks, eyes shut tight, brow against brow.
“And the other half of the time,” John whispers.
He says no more. There is no more to say, everything in those few hoarse words.
Their hands clench, fingers locked. It aches well.
“Four-fifths,” Sherlock replies.
“What?”
“You’re four-fifths of the time.”
John’s lips are no different than they were for their last kiss. Nevertheless, it feels as if they ought to be. When they breathe into each other, it feels as if they are.
“I wanted to take you to the pub tonight,” John murmurs. “You-”
“I hate being shown off,” Sherlock snaps immediately, recoiling involuntarily. “I loathe it, don’t you ever-”
“Quiet,” John says, not a command but a statement of what John wants, and Sherlock becomes it instantly. “That’s not- It is a little, but that’s not the point. I’ve done some asking. It’s not much on Bart’s, but there are other things in the west. There are universities in the capital. And moneylenders, those always need a scribe and a sword hand. There’s all sorts of bookwork, I hear, not only arithmetic. Translation. Travel-writing, that’s always popular, everyone loves those.
“There’s always a merchant or two on their way through town. They’d do better telling you what there is,” John continues, speaking more quickly each time Sherlock comes close to interrupting. He presses their joined hands into Sherlock’s stomach, a restraining near-tickle that stops his breath. “But there are possibilities, all sorts, and they’re safer than going out east. I know you’re worried about being pinned down, but you could manage it somehow. You could invent your own job if you had to. You could be a wandering scholar, make people pay to listen to you.
“You wouldn’t have to worry about your southern lord. There’s that, too. Lord Mayhew knows my face, he approves of my bolt-catching abilities. That’s enough of a connection to have some pull. We could go to Young Mayhew for a spot of patronage if that doesn’t make you too leery. Andrew’s a better man than most and the life-debt doesn’t hurt.
“It would still be strange for you, I can’t say it won’t be. But it could be safe and steady work. You could be doing something that deserves you,” John tells him. “Less boredom, you’d like to be less bored.”
“You’re asking me to run away with you,” Sherlock summarizes. His voice is as flat as his body is tense.
“No,” John says, a comforting word. “I’m saying there’s good work in the west for someone like you, there’s decent work for someone like me, and sharing a bed does wonders for the rent.”
“John, that’s not feasible.”
“They’re possibilities, not a plan.”
“They’re still not feasible,” Sherlock groans, eyes tight shut, brow pressed to John’s. “We can’t live together. We can’t be around each other all the time, it would be terrible.”
“Worse than none of the time?” John asks.
“I’ve known you nine weeks. We’ve never been together for more than two days at a time.”
John presses closer, the warmth and strength of his body a compelling, flawless argument. “And you don’t want to change that?”
Sherlock kisses him, a hard, silencing press. “Stop talking. You need to stop talking.”
John threads a hand into his hair and kisses him back, slow and soft and calming. “I’m not asking for forever,” he states. “I’m asking for longer than nine weeks. I want to know you better.”
“You don’t,” Sherlock stresses. “Trust me, you don’t. John, that would end terribly.”
“Or you could get bored of me,” John counters. “I know there are risks.”
“That’s not the issue. We can’t just go off and live together. I know it’s difficult for you, but you could at least try not to be an idiot.”
“You could try not to be a prat, but I don’t see that happening either,” John counters. “Which is fine, by the way. I’m from a family of shouters, I know how to live that way.”
“John, I cannot live with you.”
“That’s fine. Could you live near me?”
Sherlock hesitates.
“You could,” John reasons from his silence. “More expensive, not splitting the rent, but that’s fine.”
“It’s not,” Sherlock tells him. “You think you want more, but you don’t. You need to believe that.”
The glamour spills from his mouth, too much force and belief to be restrained. The words ring in the air. They twist against John’s mind.
“I know I want more,” John says, and that is terrible, that is terrifying. John’s conviction is ironclad. His will is incredible, his certainty magnificent. “If you want more, we should have more.”
“You tried to slit my throat.”
Though true, it feels a weak excuse. How these words fail as a line of defence is a mystery. Perhaps it’s his sulking tone. Perhaps it’s the way his hands tether John close.
Or, perhaps, it’s the sincerity of John’s apologies, the helplessness the human feels. John believes himself at the mercy of his own damaged mind and this too is Sherlock’s fault. Telling him the truth is otherwise could get Sherlock killed, and John as well now that all of Bart’s knows they’re together. Everything is Sherlock’s fault and John is carrying his guilt.
“Can’t believe you still trust me,” John admits. “I barely still trust me.”
“You’re predictable. You do what’s right, you-”
“Hurting you isn’t right.”
“-have your duty and you do it.”
John shakes his head against the pillow. “Some of my duties haven’t been right. A lot of them, Sherlock. My best skill is killing people.”
“You’re still fundamentally a good man.”
“You were frightened of me,” John tells him and all Sherlock need do is agree. Yes, Sherlock was frightened and yes, that is why he cannot run away with him.
“Yes,” Sherlock says.
The moment was vulnerable and harsh, but Sherlock had handled him. Sherlock knew him so well, played him so expertly that John still believes Sherlock’s unglamorous words over his own senses. It’s a triumph and Sherlock hates that he can only feel failure.
John sits up. The blankets shift further as John draws his legs beneath him, but the human remains in the narrow bed rather than climb out of it over Sherlock. Cold seeps between their bodies. Peering through the dark, Sherlock can determine the hunching curve of his back. John sits with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Sherlock watches him, uncertain of where to touch or what to say.
“I was going to be better than him,” John tells him quietly. “I meant to be. I’m sorry.” It’s matter-of-fact, no begging in the dark. The words are as steady and sincere as they are mystifying.
“Better than whom?”
John looks at him, which is worth something. Even so, his face is lost to shadow.
Sherlock sits up to shiver in the cold. His hands hover before his arms wrap around John, binding the man against his chest with bone and sinew. John is still and stiff, as if the air has frozen him. “Better than whom?” Sherlock repeats. Rage kindles and grows closer to a blaze with each moment of silence. Who else has hurt his soldier?
“The man who had you,” John answers. He’s tense and almost tentative and it makes no sense.
“John, I don’t know what you’re talking about-”
“We don’t have to talk about it. It’s fine, I sorted it out on my own-”
“What do you think you know?” Sherlock demands.
“You can suck a cock like that but you didn’t know how to kiss,” John tells him. “You don’t know what to do when I tell you you’re brilliant or gorgeous. God, Sherlock, when you come, you look surprised. Even an idiot can put that together.”
“An idiot can put it together incorrectly, yes,” Sherlock agrees. “I like cock, I like to be spoken to, and with my condition, yes, achieving release is surprising. It’s fine. I’m fine. Stop being upset, we were meant to be sleeping hours ago.”
John is silent within his arms. Though easily infolded, he sits somehow unclaimed.
“We’ll talk about this in the morning,” Sherlock tells him. “If we truly must, which we don’t.”
They sit in silence. John lifts his hand and his fingers thread through Sherlock’s.
“You could go west without me,” John says at last. “It’s a better place, Sherlock. Less dangerous.”
“If I wanted less dangerous, I wouldn’t be in your bed. If you wanted less dangerous, you wouldn’t man the eastern gatehouse. You’re keeping your post. I’m going east. And south, once I can afford it.” He still has Irene’s ring. If he finds the right ship, the right captain, that will have sufficient clout.
John turns his face, searching for him in the dark. “You’re right,” John says, words without any sense of agreement. “We should be sleeping.”
Sherlock nods. He lies back and nudges forward, and John holds him with exquisite, painstaking gentleness until Sherlock huffs against his shoulder. Then the grip tightens, changes into the steady ownership they ought to have over each other.
Slowly, out of nothing more than fading endurance, John does not hold so tightly, nor Sherlock clutch. John pets his hair, his last resort of calming. Sherlock hums, a gentle thrum of glamour, and John drifts down. His hand remains curled at Sherlock’s nape.
Sherlock closes his eyes and breathes deep the scents of the room before he moves, carefully extricating himself from sleep-heavy arms. Even with John present, the soiled handkerchief is easily found within the blankets, and John does not stir as he searches. Success is a relief when there can be no other attempts. Sherlock rises from the bed to tuck his prize away into his satchel. There have been stranger mementoes.
Cold alone, he’s quick to return beneath the blankets. Knowing well his touch, John’s body reaches for him. Steady, seeking hands welcome him home.
They fight in the morning.
They fight a great deal in the morning.
By mid-afternoon, Sherlock has locked himself into a cramped inn room in Montague.
By evening, he regrets it.
next
Rating: NC-17
Wordcount: 6.2k 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
“Could we, erm,” Sherlock begins as awkwardly as he can. It’s not very difficult. “Could we ease into the topic?”
Stamford’s expression is exceptionally professional and the exactly correct shade of compassionate. “Of course.”
Sherlock sits stiffly, hands between his knees. He bites his lip the way John does, distractedly, momentarily, hoping that Stamford will see the similarity. “Thank you, doctor,” he says. “So, erm, um. What sort of things do you usually, ah, see to?”
“All sorts,” Stamford replies. “I’ve always been something of a general practitioner, though I met John during my stint as a field surgeon. Nowadays, things are much calmer, thank god.” His tone is very much designed to put Sherlock at his ease. He’s quite good. Sherlock is reminded of Molly’s late father.
“So you see to patients on Bart’s and on either side of the river? That must be quite the variety.”
“The west side, yes,” Stamford replies, which is what Sherlock has heard. He’s done his share of research and questioning in the east and there is no one from Euston to Montague who has ever known Stamford to make a house call. “Clara takes the east. It’s enough to know that some troubles aren’t so rare as you’d think.”
Sherlock clams up. He becomes excruciatingly awkward. It is a performance he has taken time and effort to perfect over the years.
“Of course,” Stamford continues, “there’s always some kind of illness going around. Accidents, too.”
Sherlock nods a bit, a bobbing of the head while he hunches his shoulders.
“Not much in the way of surgery now. It’s remarkable, the things that can clear up without poking holes in people or leeching them.”
“Is that why doctors aren’t called leeches over here?” Sherlock asks.
Stamford wrinkles his nose at the term of respect. “I wasn’t aware we were called that anywhere.”
“Oh,” says Sherlock. He proceeds to shut down into awkwardness yet again, worse than before. He can always escalate. There, now he also happens to be vaguely apologetic.
“At any rate,” Stamford attempts to resume, clearly intending to approach Sherlock’s stated - well, mumbled - cause for complaint.
“Are you certain Clara can’t hear us?” Sherlock interrupts.
Stamford’s reassuring smile is both practiced and somewhat strained. “Entirely.”
“Does she, um, ever. No, I mean.” He gives himself an ample moment to rephrase. “Does she ever encounter, out east, that, or do men come here and ask, or...?”
“Most choose to stop by while on other business,” Stamford tells him. “That’s very much the usual way of it.”
“You don’t ever, I don’t know, go out on request...? If someone specifically needs to talk to a man. Or does no one actually specify that?”
“I don’t go east,” Stamford says, as if this explains everything. “Now let’s focus on you for a moment, shall we?”
Sherlock is once again nervous with his hands between his knees.
“There are three major categories,” Stamford tells him. “All you need tell me is which category fits you best. You may refer to them by number if that helps.”
Sherlock nods.
“There is rapidity, difficulty, and irritation.”
“To clarify: you don’t mean irritation as in anger.”
“No.”
“Ah,” Sherlock replies. “No, not number three.”
Stamford merely sits there with his squinting eyes, calmly waiting. It’s quite reassuring, the fact that the human can’t fully scrutinize him.
“One and a half,” Sherlock confesses.
“One and two?” Stamford asks.
“Two followed by one.”
Stamford nods at him reassuringly. “Is this a recent development?”
“The, um. Yes.”
“You smoke?”
“Yes.”
“Cut back. Drinking as well. That will help with number two.”
It won’t. Even as a settled adult, a modicum of human blood will be called for. No amount of neglecting his pipe will ever change that. As far as Sherlock knows. Which, in this topic, is admittedly not very far. “Is there anything else?”
There are a few other things. Most of them involve digesting solid foods. The remainder involve relaxing and keeping a positive attitude. Hardly about to work.
“And, ah. Number one?”
This information is actually rather interesting. Sherlock very much hopes it’s cross-species applicable. If it is, this is potentially the most Sherlock has ever learned about his own body in one sitting.
When Stamford finishes speaking, Sherlock thanks him. Soon after, he exits with the remains of his dignity and more valuable information than Stamford realizes he was imparting.
He never goes east? Ever?
“This is strange,” Sherlock announces.
John gives a vague hum. “You mean streets don’t end in cliffs where you’re from?”
“Hardly,” he replies, unable to keep himself from looking over the fence, from looking down the steep and rocky slope toward rock and racing water. The soil at the base of the fence has begun to crumple away, leaving small gaps under the wooden planks. Sherlock can work the toe of his boot under. He can see it on the other side of the fence, looking over. Incredible, how much vertigo one small motion can cause.
“You all right?” John’s hand is warm on his back. Which is impossible with the number of layers Sherlock wears.
It’s true all the same. Warmth blooms where John touches. It unfurls and stretches with an ache.
“I’m fine,” he answers.
They watch the water roar on seventy feet below.
“But that wasn’t what I meant,” Sherlock adds.
“Sorry, what you meant when?”
Sherlock rolls his eyes impatiently. “Being strange.”
John glances up at him, hand sliding from the small of Sherlock’s back to his hip. “Me not being a little man trapped in a gatehouse? That’s not strange, that’s normal.”
“It’s very strange.” Sherlock wraps his arm around firm shoulders. “You’re very strange.”
“Explain to me how I’m the stranger one of this pair.”
“You have a more civilian set of behaviours in town. You’re less alert, but also less distracted. You don’t seem to know which way to stand and attempt to orient yourself in a grid pattern, facing west or east.” He wants to set John in a circular room merely to see how he responds. “You’re easily bored despite the fact that there is even less to do in the gatehouse and you occupy yourself perfectly well in there. On average, you’re more demonstrative here, largely with your hands, though oral contact has noticeably decreased. You like it when people look at us and talk.” As the lighting has changed, his skin tone, hair and eye colour have also shifted slightly.
John considers this. He looks out across the river, perhaps thinking of the man burning beneath his arm, perhaps simply regarding the sunset. At last, John says, “You mind, don’t you?”
“No, I like differences.” He likes John. “Differences are interesting.”
“You don’t like people talking about us.”
“John, I don’t like people, full stop.”
“Sherlock,” John warns lightly.
“I don’t. I don’t like groups. Membership in a crowd changes the behaviours of the individual members. It’s unsettling. You can’t truly know anyone you only know in a group.” Social pressure and expectation are their own kinds of glamour.
“You’ve read things about this, haven’t you?” John asks. “Books and those little pamphlets.”
“I’ve observed.”
John does that thing with his mouth, that thing where he doesn’t move it, but his eyes change every meaning within its gentle curves. John is saddened and determined, neither fiercely but still enough to provoke action. “Did you like the pub last week?”
“It wasn’t terrible.”
“Then come with me tonight.”
“Stamford told me I shouldn’t drink,” he answers, pre-emptively cutting off that avenue toward disaster. “Also not to smoke, but dropping both at once is ridiculous.”
“Why was this?” John asks, watching the side of Sherlock’s face rather than the sunset. His motion more protective than motivated by the creeping chill, John presses a bit closer. “I thought your follow-up chat was about me.”
“Not everything is about you, John.”
John’s eyes widen. “Your stomach?” he asks, body turning to face Sherlock entirely. His free hand brushes across Sherlock’s front to rest lightly over his abdomen. The gesture is one of the utmost care, jarringly reminiscent of a father and his unborn child. John’s thumb circles there on his coat, every motion meant to soothe, subtle movement performed without conscious thought. “Is it getting worse?”
“No, that’s not- No. That’s all diet, I have that well in hand. We spoke about the other problem.”
“The other- oh.”
The intent behind John’s position shifts. Already wrapped in John’s arms, already standing with a deliberate hand hidden against his front, Sherlock feels it instantly. What’s more, he scents it on John. “Stop it,” Sherlock hisses. “We’re in public.”
“You still want to, then?” John asks, voice low. “With me.”
“Not in public.”
“This isn’t inappropriate.” John, terrible John, drops his mouth to Sherlock’s thoroughly clothed shoulder. “If it was inappropriate-”
“Were. If it were inappropriate. Honestly, John, your native tongue-”
“If it were inappropriate,” John continues on, “I would be doing it under your coat-”
“You really ought to stop talking, you have no idea how to do it-”
“Maybe with my hand, maybe on my knees. Probably on my knees-”
“People can hear you speaking poorly, you ought to stop-”
“Could take you in my mouth, I’d stop talking then. Or do you want me to keep talking, I can never remember. I could do either, might be dark enough to hide if we duck behind the woodpile. Can’t pick, though. I love the way you wake up on my tongue, but if I have that, I can’t tell you how much I love the way you tug on my arm when I’m touching you. So should I talk or stop talking? You’re the clever one, I’m sure you can tell me what to do.” He presses against Sherlock’s side, growing hard against his hip, delicious heat.
Sherlock pushes him back. Pushes him directly to the side, one hand firm against John’s chest, wavering on John’s chest. “You should stop. Right now.”
John does.
John holds up his hands and takes a step away and folds his hands behind his back and straightens his jacket and folds his hands behind his back a second time.
“Too much,” John says. “That was too much. That was wildly inappropriate, I’m sorry.”
“Three weeks,” Sherlock replies. He buries his hands deep in his pockets.
“Since I nearly killed you, I know, too soon. I am so sorry.”
“I want to kick your legs out from under you, pin you to the ground and fuck you until you’re hoarse,” Sherlock tells him flatly, cheeks blazing. “And you would go hoarse. Begging, praising, shouting my name; I’m not picky. Not as long as it involves you on your back.”
It takes him a moment, but John does manage to close his mouth.
“All right,” John says as Sherlock tries to duck his head and hide in the folds of his own scarf. “Yes. We can, yes, we can do that. That is a fantastic plan, and I approve of it. Once Harry finishes in her workshop, we can lock her out of there for the night.”
“Three weeks,” Sherlock restates.
“You mean since we’ve had each other,” John reasons. “Because I don’t think Harry would like being locked out for three weeks.”
“I mean,” Sherlock says, dropping his voice low, practically a growl, “it’s been three weeks. Since anything.”
John’s brow furrows. “You mean... at all?”
Facing the fence, his shoulders hunched and his fists pocketed, Sherlock nods.
It’s grown darker as they’ve spoken. Where their shadows once fell, firelight now reaches. The wind is ever colder and the water below continues to roar.
“Oh god,” John realizes.
Sherlock looks at him sharply.
“After the war,” John explains, more concerned than uncomfortable, “for the first while, I, well. Nothing happened. I didn’t want much to happen then, but it wasn’t happening.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that, sometimes, if you’re frightened enough, it just... goes away. I don’t know if that’s what’s happened here, but- You’re smiling.”
Sherlock is, quite widely.
He can’t seem to stop.
“John,” he says, nearly laughing the name, “that is far from the issue. This nuisance I have would greatly prefer to bother you instead.”
John nearly laughs as well. “Don’t call him a nuisance, it’s rude. I’m very fond. And he can bother me whenever he decides to get around to it.”
“‘He’? John, we’ve been over this.”
“Well, he’s definitely not a ‘she’,” John tells him, absolutely serious.
“It’s an ‘it’.”
John purses his lips for a moment, eying him. Finally, he concludes, “I don’t think you’re quite normal, sometimes.”
A noise not unlike a giggle escapes Sherlock’s mouth.
Then another.
And another, this from John.
Sherlock controls himself, is entirely in control, and then John has the poor sense to take a pointed glance at Sherlock’s crotch. All dissolves into laughter.
They settle into sighs and chuckling after a time. It could be a short time, but his stomach hurts and his grin aches. John grins back at him, so inexplicably essential. They each hold the other’s arm in the attempt to remain upright and steady.
“People are staring at us,” Sherlock informs him. It’s true. The few on the lamp-lit street, a few more from windows; there is no such thing as true privacy here. It’s all that keeps Sherlock’s need in check and John’s neck unbloodied.
“I know,” John says, jubilant, and waves at his neighbours with his free hand. “I know what they’re saying too.”
“Oh dear.”
“Mm, yeah. ‘That John Watson and his gorgeous bloke, what happy lunatics.’”
Sherlock can’t breathe. He can’t do anything but smile helplessly, consciously holding his teeth in.
John stands close. His mouth is soft and fond. His eyes are bright in the growing dark. His hand on Sherlock’s arm is not a tether to hold him or pull him near, but the warm assumption that the distance between their bodies could never be relevant.
“I still say your language is idiotic,” Sherlock tells him. Only argument can stand in the way of kisses when John looks like that.
“This from the man who calls his cock a nuisance,” John counters.
“It is a nuisance.”
John shakes his head disbelievingly. “Trust whatever Mike tells you and you’ll soon say differently.”
“Why, is that his area of expertise?”
“No, but he’s a good doctor,” John tells him. “Practically brought me back from the dead.” He wears his little smile, the one that indicates truth and understatement has been made into a joke. It’s possibly the expression of John’s that Sherlock watches for the most. The words it accompanies are unfailingly important, yet imparted as if meaningless.
“He’s really that good?”
John nods.
“Then what’s he doing this close to the edge of Mayhew’s territory?” Sherlock asks, certain to look confused rather than inquisitive. “He said he used to work for the man. A lord like Mayhew doesn’t let a useful tool escape without a fight.”
“Ah,” John says. “That’s one of the local pickles.”
Sherlock frowns. “Is that a food-based idiom?”
“What? Oh, sorry. It’s political manoeuvring on both sides.”
“On Mayhew’s or Stamford’s?”
“Lord Bryant’s,” John answers. “The river’s their border. Still fighting over it, but it’s political now. I mostly ignore it, these days. Not so exciting without anyone getting cut up over it. C’mon, it’s getting cold out. Let’s head in.”
“You mean there are treaties in progress?” Sherlock asks, slipping his gloved hand down into John’s. He follows where John leads him. “I thought those were decided four, five years ago.”
“They were, but it’s still politics with Mike and Clara.”
“Clara services the east and Stamford the west, I know that, but why the divide?”
“Clara’s just got a bit caught up in it, but Mike’s been stationed here deliberately,” John tells him. “And you can call him ‘Mike,’ you realize, that is allowed. The man who saved my life and my, well. You. You two ought to be on a first-name basis.”
“He’s a doctor. It’s respectful,” Sherlock assures him. “But why here? Putting a doctor at a border - why announce his expectations of further bloodshed that way?”
“That’s not it, actually,” John says, sounding surprised. “It’s more like posturing. I mean, Clara’s good, don’t get me wrong, but she’s still learning. The Stamford family has been producing doctors for generations and apparently, the Mayhews have always had one on hand.”
“One of those Stamfords?” Sherlock asks. “Out here?”
“It’s a bit lunatic,” John agrees. “Common enough name, I can see how you missed it.”
Sherlock flaps his free hand at him. “Let me work the rest of it out.”
John’s reply is in the squeeze of his fingers, the circling of a thumb.
“Stamford’s on the edge of Mayhew’s territory to demonstrate Mayhew’s superiority to Bryant’s followers,” Sherlock determines. “He’s better than their own physicians, they come to him, and they see how Mayhew is providing for his own people. A seed of civil unrest for Bryant and no great loss for Mayhew. And that’s why Michael Stamford in particular: send the one with the poorest eyesight, much less a waste of a surgeon.”
“I don’t know about that last part,” John says, “but that’s most of it.” Regarding Sherlock out of the corner of his eye, he looks proud.
Sherlock loves John’s pride in him. He absolutely adores it.
“Shall I tell you the rest of it, then?” Sherlock asks.
“Tell me.”
“Stamford and Clara see to the sides of the river from which they were born, which is ostensibly the reason for the divide. The official reason that everyone knows,” he says, speaking quickly and working it out as he does. “The unofficial but nevertheless real reason is that Stamford is too well-associated with Mayhew, or would be if people trust their urge toward name recognition. For Stamford to venture regularly into Bryant’s territory would smack of infiltration, if not espionage. Mayhew giving protection to those outside his own territory, at any rate.”
It will have to be a quick journey when Sherlock gets the doctor out of Bart’s. The doctor is a good man and Sherlock would rather not force that level of ramification upon him. Besides, it would probably upset John. Which would be quite terrible as John presently looks very pleased indeed.
“I love watching you do that,” John tells him.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. What did I miss?”
John grins a little. “Just the one thing.”
“Oh?” He’s ready for another laugh. The laughing helps diffuse the urge toward public indecency.
John’s grin fades. “It’s not actually very funny.” There it is, the understatement.
Sherlock has no trouble appearing concerned. “How not funny?”
“All that mess you just described? Actually happened about three... three and a half years ago, yeah, it was in the spring,” John says. “Bryant took poorly to it. It was settled fairly quietly. I only know about it because of Clara. She says most people don’t realize how serious it was.”
“Stamford’s been banished from the east,” Sherlock realizes.
“On pain of death,” John confirms. “It’s a bit ridiculous.”
Sherlock stops walking. John’s hand slides out of his before John stops as well and tries to catch at him. Sherlock doesn’t let him.
“A bit,” Sherlock repeats.
“What?”
“How is ‘on pain of death’ a ‘bit ridiculous’?” he demands. “How can that- How can that be normal to you?”
“Well, no, it’s not like it happens often-”
“Who banishes that way? John, there are better ways. Not simply less beheading but no beheading at all. Can you imagine that way of life or is that too foreign a concept?”
“What the hell are you on about?” John asks, staring at him, quizzical and injured around the edges.
“Nothing,” Sherlock snaps. He knows quite well they’re being stared at. He’s always being stared at, a curiosity in front of so many humans who all realize he’s different from them without understanding why. “Nothing, ignore me. My nuisance is making me irritable.”
The lie is bald and plain enough to make the very attempt offensive. John clearly takes it as such. Watching the human force down his anger and frustration is very much a remarkable sight.
“Is that no to the pub, then?” John asks, expression bland. He looks tired enough that it couldn’t be worth fighting him.
Sherlock sighs. “You go.”
John shakes his head. “I see them every day. I see you once a week.” He says the words so simply, so logically.
“Yes, fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yes.” Snippy. Unable to hide it.
John nods, then walks away in a new direction. The way back to Harry’s house.
Sherlock keeps close.
On the next street, he takes John’s arm and holds onto him tightly.
John nods once, just the once, and tucks their hands into his jacket pocket.
When they reach it, the house is empty but still warm, the fire banked. John tends to it.
Sherlock sits.
John watches the fire.
Sherlock stands. Crosses into the backroom and finds his way about by feel. He may nearly stab himself in the dark. He finds his satchel by scent and removes the missive by feel. He can’t take the second page into the other room. John will recognize the diagrams. The gatehouse and the bridge are too plain.
He returns to the front room. John doesn’t look up. He is seated before the fire. He has not moved.
Sherlock crosses to the ring of firelight and stands on the edge. He holds the missive in plain sight. He reads it. The challenge. The dare.
The phrasing and the tone are all correct. A game, the letter tells him. Solve this puzzle and play an even greater one. Go to the town which cannot be entered. Fetch this man. How far can he be brought east? Success will be counted in miles.
This isn’t innocent. This is no joke, no prank. He’d been blinded with eagerness to believe so.
What now?
He rereads the letter, as if the meaning could have shifted, as if words on paper are the contents of a jostled bag.
It remains the same, exactly as he has memorized it.
He folds the paper into thirds and looks into the fire. He waits for John to ask him what is wrong. He formulates several passable lies.
Rather than ask, John quietly tells him, “I’ve never seen paper burn. I’m almost certain of it.”
Sherlock closes his eyes. Light shines red and flickering against them all the same. He opens them.
He takes two steps forward and runs his hand through John’s hair. It shines in firelight: straw and wheat and gold, mingled and woven. No regard for order, not order as Sherlock sees it, but nevertheless neatly cut.
“Shall I indulge you?” he asks.
“Please,” John requests, calm and soft beneath the crackling of fire.
Sherlock steps forward and stoops. The corner of the folded paper catches. Withdrawing it from the fire, he cups his hand around the small flame. He returns to John. Small red flame shrivels the paper, shrivels itself into a blue burning edge. Words vanish letter by letter in small blazes of green, precise flourishes of penmanship and ink truly erased.
The fire fails halfway through and he returns to the hearth to finish it. Again, he holds it before John, showing him the glowing black curves of paper, the thin trail of smoke from its edges. The glow is so very slight. He breathes the scent deep into his lungs. He singes his fingers.
With the ashes gathered in his hands, he returns to the fire and tosses them in. His fingers are sooty. He rubs them together. The soot merely smears.
He sits down where he is and leans back until his shoulders touch John’s knees. He closes his eyes to heat and wavering light.
Steady, ever-steady, rough hands thread through his hair. Strong palms cradle his head. John, leaning forward, slowly crushes curls beneath his lips. A solitary kiss presses true.
“That was very nice,” John thanks him, ordinary words shaped by breath. “Almost like leaves.”
There is no reply that is not false, or inadequate, or entirely too true.
He settles against John’s shins, every inch of him a fool.
“You still haven’t asked.” His words are a quiet utterance into the dark, quiet enough not to wake John should he be sleeping.
A motion as slow as his sigh, John’s arm tightens about his waist. Short legs shift beneath the blankets, not quite fitting behind his. “D’you want me to ask?” John mumbles against the back of his neck. His breath sends a shiver through Sherlock’s skin that is quick to fade. That new piece of Sherlock, that unthinking, needful nuisance of desire, it seems to have died, or vanished. He has no appetite for John’s blood or flesh, merely for his voice and solidity.
Sherlock shakes his head, hair scraping against the pillow, brushing against John’s face.
John presses a kiss to his nape. “Then sleep.”
In the cramped space of the bed, Sherlock rolls over. He’s careful, aware of his elbows and John’s injured shoulder. Though John has never said, the muscle and bone ache when cold. John’s face is little more than a shape in the dark. The curve of the mattress and confident arms keep Sherlock close.
“How are you not curious?” Their noses brush. Breath between their mouths.
“I’m always curious about you. I don’t mind wondering.”
“How can you not mind?” Sherlock demands in a whisper. “That isn’t possible.”
John sighs. “No one sleeps until you stop wondering, is that it?”
“Essentially, yes.”
He listens to John thinking in the dark. If he could draw the thoughts from his mind, he would. If he could open John up and catalogue the innumerable contents, the hidden and the plain, he would.
John’s left hand leaves his back, shifting instead to his shoulder. That palm trails down his arm until fingers thread through his. John brings their hands into the small space between their chests, between their breath.
“The first part of you I saw was your hand,” John tells him. “No one has hands like yours, Sherlock. Not even Andrew - Young Mayhew - he has a swordsman’s hands. They’re a bit like Mike’s, but not much. I see a lot of hands in my job. Yours are different.”
“I told you,” Sherlock insists. “Our second night together.”
“You’re running from some southern lord,” John summarizes. “Or banished. I’d say banished, after tonight.”
They’re quiet for a time.
“What else?” Sherlock asks.
“If I had to run from Mayhew, I know I’d be frightened too,” John answers. “If I had to learn another language while I was at it, I’d be useless. If I ended up unarmed somewhere violent, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Sherlock says nothing. He brushes his thumb across John’s fingers, the motion small yet continuous.
“I’m sure I’d look a bit odd. Doubt I could control my temper. I try, but sometimes it.... I don’t think I’d do it as well as you do. Half the time, you’re the most ridiculously sheltered man I’ve ever come across. You’re constantly living in your head, you have no idea what’s reasonable or safe, and you’re probably going to wind up bleeding out in a ditch somewhere, the way you go on.”
John presses impossibly closer as he speaks, eyes shut tight, brow against brow.
“And the other half of the time,” John whispers.
He says no more. There is no more to say, everything in those few hoarse words.
Their hands clench, fingers locked. It aches well.
“Four-fifths,” Sherlock replies.
“What?”
“You’re four-fifths of the time.”
John’s lips are no different than they were for their last kiss. Nevertheless, it feels as if they ought to be. When they breathe into each other, it feels as if they are.
“I wanted to take you to the pub tonight,” John murmurs. “You-”
“I hate being shown off,” Sherlock snaps immediately, recoiling involuntarily. “I loathe it, don’t you ever-”
“Quiet,” John says, not a command but a statement of what John wants, and Sherlock becomes it instantly. “That’s not- It is a little, but that’s not the point. I’ve done some asking. It’s not much on Bart’s, but there are other things in the west. There are universities in the capital. And moneylenders, those always need a scribe and a sword hand. There’s all sorts of bookwork, I hear, not only arithmetic. Translation. Travel-writing, that’s always popular, everyone loves those.
“There’s always a merchant or two on their way through town. They’d do better telling you what there is,” John continues, speaking more quickly each time Sherlock comes close to interrupting. He presses their joined hands into Sherlock’s stomach, a restraining near-tickle that stops his breath. “But there are possibilities, all sorts, and they’re safer than going out east. I know you’re worried about being pinned down, but you could manage it somehow. You could invent your own job if you had to. You could be a wandering scholar, make people pay to listen to you.
“You wouldn’t have to worry about your southern lord. There’s that, too. Lord Mayhew knows my face, he approves of my bolt-catching abilities. That’s enough of a connection to have some pull. We could go to Young Mayhew for a spot of patronage if that doesn’t make you too leery. Andrew’s a better man than most and the life-debt doesn’t hurt.
“It would still be strange for you, I can’t say it won’t be. But it could be safe and steady work. You could be doing something that deserves you,” John tells him. “Less boredom, you’d like to be less bored.”
“You’re asking me to run away with you,” Sherlock summarizes. His voice is as flat as his body is tense.
“No,” John says, a comforting word. “I’m saying there’s good work in the west for someone like you, there’s decent work for someone like me, and sharing a bed does wonders for the rent.”
“John, that’s not feasible.”
“They’re possibilities, not a plan.”
“They’re still not feasible,” Sherlock groans, eyes tight shut, brow pressed to John’s. “We can’t live together. We can’t be around each other all the time, it would be terrible.”
“Worse than none of the time?” John asks.
“I’ve known you nine weeks. We’ve never been together for more than two days at a time.”
John presses closer, the warmth and strength of his body a compelling, flawless argument. “And you don’t want to change that?”
Sherlock kisses him, a hard, silencing press. “Stop talking. You need to stop talking.”
John threads a hand into his hair and kisses him back, slow and soft and calming. “I’m not asking for forever,” he states. “I’m asking for longer than nine weeks. I want to know you better.”
“You don’t,” Sherlock stresses. “Trust me, you don’t. John, that would end terribly.”
“Or you could get bored of me,” John counters. “I know there are risks.”
“That’s not the issue. We can’t just go off and live together. I know it’s difficult for you, but you could at least try not to be an idiot.”
“You could try not to be a prat, but I don’t see that happening either,” John counters. “Which is fine, by the way. I’m from a family of shouters, I know how to live that way.”
“John, I cannot live with you.”
“That’s fine. Could you live near me?”
Sherlock hesitates.
“You could,” John reasons from his silence. “More expensive, not splitting the rent, but that’s fine.”
“It’s not,” Sherlock tells him. “You think you want more, but you don’t. You need to believe that.”
The glamour spills from his mouth, too much force and belief to be restrained. The words ring in the air. They twist against John’s mind.
“I know I want more,” John says, and that is terrible, that is terrifying. John’s conviction is ironclad. His will is incredible, his certainty magnificent. “If you want more, we should have more.”
“You tried to slit my throat.”
Though true, it feels a weak excuse. How these words fail as a line of defence is a mystery. Perhaps it’s his sulking tone. Perhaps it’s the way his hands tether John close.
Or, perhaps, it’s the sincerity of John’s apologies, the helplessness the human feels. John believes himself at the mercy of his own damaged mind and this too is Sherlock’s fault. Telling him the truth is otherwise could get Sherlock killed, and John as well now that all of Bart’s knows they’re together. Everything is Sherlock’s fault and John is carrying his guilt.
“Can’t believe you still trust me,” John admits. “I barely still trust me.”
“You’re predictable. You do what’s right, you-”
“Hurting you isn’t right.”
“-have your duty and you do it.”
John shakes his head against the pillow. “Some of my duties haven’t been right. A lot of them, Sherlock. My best skill is killing people.”
“You’re still fundamentally a good man.”
“You were frightened of me,” John tells him and all Sherlock need do is agree. Yes, Sherlock was frightened and yes, that is why he cannot run away with him.
“Yes,” Sherlock says.
The moment was vulnerable and harsh, but Sherlock had handled him. Sherlock knew him so well, played him so expertly that John still believes Sherlock’s unglamorous words over his own senses. It’s a triumph and Sherlock hates that he can only feel failure.
John sits up. The blankets shift further as John draws his legs beneath him, but the human remains in the narrow bed rather than climb out of it over Sherlock. Cold seeps between their bodies. Peering through the dark, Sherlock can determine the hunching curve of his back. John sits with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Sherlock watches him, uncertain of where to touch or what to say.
“I was going to be better than him,” John tells him quietly. “I meant to be. I’m sorry.” It’s matter-of-fact, no begging in the dark. The words are as steady and sincere as they are mystifying.
“Better than whom?”
John looks at him, which is worth something. Even so, his face is lost to shadow.
Sherlock sits up to shiver in the cold. His hands hover before his arms wrap around John, binding the man against his chest with bone and sinew. John is still and stiff, as if the air has frozen him. “Better than whom?” Sherlock repeats. Rage kindles and grows closer to a blaze with each moment of silence. Who else has hurt his soldier?
“The man who had you,” John answers. He’s tense and almost tentative and it makes no sense.
“John, I don’t know what you’re talking about-”
“We don’t have to talk about it. It’s fine, I sorted it out on my own-”
“What do you think you know?” Sherlock demands.
“You can suck a cock like that but you didn’t know how to kiss,” John tells him. “You don’t know what to do when I tell you you’re brilliant or gorgeous. God, Sherlock, when you come, you look surprised. Even an idiot can put that together.”
“An idiot can put it together incorrectly, yes,” Sherlock agrees. “I like cock, I like to be spoken to, and with my condition, yes, achieving release is surprising. It’s fine. I’m fine. Stop being upset, we were meant to be sleeping hours ago.”
John is silent within his arms. Though easily infolded, he sits somehow unclaimed.
“We’ll talk about this in the morning,” Sherlock tells him. “If we truly must, which we don’t.”
They sit in silence. John lifts his hand and his fingers thread through Sherlock’s.
“You could go west without me,” John says at last. “It’s a better place, Sherlock. Less dangerous.”
“If I wanted less dangerous, I wouldn’t be in your bed. If you wanted less dangerous, you wouldn’t man the eastern gatehouse. You’re keeping your post. I’m going east. And south, once I can afford it.” He still has Irene’s ring. If he finds the right ship, the right captain, that will have sufficient clout.
John turns his face, searching for him in the dark. “You’re right,” John says, words without any sense of agreement. “We should be sleeping.”
Sherlock nods. He lies back and nudges forward, and John holds him with exquisite, painstaking gentleness until Sherlock huffs against his shoulder. Then the grip tightens, changes into the steady ownership they ought to have over each other.
Slowly, out of nothing more than fading endurance, John does not hold so tightly, nor Sherlock clutch. John pets his hair, his last resort of calming. Sherlock hums, a gentle thrum of glamour, and John drifts down. His hand remains curled at Sherlock’s nape.
Sherlock closes his eyes and breathes deep the scents of the room before he moves, carefully extricating himself from sleep-heavy arms. Even with John present, the soiled handkerchief is easily found within the blankets, and John does not stir as he searches. Success is a relief when there can be no other attempts. Sherlock rises from the bed to tuck his prize away into his satchel. There have been stranger mementoes.
Cold alone, he’s quick to return beneath the blankets. Knowing well his touch, John’s body reaches for him. Steady, seeking hands welcome him home.
They fight in the morning.
They fight a great deal in the morning.
By mid-afternoon, Sherlock has locked himself into a cramped inn room in Montague.
By evening, he regrets it.
next