Electrum (Sherlock/John, PG-13)

[igrab]

Sherlock/John . 2,511 words . written for storylandqueen . magical island AU . PG-13 . I'm the silver, and you're gold.

John stared. He couldn't do anything but stare, could he? The man was - he -

He wasn't wearing much of anything, for one, but that wasn't really the problem.

Every visible inch of his skin was covered in ink. Patterns, arrays, what looked like chemical notations and complex mathematical formulas, and over his heart there was a spiral denoting the golden rule.

Christ, he wanted to touch him all over.

The man jerked back like a deer, and then, very much like a deer, he sprang away. John cursed the air blue because, of course, it only then sunk in that his leg was broken and he was stranded and he was probably going to die. But tattooed natives at least meant humanity?

He flopped back into the sand and sighed, praying they weren't all so pretty or he might just die anyway.

•
"Logic in nature," Sherlock said, as John's hands skimmed over the diagram splayed across his heart. "I suppose you can guess why it's placed there."

"Core values?" John bent to kiss it, eliciting a very small shiver of appreciation. Sherlock's lips curled.

"That's putting it a bit dry, but yes. The way to my heart." He said it so candidly, so matter-of-factly, but John had this tendency of doing the blushing for him. He hoped it was more figurative - he wasn't sure how much 'logic in nature' he represented.

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow. "You're the very epitome, John. This proves it." He reached a hand up and stroked his fingertips down John's cheeks, from his eye down to his jawline. The new tattoos still burned, and John hadn't quite reconciled himself to them - to any of this, but he knew on some level that this was where he belonged. He knew it every time he saw Sherlock, looking back at him, grinning.

•
John's face was white as he sat off to the side, apart from the council, still completely shaken by the mere presence of all these ridiculously tattooed people - but more so from what they'd just told him, the price for their help and attention.

He had two options, they'd told him. He could leave - right now, and never to return - or he could be inducted into the tribe.

And he would have to stay here for the rest of his life.

He had found out - through overhearing, mostly, but a few of the villagers had been kind enough to talk to him - that most of the village had arrived in a similar way, had received the same ultimatum. None of them had regretted it. It was the general consensus that he would stay (and their eyes would inevitably flick to his leg, smashed to pieces though thankfully no longer bleeding) and that, though it may take time, he would not regret it, either.

But he couldn't help thinking of home. Of Sarah, of Harry, of everyone who had probably already assumed him dead in that plane crash.

He heard a light, clear voice float over the background noise.

"I'm sorry I ran away, earlier. You startled me, I didn't realize you'd been hurt."

John's eyes flew open and he looked up, up, up - into the face that had so captured his mind not hours earlier. It looked a little - smug, for lack of a better word, and John scowled, mostly because he was sitting and the man was standing and he could tell, already, that he would tower over him.

"You looked like a deer." Not at all what John had meant to say, not remotely. But he said it anyway.

The man's eyes got a little wider in questioning. "What's a deer?"

•
"How about this one?" John mouthed, his breath brushing at the base of Sherlock's spine.

He squirmed, fidgeting. "What one?" Oh, he knew which mark John was referring to - the awkward, messy tangle on his lower back, uneven and almost all black. It had hurt for weeks but the humiliation had stung far worse.

John's thumb dragged along it, pressing into the old black bands. "This one. It's so..." Sherlock could tell, knew he wanted to say ugly but John was far too nice for that. He exuded radiance, Sherlock could feel it like a buzz all over his magic. It was distracting. "...different," he finished, and Sherlock rested his case.

He sighed and leaned back into John's hands. "If I tell you what that space is for, will you promise not to ask questions about it?"

John opened his mouth to answer, but Sherlock turned and covered it with his hand, imploring with eyes ringed in black. He knew for a fact that John wasn't yet used to it, the accented eyes, and Sherlock was equally obsessed with the rest of John's skin - smooth, not unblemished but unmarked, like a blank page ready to be filled. Sherlock wanted to fill him in, wanted to scrawl his story in bold letters, he wanted to watch the story of John's life come alive in black and white on the uncertain map of his skin. He wanted.

John relented, and nodded.

"You get marked there when you have sex for the first time," Sherlock said quietly, and he watched as John's eyes widened in understanding. Ugly, he thought, you had it right all along. I wasn't ready. It wasn't right. It wasn't you.

•
John closed his eyes, felt the shaman's fingertips press against his temples.

He fell into a dream.

He was walking - no, running - along the streets of London, breathless, dizzy, and there was a person-shaped hole beside him that John's mind stubbornly wanted to fill in with the tattooed man - Sherlock, he has a name, he told you his name - even though his mind stripped him of the marks and stuck him in a London coat and scarf. Didn't he have a leg injury? But it didn't matter because they were doing something important, and adrenaline was pounding in his veins and he had never felt so thrilled.

He was sitting at his desk with his laptop under his hands, staring at a white screen and watching the single point of motion - the steady, dolorous blink of the text cursor. It was mocking him. It had always mocked him. He had the words, they were in his head, but they felt so locked up and it was such a contrast to the wild free feeling of running that he wanted to pull out his hair and scream. His leg throbbed in pain, as if saying, yes, yes, I understand.

He was in a room that smelled of pipe smoke.

He was wearing a suit and he had a mustache, though why this was relevant he didn't know, what he did know was that his roommate was both infuriating and infuriatingly lovable, and at the moment, it was a little more of the latter. After all, he'd just bought John a brand new ream of foolscap, a pot of blue ink, and a full set of nibs for his much-beloved fountain pen. John wondered what he'd done, because Holmes never put out unless he wanted something, but John had come to learn over the years that whatever it was, he'd already forgiven him. The presents were an added benefit, a bonus, and they were always perfect. He chose a nib, dipped the pen in the ink, blotted, and then began to write in a smooth and perfect stream of prose, his mustache twitching in love and contentment.

John surfaced from the dream with a gasp like water.

Whatever the hell had just happened, it - it was - he couldn't -

The shaman was giving him thoughtful looks, her face calculating and prim, then stood to chat quietly with the man who would presumably be marking (that's what they called it, he had to stop thinking of them as tattoos) his face. He looked a little... familiar. John had a hard time placing it.

"Sherlock? Are you certain?"

He realized, then - the man looked like Sherlock. Not terribly, no, but there was something in the eyes and the way he carried himself. They were probably related.

He thought of that last image (and really, what was all that about?) and thought, this man will be putting ink on my face, and he shuddered in something like fear.

•
They moved off of that topic then, thankfully, and Sherlock spread his limbs in open invitation for more exploration and questions. He couldn't get enough of it, enough of John, and he'd never met anyone so curious without being judgmental.

"This," John said, and Sherlock's eyes flew open when he felt where those hands were pressing.

It was on the inside of his thigh, very high up indeed, and he wasn't embarrassed but he was quite deliciously pleased at the touch. He had to take a moment to remember what side was what, because he'd decorated both inner thighs, but in retrospect he might've saved some room for John. He should have known. That's what was killing him, his body was so marked already but this was only the beginning, he could feel it. He should have known.

"It's the symbol for electrum," he murmured, and his magic sparked and he felt something in John give. That was Sherlock's magic, to read people, and he had the mark of the third eye on the backs of his hands to signify that he was the tribe's truthseer. But it had never been like this. He'd never felt so in tune with someone, never known anyone so intimately so fast. Electrum. He didn't know if it was the alloy or simply the word itself, but something suggested to him the latter.

Perhaps it was the illegible lines of cursive script, striping down John's cheeks, declaring to all the world that his soul was in writing and his expression and purpose was the crafting of words. That was his anima, and he couldn't miss how nearly it mirrored the row of numbers trailing down Sherlock's own face. Numbers. Letters. Destiny.

John's hand slid a little higher and maybe, Sherlock thought, the marks weren't such set things of the past, they weren't just bits of his history laid out like a track record. They were a part of him, and John loved every part, and there wasn't much room for new marks because John was here to bring life to all the old ones. Electrum, he thought. I'm the silver, and you're gold.

•
The day he knew he loved Sherlock was, coincidentally, the day that John first did magic.

He'd been told he would, eventually, that the island itself was a source or something and that everyone had talents, that they would manifest eventually. John figured it might have something to do with the writing (they'd all been harping on that, and with good reason - the island didn't even have a proper written history! it was ridiculous) but in the end, it was something completely different.

He'd realized he'd fallen in love, then just as quickly realized that that was completely preposterous as he'd only known the man for all of three days. He couldn't love him. But his heart was resolutely informing him otherwise, and refused to sit still when Sherlock was in any kind of proximity. This, however, was a problem, because Sherlock could read people and John was more than an open book to him, he was glass.

So he concentrated. He concentrated very hard on not letting Sherlock know that he was head over heels for him, and Sherlock had quickly realized that he was hiding something but the important part was he didn't know what it was. John counted this as a success.

Very quickly, though, it spiraled out of control. Sherlock couldn't read him at all the next day, and it had actually upset him (though Sherlock's version of upset was apparently sulky, which wasn't winning him any points) and the next day, he'd turned invisible.

All right. That settled that question. Yes, he had magic.

Very quickly, he'd learned to do a number of different things. He could become invisible, he could become inaudible. He was toying with the notion of perhaps becoming intangible, though that was a little frightening. He was a guard, he was told, and with enough training, he could protect someone other than himself as well.

He thought of making out with Sherlock in plain view, unseen, unheard, unfelt. It was ridiculous how much he wanted it.

At some point he simply forgot to shield his thoughts, and Sherlock dived in with no sense of decency or impulse control, and when he found what John had been hiding - quite successfully - for the past week, his eyes shot wide open and his breath had frozen in his chest.

John wondered, faintly, if it had all been a mistake. If he should have just left when he had the chance.

Sherlock tackled him to the bed instead, and muttered tiny 'I love you's all up and down his skin, and John was certain that life couldn't get better.

•
"I have one more question," John breathed, and Sherlock shifted and hoped he would understand that that meant Go on, ask, because he was simply too far off in a post-orgasmic haze to even contemplate speech.

"There's... a blank ring, right here." He traced along Sherlock's collarbones, lovingly. "Like a necklace. It's - the rest of you is so... detailed."

That was a nice way of putting it, and Sherlock meant to say something to that effect, but it came out as a sort of mumble. John's fingers were warm and pleasant, he'd just had terrific sex with someone he loved more than he could have thought possible, and he'd just asked a terribly important question.

Wait.

Sherlock's eyes drifted open. "That's the mark you get for choosing a life partner," he said, simply, and before John could even respond, he'd curled right up against him and fallen half-asleep. "It won't be blank for much longer."

He felt John still, thinking, then there was that giving feeling once more and an arm wrapped around him. "No," he heard, in chocolate tones above him. "It won't be."