Points of Light Chapter 4
And it is done. Last chapter before the epilogue.
Title: Points of Light: Chapter 4 (follows on from Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3)
Author: pennypaperbrain
Beta: Chloe and eldritchhorrors
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: explicit consensual BDSM in a romantic, equal relationship (not PWP)
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Wordcount: 5,055 for this chapter; about 15,000 for the fic so far
Spoilers: First three episodes
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters. I couldn’t be trusted with them. There’d be kinky slash everywhere.
Summary: Sherlock and John have finally come to an understanding about what they want - and they act on it. This particular chapter is a sex scene, and can be read on its own, but it works best if you invest in the whole fic, which is a love story, about needing something right down to the bottom of your soul, and perhaps eventually getting it.
The main story can now be regarded as complete, but there will be a short epilogue in a couple of days.
ETA: This chapter now has gorgeous and entirely unworksafe fanart by kirimoth to go with it!
Also on AO3
A/N: John gets his toys out in this chapter. On first appearance they are hyperlinked to reference pages for anyone not familiar with them.
Four minutes and fifty-eight seconds later, Sherlock is sitting naked on the edge of his bed, watching the door.
Submission is not his natural state. It’s the concept of compulsion that interests him - another will, temporarily as strong as his, clearing its own space in his mind.
John ordered him to strip, and he obeyed. It feels like… calm breaking out in his head. He wants to be used and damaged, wants the release and the distraction, but he finds himself caring whether John enjoys it, and that’s still new, curious and fresh.
Five minutes and three seconds. There are footsteps on the stairs.
When John pushes open the door, he’s wearing a rather appealing ensemble of black jeans, a khaki shirt and combat boots, plus a shoulder bag which he shucks immediately onto the floor. His demeanour suggests he might be going on a field trip, because he doesn’t pay attention to Sherlock, instead crouching down to rummage in the bag. And then he does glance up, and he looks Sherlock slowly all over, eyes lingering at cock level, and he grins.
That grin is depraved. Sadistic and happy and intent, it lights John’s weathered face and sends a tendril of delicious trepidation shooting up Sherlock’s spine. He’s used to evoking and exploiting lust in the stupid, but this is different. John knows him. And still likes what he sees.
‘So here we are,’ says John. He stands up, and he’s holding two chunky pieces of metal. With a flip of the stomach Sherlock recognises Irish eights. He won’t be escaping from them.
Sherlock can think of a hundred things to say, and they all cancel each other out. John is approaching him with heavy-duty cuffs. John, with that look on his face. Fuck.
‘Kneel down, facing the bed, with your arms behind you,’ John instructs, and although arguments have broken out in Sherlock’s head he finds that his body has taken up the position.
John takes a quick look over the bed, lifting the mattress to check the configuration of the base. Then he comes around behind Sherlock, closing cold steel around his ankles and then his wrists, screwing the eights into place. Sherlock gives an instinctive squirm, trying to pull his wrists apart but nothing’s doing, and the heat of the realisation takes the breath out of him, because John has come around, seated himself on the bed and placed his hands around Sherlock’s chin and neck.
They stay like that for a full minute.
Swallowing, Sherlock feels the push of his own muscles against John’s palms, and shuffles still closer on his knees. John’s eyes are hard and bright, as if he’s searching for something in Sherlock’s face. Sherlock wants him to find it there. There is a kiss coming, he’s sure of that, but not yet.
Not yet, and not yet.
John’s right hand is travelling slowly down to stroke Sherlock’s chest. He’s toying with a nipple, and then he’s pinching hard. Too hard for a beginning in fact, and Sherlock hisses protest and tries to jerk away, but John’s left hand is now a vice around his shoulder… and Sherlock understands that his personal opinion is not relevant now just as John pushes in for the kiss.
Their first. It’s deep and long and ragged with what Sherlock recognises as his own whimpering. John tortures first one nipple then another, and Sherlock catches fire because he is hurting, and it doesn’t stop, and John.
Eventually a muffled giggle breaks out of him, fuelled by endorphins. John pulls back, takes Sherlock by the hair and delivers a blunt slap to the side of his face, not hard enough for serious pain but enough to silence him - and send him scrambling through internal disarray, looking for the right response, chasing awareness that there isn’t one and that is the very point.
‘Fuck,’ Sherlock breathes. The skeins of logic in his head are getting tangled and when that happens it is imperative that he reorder them, but he can’t fix his attention because it is all absorbed by John, whose face is very close to his, an open book as ever. The kindness and steel and patience are all still there, just shuffled in a slightly different order from anything Sherlock has previously seen.
The vertical folds between John’s eyebrows have deepened. His breath is coming faster, and one corner of his mouth has quirked up.
He’s getting off on hurting Sherlock. On trying to unstring his mind.
Unthinkable. Impermissible. Hot. As John strokes the curls at the side of his head and then turns the movement into a painful twist of the ear, Sherlock registers that his own breath has become panting. Nothing is quite normal now, and yes that is as predicted when they planned this, but it is also quite extraordinary, and he wants to keep track, because …
There is a violent sideways shove to his shoulder, and as John stands up and walks away Sherlock overbalances and crashes helplessly onto the floor.
He is staring at the underside of the mahogany bedframe. He flexes his wrists, and steel restrains them. The world is without precedent, and he is in it… and somewhere far above him, John laughs.
*
John has never fantasized anything quite like this: it would have been too lavish, too costly for his straitened tastes. Barring a few occasions on the edge of sleep, he limited himself to general desires, without focusing in too much on the detail: Sherlock struggling, Sherlock crying out. Even during last night’s taxi ride John worried about misreading, about being out of practice, about failing to cope with a bottom who mentally runs him in circles. A thousand general concerns.
The reality of this actual scene brings him to earth.
For long seconds, Sherlock lies where he fell, face towards the bed, his cuffed hands moving slightly behind his back. Then with a vigorous squirm he rolls onto his stomach and up on to his other side. His gaze as it meets John’s is so intense it looks almost stunned, and John smiles as he draws a light chain out of his shirt pocket and lets it dangle from his hand.
Sherlock’s gaze flicks down to it instantly and yes there is fear in his expression, and that is delicious.
John pushes away from the wall he has been leaning against, strolls over to Sherlock and rests a boot lightly on his throat.
Sherlock could shrink back, at the cost of banging into the side of the low bed, but he doesn’t. Through the sole of his boot, John can feel the tremors in the long neck underneath him - until Sherlock suddenly swallows and looks down, as if disengaging from a dull conversation.
‘Not sure you want this after all?’ says John, smiling to himself at this bit of last-ditch resistance. ‘Well, I could just leave you there and make myself a cup of tea instead.’
A small but audible snort answers him.
John waits for a long moment. Then he drops to his knees, seizes a handful of hair and forces the pale face back round towards him. With his free hand he tugs roughly at already reddened nipples, then fits on the clover clamps. He lets them bite home, enjoying Sherlock’s long hiss of protest, the utterly absorbed expression as he handles the pain, then John tugs, wrapping the chain around his fingers.
Sherlock lets out his first yell, a raw-throated half-sob that mixes pain with longing and surprise. It goes straight to John’s groin and he pulls again, harder; he keeps up the tension and the next sound he hears is a whimper, low and intimate.
Sherlock’s eyes are wide open as he gazes up with an expression of sweet, dazed bewilderment.
‘It’s all right,’ says John, because really it is. All of him is finally here, in this room, with Sherlock. They are who they are, the both of them.
‘Fuck,’ breathes Sherlock after a moment, as if it was his profoundest-ever deduction. He’s shaking slightly. His shackled hands are crushed behind him and there is no possible way he can stop John from doing anything he wants to.
It is twisted and perfect.
‘You deserve this,’ John says. Another tug at the clamps, and Sherlock’s groan makes his own breath catch with desire at the thought of what will happen next. ‘It’s time to use that riding crop. I’m going to beat you, and I will make it hurt.’
*
Sherlock wonders if this is what people call letting go. It isn’t like other times, when he always knew that afterwards the wielder of the cane or flogger would have to be managed and dispatched. John has, somehow, become as enduring as London. That is… right.
But the eights are being unscrewed from his wrists so that, for a few moments, Sherlock doesn’t know what to do with his newly-liberated arms. Instinctively he starts trying to flex them, but John catches his shoulders and drags him up and round, until he is kneeling by the side of the bed with his face pressed into the mattress.
‘Stretch your hands above your head . Stay face down,’ John says.
Sherlock’s arms are free, and he considers rebelling while he can, but John guides his limbs into place before he can think the idea through. And anyway it’s somehow more rewarding to stretch his arms as instructed, and feel the steel close around them again. There is a comforting pull on his shoulders as John loops rope through the cuffs and fastens it to the underside of the far edge of the bed. Sherlock’s clamped nipples rub against the bed, and it hurts, and that is compelling, and the only place he really wants to be is here.
‘Aren’t you at all afraid of what I might do to you?’ John asks as he comes around behind Sherlock again. He raises each of Sherlock’s knees in turn, and inserts a pillow between them and the uncarpeted floor before starting to bind his thighs to the side of the bed. Every physical sensation seems amplified, and that is fine because it means Sherlock can focus on them without the wasp buzz of the world quite breaking in. He flexes his wrist, and he’s completely stuck, and it’s peaceful. It’s right.
‘Answer me,’ presses John, and there’s a warning tone in his voice.
‘Yes,’ Sherlock says. He is afraid, and that’s part of the calm: a dark rich thread linking everything together.
‘Good, says John, and without seeing his face Sherlock knows the grin is back. ‘Cos you bloody well should be. I could have the skin off your arse with some of the kit I’ve got. Things that didn’t come from Ann Summers, thank you very much.’
A shiver travels along Sherlock’s spine. He is trussed naked with his arse in the air and he knows John would not truly harm him, but a soldier is standing over him promising pain, and reality is blurring, it’s causing Sherlock’s thoughts to snag, to fix in one desire: touch me hit me hard John now hard.
Seconds pass. Sherlock wants.
Sherlock wants.
Thwack.
John has hit him lightly on the right buttock. The pain flares briefly before dissolving into a mild ache. It’s not much, but before Sherlock can fully process it a matching blow lands on his left side, and briefly there is balance - until John strikes him again on the spot where the first impact landed.
That hurts more. Sherlock hisses instinctively, rubbing his head against the sheet. John just says ‘Ah,’ as if he was satisfied with something - then he sends the crop whistling through the air without making contact.
After that, by the sound of it, he decides to take a stroll around the bedroom, examining furniture on the way.
Sherlock tries to crane his head around and get in a glare, but before he can see much the bed creaks and dips beside him. John grabs him by the hair, crushing his face into the mattress. The voice above him issues its instructions: ‘I only want to see you squirm when you can’t stand the pain, and I will know when that is.’
Sherlock struggles for air. John is holding him down, and he can’t see, and all he can hear is his own laboured breath. Eventually the pressure on his skull lets up, but only so that a leather blindfold can slide around his face to block the light completely.
The fear surges in, sharper… and Sherlock controls it; he trusts John. But he is in the dark now, and time is suspended until seconds or minutes later a set of stinging blows slaps down across his shoulders, making him suck his breath through his teeth. Another set scours the backs of his legs and he freezes under it, trying to handle the pain, the shock, the instruction to be still… and suddenly he’s angry, because he can’t see, and some bastard is hitting him, and it hurts.
‘Fucking hell!’ Sherlock snarls in the tone of voice that normally has people backing away from him. John only gives a snort, as if something was grimly satisfying, and with a swish crack the crop hits the sensitive skin at the top of Sherlock’s inside thigh. It flicks upwards with the lightest tantalising brush against his arsehole then smack into the other thigh, so harshly that he lets out a whimper and burrows his head into his arm. Familiar darkness is rising inside him: the crop strikes again and again, and alongside the pain and the anger an old bitterness kindles. An emptiness, a nothing, turning its formless face to his own.
He’s going under. The darkness is part of that, merged with the fear, but it can’t take hold. Not with John here.
John strikes again and again, hard, hard, hard, alternating between buttocks. The onslaught forces whimpers from Sherlock’s throat, sends his fingers scrabbling at smooth rope in search of unreachable knots. And at the same time there is a blessed loosening. The pain alchemises into a burn of pleasure radiating up his spine through his limbs, the disconnected floating taking hold in defiance of moment after unendurable moment. Sherlock sinks his teeth into his own arm, a tiny sensation of his own making as desire slews through his head, desire for John, for a kiss, for more touching, for the crop that is hurting him… then even the crop is gone, and a sensation of stunning, full violence sends a whole-body shudder through Sherlock, chafing his cock deliciously against the bed.
John is spanking him bare-handed, hmming with concentration. Each blow melds punishment and caress, and Sherlock pushes his arse up into the pain, because something has unfurled and is flying free inside him. Overhead John pauses and murmurs ‘God, you do love this,’ as if an alternative was conceivable.
There is such rich darkness between them. John killed for him. John is hurting him. John made him live.
Finally the spanking slows, comes to a halt, leaving Sherlock buzzing, raw, but only half-spent. More of this is needed. More. Deeper. More.
‘All right,’ says John. ‘I’m going to untie you…’
No! Sherlock reacts, almost surfacing with the force of it.
‘…because I want to see you crawl.’
He is dropped back into a crucible of pure desire.
Yes. Yes yes yes.
*
This is topspace. John remembers it: the feeling of precision and rightness, with everything in place beneath his hand.
Deep inside him, old cramps have eased. There is soldiering, and there is doctoring, and there is this, the time when the pain is beautiful, and controlled, and fused with John’s care - with his devotion. There’s little point kidding himself it’s anything less than that. Right now he would, if necessary, shoot half the population of London to protect Sherlock.
And Sherlock…
is naked on his hands and knees on the bare floorboards. His hair is dishevelled and sweaty, and his back and bum are blotched and streaked red-pink. His swollen cock points down, twitching a little, out of time with the swaying chain of the nipple clamps.
He is staring unwinkingly at John, who leans against the opposite wall of the bedroom to take in the sight of Sherlock undone. He is still recognisably himself, his eyes lit by the fire of will even if his intellect is banked for the moment. But the habitual harshness has blunted. Sherlock’s contempt is in check, for the duration of their game.
It’s been replaced by need. For what John can give him.
John’s blood is singing. And his cock is pressing insistently against the inside of his pants. He unzips his fly, puts his hand inside, feels pleasure radiate through him while his eyes explore Sherlock’s beautiful, stripped self.
Sherlock’s own eyes have gone to John’s crotch. His tongue comes out and runs across dry-looking lips. John makes an answering movement.
Sherlock is waiting for him.
‘Crawl to me,’ John instructs.
In spite of his exaltation, he almost disbelieves that it will happen. But it does. Sherlock puts one hand forward, then the other, then shuffles his knees up behind. The movements are small, as if Sherlock wants to draw this out as much as John does, but the room is not large and a few seconds later he’s crossed half of it.
So John backs away towards the bedroom door. He’s improvising the scene at this point, flying, and simply to prolong the sight in front of him he steps backwards over the threshold, past the dining table, and keeps going. Sherlock crawls after him, a little faster now, the only sound harsh breathing interspersed with hands and knees thudding against floorboards, the slight jingle of the nipple chain.
The kitchen is still and normal and homely. And there is Sherlock, naked and marked: intent, animal, vulnerable and wholly John’s.
From downstairs comes the faint hiss and grind of a commercial coffee maker. The sound reminds John of place and time: this is only one day in his life, and tomorrow he will still be crippled, pensioned off, haunted in the head. But against those broken images he can set this present, this necessary version of himself.
Until this moment, he has been holding back, just a little. He stops.
John takes one more step backwards, smiling, trying to methodically commit what he sees to memory the way Sherlock might. Then he swings forward on the balls of his feet to grab Sherlock by the hair and yank him to his feet.
Sherlock stumbles. His arm comes out to steady himself against a chair, but before he can catch hold of it, John has him. He takes Sherlock by the wrists, rights him roughly and shoves him face-first against the battered door that leads to the stairwell.
‘God, I love doing this,’ says John, above the anguished huff of Sherlock’s breath being pushed out of his body. ‘Can you tell?’
Instead of a reply, Sherlock fights back. He’s strong, and instinctive, but also predictable, and John is trained, and stronger, and high on his own mastery as he twists Sherlock’s arm up behind him, locks a wrist around his neck, bites deeply into his upper arm. Sherlock spasms, half-choking on a cry of pain and exultation, jerking his head back so his curls brush softly against John’s cheek as John drags blunt nails through the sparse hair on his chest and finishes the bite to kiss his way up Sherlock’s shoulder to his ear.
‘There’s so many things I want to do to you,’ he says. ‘I want to choke you, and feel you fighting for air which I might not give you. I want to splay you out and cut you. I want to clamp your balls and tighten and tighten the grips until you lose your mind with the pain. You fucking know I want this, and you come crawling to me, and Jesus you’re going to get it. Not all today, but this is where it starts.’
John’s own intensity surprises him. It lays him open to rejection, wanting Sherlock this much… and right now he doesn’t care. You don’t ask, you don’t get.
Sherlock is shaking in John’s grip. He’s somehow managed to turn slightly, and his mouth blunders against John’s, seeking a kiss. John jolts back into himself, thrusts his tongue briefly into Sherlock’s mouth then pulls back into biting his lower lip, hard enough to draw a little blood. Sherlock is squirming against John’s clothed chest and if there’s one thing John wants now it’s as much contact as possible. This man is his: he will hurt Sherlock with his own body, and have Sherlock pleasure him the same way.
Still holding Sherlock’s twisted arm, he drags him back through the door into the bedroom and pushes him onto the bed. Sherlock lies as if stunned, his eyes wide and his lips trembling for the few seconds it takes John to retrieve the eights and fit them back into position.
‘You still in there?’ John checks briefly, low-key for a moment as he fiddles with the locking mechanism then reaches out to stroke Sherlock’s cheek. This doesn’t feel like a first scene, not when they’ve been playing in their heads since Barts in February, but still it is one.
Sherlock nods. ‘Mm-hm,’ he manages, then turns his head and kisses John’s fingertips. John plants a kiss of his own on Sherlock’s sweaty forehead, before scrambling off the bed and unbuttoning his shirt.
*
Sherlock’s mind does not have an off switch, but it is not beyond control. He has given that control to John, just for a time, and John fills him with pain, with touch, with blissful obscene promises. He sprawls on his side on the bed where John left him, scoured arse smarting where his steel-bound wrists press against it.
John is removing his own clothes. Stocky but trim limbs emerge from denim and khaki, a thick, dark-flushed cock springs eagerly out as pants slip down. And there on his left shoulder is the livid trace of his bullet wound.
Ordinary, extraordinary, fierce, scarred John.
‘I’m going to teach you to be useful,’ John says, coming over to sit on the bed. He unfolds his hand to reveal a second set of clover clamps, which he loops around the dangling chain of the pair already affixed to Sherlock’s nipples. Then he slides his hand slowly downwards, skirts Sherlock’s cock, attaches the two sets of rubber teeth to the skin of his ballsac, and tugs the chain.
Four points of agony flare in Sherlock’s chest and groin. The world clenches. Even John’s face slips out of focus as Sherlock’s knees try to jerk up and his arms flex hopelessly behind him. His own whimpering is harsh in his ears, because whatever he said he can’t bear this after all, even if he wants it… even if John is holding him down while he suffers… and oh god that is gorgeous and filthy, and the pain is burning, colliding, finally stoking his arousal, because John is doing this to him, murmuring ‘Fuck yes. Yes,’ as if in admiration.
The pain is bearable, welcome, right.
‘Yes,’ Sherlock echoes, shakily, and above him he sees John’s feral smile.
‘Good. Now, follow my instructions,’ John says.
He takes Sherlock by the shoulders then drags him into an upright sitting position in the centre of the bed, feet dangling over the edge. When John straddles his thighs, settling into a kneeling position, Sherlock tries to thrust himself forwards a little so that their cocks meet, but John takes him by the hair and pulls his back straight.
‘Great handle, this stuff,’ John says. He drags Sherlock’s face down again, to position it in the dip between his own shoulder and neck. ‘Now, kiss and suck, medium hard.’
Origins and conclusions have lost their meanings. John simply is, and Sherlock is forced to pleasure him. Again and again John issues an instruction and drags Sherlock like a puppet so his mouth is positioned against earlobe or clavicle or neck, and Sherlock kisses, licks, nuzzles, feeling the vibrations from John’s growls of approval, occasionally flexing his hands or feet in their cuffs and feeling again how totally he’s restrained. John reaches his free hand right down to Sherlock’s arse and digs his nails in, and Sherlock winces, the shudder drawing new throbs of pain from his clamped flesh, until oh god John presses their bodies right up together, his cock rubbing against Sherlock’s in a blissful confusion of chains, pain, warmth, pressure.
‘You wanted to feel everything I do to you,’ says John, and his voice is shaky. ‘God, I like feeling it as well. When I hurt you, and you take it… well, fuck.’
Sherlock searches inside himself for words. ‘Not… much option,’ he manages.
‘No,’ breathes John. ‘None.’
Nails drag slowly all the way up Sherlock’s back, and he moans, trying to shrink from the new pain, but there’s nowhere to go. As his hand crests Sherlock’s shoulder, John rises up on his knees and pulls Sherlock’s head right back, then bends in and bites his throat, fisting both hands in his hair. Sherlock stares at the white ceiling; stares and feels.
Finally John’s left hand leaves Sherlock’s scalp and delves down between them. With a jolt of fire the clamps tighten and John groans with pleasure as Sherlock hisses with pain, and god he can guess what is happening… Yes: John shoves his head downwards, and he sees how the chains are now looped over John’s cock, and John’s hand is wrapped around chains and flesh together, tugging at himself, hurting Sherlock with every pull. Sherlock’s own cock juts neglected between them, weeping pre-come.
Sherlock feels John trembling; he’s getting close. Then suddenly John lets go of his cock but keeps hold of the chains. The arm still holding Sherlock’s head straightens, and he is wrenched backwards, away from John. The clamps stretch Sherlock’s nipples with a sickening burn then slip off and he flounders in a wave of agony, and John has let him go entirely so that he screams and collapses backwards onto his bound hands, the endorphins crashing in so that the room spins crazily as his head tips back off the edge of the bed, looking upside down at the madly ordinary dresser, and god he’s laughing and sobbing and his raw back smarts against the sheets, and the clamps are still on his bollocks and John is still pulling the chain.
‘Yes,’ says John - just that - looming over Sherlock on hands and knees, and there’s a vicious light in his eyes. One of his hands wraps around Sherlock’s throat, not hard enough to choke or silence, not quite, but the promise is clear. Sherlock co-operates as best he can as John drags him a few inches so that he’s fully on the bed, and then the weight of John’s body descends on him, warm and solid. They rut together violently, Sherlock’s wrists protesting under him but fuck his cock is tangled in chains and caught between John’s erection and thigh. Sherlock’s orgasm is rising up through the heat and the helplessness, an inexorable bliss riding all the pains that assault him, harnessing them to pitch higher and higher as John bites his shoulder, snarling against him… and Sherlock comes with a strangled shriek, pressing his neck up into John’s clutching hand.
There are light bursts and ringing, ringing ecstasy as Sherlock convulses up against John’s hard cock and hip, and exquisite pleasure takes him and wrings him out… and when it passes it is not quite over, because John is kneeling above him now, bucking and moaning as he brings himself off.
‘John,’ whispers Sherlock, meaning everything by it. That fierce blue gaze sweeps over the wrecked expanse of Sherlock’s come-stained, welted body and up to his face, owning everything it touches. Sherlock’s own cock twitches again at the sight, and seconds later John spasms, wide-eyed and exultant, come shooting out to stripe Sherlock’s chest and the sheets.
Spent, John tips forward onto one elbow, and their faces come very close together. He smiles as he rolls aside to lie on his back, next to Sherlock on the ravaged bed.
His hand rests on the left side of Sherlock’s chest.
*
In the aftermath, John pulls himself together and removes the two remaining clamps as quickly and steadily as he can. Sherlock jerks away and John winces as well, picturing the blood rushing back into newly-released flesh. Post-orgasm it must be unadulterated agony.
‘Ssh,’ soothes John, and kisses the top of Sherlock’s head. ‘It’s done now. Roll over and I’ll get the eights off your wrists.’
John’s blood is still singing. His mind’s eye is full of images of Sherlock suffering rapturously, for him, so he doesn’t really register that Sherlock has tensed up. John smiles as their eyes meet... and Sherlock glares at him, as hard and watchful as when they were strangers, each probing for what he might find in the other’s face.
John stalls.
‘All right. What is it?’ he asks, drawing his arms back. He will not let this happen.
Sherlock’s gaze drops to the bedclothes. It stays fixed there as he hitches himself awkwardly up onto his side.
‘Sherlock…’ John prods cautiously. He wills himself to relax: this isn’t a fight.
‘Hold me a while longer,’ Sherlock says. ‘Please, John. I want to… not go back yet.’
John understands. Such a simple, momentous request.
‘OK,’ he says lightly.
The stiffness leaks out of Sherlock’s posture as John lies down again. He presses up to Sherlock, who flexes luxuriously against his chest, letting out the occasional hiss as a raw spot is chafed. Gently John traces a finger down Sherlock’s back, across the welts and scratches that must be showing there, pink and red. His own wounded shoulder is twinging a little, from the effort of spanking, and he feels pleasantly dazed.
‘You smell good,’ says Sherlock a little smugly, as if the fact is his own doing. Which it kind of is.
‘I feel good,’ John admits.
*
Sherlock rests.
John holds him.
John holds him.
Sherlock rests.
On to the Epilogue
Title: Points of Light: Chapter 4 (follows on from Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3)
Author: pennypaperbrain
Beta: Chloe and eldritchhorrors
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: explicit consensual BDSM in a romantic, equal relationship (not PWP)
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Wordcount: 5,055 for this chapter; about 15,000 for the fic so far
Spoilers: First three episodes
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters. I couldn’t be trusted with them. There’d be kinky slash everywhere.
Summary: Sherlock and John have finally come to an understanding about what they want - and they act on it. This particular chapter is a sex scene, and can be read on its own, but it works best if you invest in the whole fic, which is a love story, about needing something right down to the bottom of your soul, and perhaps eventually getting it.
The main story can now be regarded as complete, but there will be a short epilogue in a couple of days.
ETA: This chapter now has gorgeous and entirely unworksafe fanart by kirimoth to go with it!
Also on AO3
A/N: John gets his toys out in this chapter. On first appearance they are hyperlinked to reference pages for anyone not familiar with them.
Four minutes and fifty-eight seconds later, Sherlock is sitting naked on the edge of his bed, watching the door.
Submission is not his natural state. It’s the concept of compulsion that interests him - another will, temporarily as strong as his, clearing its own space in his mind.
John ordered him to strip, and he obeyed. It feels like… calm breaking out in his head. He wants to be used and damaged, wants the release and the distraction, but he finds himself caring whether John enjoys it, and that’s still new, curious and fresh.
Five minutes and three seconds. There are footsteps on the stairs.
When John pushes open the door, he’s wearing a rather appealing ensemble of black jeans, a khaki shirt and combat boots, plus a shoulder bag which he shucks immediately onto the floor. His demeanour suggests he might be going on a field trip, because he doesn’t pay attention to Sherlock, instead crouching down to rummage in the bag. And then he does glance up, and he looks Sherlock slowly all over, eyes lingering at cock level, and he grins.
That grin is depraved. Sadistic and happy and intent, it lights John’s weathered face and sends a tendril of delicious trepidation shooting up Sherlock’s spine. He’s used to evoking and exploiting lust in the stupid, but this is different. John knows him. And still likes what he sees.
‘So here we are,’ says John. He stands up, and he’s holding two chunky pieces of metal. With a flip of the stomach Sherlock recognises Irish eights. He won’t be escaping from them.
Sherlock can think of a hundred things to say, and they all cancel each other out. John is approaching him with heavy-duty cuffs. John, with that look on his face. Fuck.
‘Kneel down, facing the bed, with your arms behind you,’ John instructs, and although arguments have broken out in Sherlock’s head he finds that his body has taken up the position.
John takes a quick look over the bed, lifting the mattress to check the configuration of the base. Then he comes around behind Sherlock, closing cold steel around his ankles and then his wrists, screwing the eights into place. Sherlock gives an instinctive squirm, trying to pull his wrists apart but nothing’s doing, and the heat of the realisation takes the breath out of him, because John has come around, seated himself on the bed and placed his hands around Sherlock’s chin and neck.
They stay like that for a full minute.
Swallowing, Sherlock feels the push of his own muscles against John’s palms, and shuffles still closer on his knees. John’s eyes are hard and bright, as if he’s searching for something in Sherlock’s face. Sherlock wants him to find it there. There is a kiss coming, he’s sure of that, but not yet.
Not yet, and not yet.
John’s right hand is travelling slowly down to stroke Sherlock’s chest. He’s toying with a nipple, and then he’s pinching hard. Too hard for a beginning in fact, and Sherlock hisses protest and tries to jerk away, but John’s left hand is now a vice around his shoulder… and Sherlock understands that his personal opinion is not relevant now just as John pushes in for the kiss.
Their first. It’s deep and long and ragged with what Sherlock recognises as his own whimpering. John tortures first one nipple then another, and Sherlock catches fire because he is hurting, and it doesn’t stop, and John.
Eventually a muffled giggle breaks out of him, fuelled by endorphins. John pulls back, takes Sherlock by the hair and delivers a blunt slap to the side of his face, not hard enough for serious pain but enough to silence him - and send him scrambling through internal disarray, looking for the right response, chasing awareness that there isn’t one and that is the very point.
‘Fuck,’ Sherlock breathes. The skeins of logic in his head are getting tangled and when that happens it is imperative that he reorder them, but he can’t fix his attention because it is all absorbed by John, whose face is very close to his, an open book as ever. The kindness and steel and patience are all still there, just shuffled in a slightly different order from anything Sherlock has previously seen.
The vertical folds between John’s eyebrows have deepened. His breath is coming faster, and one corner of his mouth has quirked up.
He’s getting off on hurting Sherlock. On trying to unstring his mind.
Unthinkable. Impermissible. Hot. As John strokes the curls at the side of his head and then turns the movement into a painful twist of the ear, Sherlock registers that his own breath has become panting. Nothing is quite normal now, and yes that is as predicted when they planned this, but it is also quite extraordinary, and he wants to keep track, because …
There is a violent sideways shove to his shoulder, and as John stands up and walks away Sherlock overbalances and crashes helplessly onto the floor.
He is staring at the underside of the mahogany bedframe. He flexes his wrists, and steel restrains them. The world is without precedent, and he is in it… and somewhere far above him, John laughs.
*
John has never fantasized anything quite like this: it would have been too lavish, too costly for his straitened tastes. Barring a few occasions on the edge of sleep, he limited himself to general desires, without focusing in too much on the detail: Sherlock struggling, Sherlock crying out. Even during last night’s taxi ride John worried about misreading, about being out of practice, about failing to cope with a bottom who mentally runs him in circles. A thousand general concerns.
The reality of this actual scene brings him to earth.
For long seconds, Sherlock lies where he fell, face towards the bed, his cuffed hands moving slightly behind his back. Then with a vigorous squirm he rolls onto his stomach and up on to his other side. His gaze as it meets John’s is so intense it looks almost stunned, and John smiles as he draws a light chain out of his shirt pocket and lets it dangle from his hand.
Sherlock’s gaze flicks down to it instantly and yes there is fear in his expression, and that is delicious.
John pushes away from the wall he has been leaning against, strolls over to Sherlock and rests a boot lightly on his throat.
Sherlock could shrink back, at the cost of banging into the side of the low bed, but he doesn’t. Through the sole of his boot, John can feel the tremors in the long neck underneath him - until Sherlock suddenly swallows and looks down, as if disengaging from a dull conversation.
‘Not sure you want this after all?’ says John, smiling to himself at this bit of last-ditch resistance. ‘Well, I could just leave you there and make myself a cup of tea instead.’
A small but audible snort answers him.
John waits for a long moment. Then he drops to his knees, seizes a handful of hair and forces the pale face back round towards him. With his free hand he tugs roughly at already reddened nipples, then fits on the clover clamps. He lets them bite home, enjoying Sherlock’s long hiss of protest, the utterly absorbed expression as he handles the pain, then John tugs, wrapping the chain around his fingers.
Sherlock lets out his first yell, a raw-throated half-sob that mixes pain with longing and surprise. It goes straight to John’s groin and he pulls again, harder; he keeps up the tension and the next sound he hears is a whimper, low and intimate.
Sherlock’s eyes are wide open as he gazes up with an expression of sweet, dazed bewilderment.
‘It’s all right,’ says John, because really it is. All of him is finally here, in this room, with Sherlock. They are who they are, the both of them.
‘Fuck,’ breathes Sherlock after a moment, as if it was his profoundest-ever deduction. He’s shaking slightly. His shackled hands are crushed behind him and there is no possible way he can stop John from doing anything he wants to.
It is twisted and perfect.
‘You deserve this,’ John says. Another tug at the clamps, and Sherlock’s groan makes his own breath catch with desire at the thought of what will happen next. ‘It’s time to use that riding crop. I’m going to beat you, and I will make it hurt.’
*
Sherlock wonders if this is what people call letting go. It isn’t like other times, when he always knew that afterwards the wielder of the cane or flogger would have to be managed and dispatched. John has, somehow, become as enduring as London. That is… right.
But the eights are being unscrewed from his wrists so that, for a few moments, Sherlock doesn’t know what to do with his newly-liberated arms. Instinctively he starts trying to flex them, but John catches his shoulders and drags him up and round, until he is kneeling by the side of the bed with his face pressed into the mattress.
‘Stretch your hands above your head . Stay face down,’ John says.
Sherlock’s arms are free, and he considers rebelling while he can, but John guides his limbs into place before he can think the idea through. And anyway it’s somehow more rewarding to stretch his arms as instructed, and feel the steel close around them again. There is a comforting pull on his shoulders as John loops rope through the cuffs and fastens it to the underside of the far edge of the bed. Sherlock’s clamped nipples rub against the bed, and it hurts, and that is compelling, and the only place he really wants to be is here.
‘Aren’t you at all afraid of what I might do to you?’ John asks as he comes around behind Sherlock again. He raises each of Sherlock’s knees in turn, and inserts a pillow between them and the uncarpeted floor before starting to bind his thighs to the side of the bed. Every physical sensation seems amplified, and that is fine because it means Sherlock can focus on them without the wasp buzz of the world quite breaking in. He flexes his wrist, and he’s completely stuck, and it’s peaceful. It’s right.
‘Answer me,’ presses John, and there’s a warning tone in his voice.
‘Yes,’ Sherlock says. He is afraid, and that’s part of the calm: a dark rich thread linking everything together.
‘Good, says John, and without seeing his face Sherlock knows the grin is back. ‘Cos you bloody well should be. I could have the skin off your arse with some of the kit I’ve got. Things that didn’t come from Ann Summers, thank you very much.’
A shiver travels along Sherlock’s spine. He is trussed naked with his arse in the air and he knows John would not truly harm him, but a soldier is standing over him promising pain, and reality is blurring, it’s causing Sherlock’s thoughts to snag, to fix in one desire: touch me hit me hard John now hard.
Seconds pass. Sherlock wants.
Sherlock wants.
Thwack.
John has hit him lightly on the right buttock. The pain flares briefly before dissolving into a mild ache. It’s not much, but before Sherlock can fully process it a matching blow lands on his left side, and briefly there is balance - until John strikes him again on the spot where the first impact landed.
That hurts more. Sherlock hisses instinctively, rubbing his head against the sheet. John just says ‘Ah,’ as if he was satisfied with something - then he sends the crop whistling through the air without making contact.
After that, by the sound of it, he decides to take a stroll around the bedroom, examining furniture on the way.
Sherlock tries to crane his head around and get in a glare, but before he can see much the bed creaks and dips beside him. John grabs him by the hair, crushing his face into the mattress. The voice above him issues its instructions: ‘I only want to see you squirm when you can’t stand the pain, and I will know when that is.’
Sherlock struggles for air. John is holding him down, and he can’t see, and all he can hear is his own laboured breath. Eventually the pressure on his skull lets up, but only so that a leather blindfold can slide around his face to block the light completely.
The fear surges in, sharper… and Sherlock controls it; he trusts John. But he is in the dark now, and time is suspended until seconds or minutes later a set of stinging blows slaps down across his shoulders, making him suck his breath through his teeth. Another set scours the backs of his legs and he freezes under it, trying to handle the pain, the shock, the instruction to be still… and suddenly he’s angry, because he can’t see, and some bastard is hitting him, and it hurts.
‘Fucking hell!’ Sherlock snarls in the tone of voice that normally has people backing away from him. John only gives a snort, as if something was grimly satisfying, and with a swish crack the crop hits the sensitive skin at the top of Sherlock’s inside thigh. It flicks upwards with the lightest tantalising brush against his arsehole then smack into the other thigh, so harshly that he lets out a whimper and burrows his head into his arm. Familiar darkness is rising inside him: the crop strikes again and again, and alongside the pain and the anger an old bitterness kindles. An emptiness, a nothing, turning its formless face to his own.
He’s going under. The darkness is part of that, merged with the fear, but it can’t take hold. Not with John here.
John strikes again and again, hard, hard, hard, alternating between buttocks. The onslaught forces whimpers from Sherlock’s throat, sends his fingers scrabbling at smooth rope in search of unreachable knots. And at the same time there is a blessed loosening. The pain alchemises into a burn of pleasure radiating up his spine through his limbs, the disconnected floating taking hold in defiance of moment after unendurable moment. Sherlock sinks his teeth into his own arm, a tiny sensation of his own making as desire slews through his head, desire for John, for a kiss, for more touching, for the crop that is hurting him… then even the crop is gone, and a sensation of stunning, full violence sends a whole-body shudder through Sherlock, chafing his cock deliciously against the bed.
John is spanking him bare-handed, hmming with concentration. Each blow melds punishment and caress, and Sherlock pushes his arse up into the pain, because something has unfurled and is flying free inside him. Overhead John pauses and murmurs ‘God, you do love this,’ as if an alternative was conceivable.
There is such rich darkness between them. John killed for him. John is hurting him. John made him live.
Finally the spanking slows, comes to a halt, leaving Sherlock buzzing, raw, but only half-spent. More of this is needed. More. Deeper. More.
‘All right,’ says John. ‘I’m going to untie you…’
No! Sherlock reacts, almost surfacing with the force of it.
‘…because I want to see you crawl.’
He is dropped back into a crucible of pure desire.
Yes. Yes yes yes.
*
This is topspace. John remembers it: the feeling of precision and rightness, with everything in place beneath his hand.
Deep inside him, old cramps have eased. There is soldiering, and there is doctoring, and there is this, the time when the pain is beautiful, and controlled, and fused with John’s care - with his devotion. There’s little point kidding himself it’s anything less than that. Right now he would, if necessary, shoot half the population of London to protect Sherlock.
And Sherlock…
is naked on his hands and knees on the bare floorboards. His hair is dishevelled and sweaty, and his back and bum are blotched and streaked red-pink. His swollen cock points down, twitching a little, out of time with the swaying chain of the nipple clamps.
He is staring unwinkingly at John, who leans against the opposite wall of the bedroom to take in the sight of Sherlock undone. He is still recognisably himself, his eyes lit by the fire of will even if his intellect is banked for the moment. But the habitual harshness has blunted. Sherlock’s contempt is in check, for the duration of their game.
It’s been replaced by need. For what John can give him.
John’s blood is singing. And his cock is pressing insistently against the inside of his pants. He unzips his fly, puts his hand inside, feels pleasure radiate through him while his eyes explore Sherlock’s beautiful, stripped self.
Sherlock’s own eyes have gone to John’s crotch. His tongue comes out and runs across dry-looking lips. John makes an answering movement.
Sherlock is waiting for him.
‘Crawl to me,’ John instructs.
In spite of his exaltation, he almost disbelieves that it will happen. But it does. Sherlock puts one hand forward, then the other, then shuffles his knees up behind. The movements are small, as if Sherlock wants to draw this out as much as John does, but the room is not large and a few seconds later he’s crossed half of it.
So John backs away towards the bedroom door. He’s improvising the scene at this point, flying, and simply to prolong the sight in front of him he steps backwards over the threshold, past the dining table, and keeps going. Sherlock crawls after him, a little faster now, the only sound harsh breathing interspersed with hands and knees thudding against floorboards, the slight jingle of the nipple chain.
The kitchen is still and normal and homely. And there is Sherlock, naked and marked: intent, animal, vulnerable and wholly John’s.
From downstairs comes the faint hiss and grind of a commercial coffee maker. The sound reminds John of place and time: this is only one day in his life, and tomorrow he will still be crippled, pensioned off, haunted in the head. But against those broken images he can set this present, this necessary version of himself.
Until this moment, he has been holding back, just a little. He stops.
John takes one more step backwards, smiling, trying to methodically commit what he sees to memory the way Sherlock might. Then he swings forward on the balls of his feet to grab Sherlock by the hair and yank him to his feet.
Sherlock stumbles. His arm comes out to steady himself against a chair, but before he can catch hold of it, John has him. He takes Sherlock by the wrists, rights him roughly and shoves him face-first against the battered door that leads to the stairwell.
‘God, I love doing this,’ says John, above the anguished huff of Sherlock’s breath being pushed out of his body. ‘Can you tell?’
Instead of a reply, Sherlock fights back. He’s strong, and instinctive, but also predictable, and John is trained, and stronger, and high on his own mastery as he twists Sherlock’s arm up behind him, locks a wrist around his neck, bites deeply into his upper arm. Sherlock spasms, half-choking on a cry of pain and exultation, jerking his head back so his curls brush softly against John’s cheek as John drags blunt nails through the sparse hair on his chest and finishes the bite to kiss his way up Sherlock’s shoulder to his ear.
‘There’s so many things I want to do to you,’ he says. ‘I want to choke you, and feel you fighting for air which I might not give you. I want to splay you out and cut you. I want to clamp your balls and tighten and tighten the grips until you lose your mind with the pain. You fucking know I want this, and you come crawling to me, and Jesus you’re going to get it. Not all today, but this is where it starts.’
John’s own intensity surprises him. It lays him open to rejection, wanting Sherlock this much… and right now he doesn’t care. You don’t ask, you don’t get.
Sherlock is shaking in John’s grip. He’s somehow managed to turn slightly, and his mouth blunders against John’s, seeking a kiss. John jolts back into himself, thrusts his tongue briefly into Sherlock’s mouth then pulls back into biting his lower lip, hard enough to draw a little blood. Sherlock is squirming against John’s clothed chest and if there’s one thing John wants now it’s as much contact as possible. This man is his: he will hurt Sherlock with his own body, and have Sherlock pleasure him the same way.
Still holding Sherlock’s twisted arm, he drags him back through the door into the bedroom and pushes him onto the bed. Sherlock lies as if stunned, his eyes wide and his lips trembling for the few seconds it takes John to retrieve the eights and fit them back into position.
‘You still in there?’ John checks briefly, low-key for a moment as he fiddles with the locking mechanism then reaches out to stroke Sherlock’s cheek. This doesn’t feel like a first scene, not when they’ve been playing in their heads since Barts in February, but still it is one.
Sherlock nods. ‘Mm-hm,’ he manages, then turns his head and kisses John’s fingertips. John plants a kiss of his own on Sherlock’s sweaty forehead, before scrambling off the bed and unbuttoning his shirt.
*
Sherlock’s mind does not have an off switch, but it is not beyond control. He has given that control to John, just for a time, and John fills him with pain, with touch, with blissful obscene promises. He sprawls on his side on the bed where John left him, scoured arse smarting where his steel-bound wrists press against it.
John is removing his own clothes. Stocky but trim limbs emerge from denim and khaki, a thick, dark-flushed cock springs eagerly out as pants slip down. And there on his left shoulder is the livid trace of his bullet wound.
Ordinary, extraordinary, fierce, scarred John.
‘I’m going to teach you to be useful,’ John says, coming over to sit on the bed. He unfolds his hand to reveal a second set of clover clamps, which he loops around the dangling chain of the pair already affixed to Sherlock’s nipples. Then he slides his hand slowly downwards, skirts Sherlock’s cock, attaches the two sets of rubber teeth to the skin of his ballsac, and tugs the chain.
Four points of agony flare in Sherlock’s chest and groin. The world clenches. Even John’s face slips out of focus as Sherlock’s knees try to jerk up and his arms flex hopelessly behind him. His own whimpering is harsh in his ears, because whatever he said he can’t bear this after all, even if he wants it… even if John is holding him down while he suffers… and oh god that is gorgeous and filthy, and the pain is burning, colliding, finally stoking his arousal, because John is doing this to him, murmuring ‘Fuck yes. Yes,’ as if in admiration.
The pain is bearable, welcome, right.
‘Yes,’ Sherlock echoes, shakily, and above him he sees John’s feral smile.
‘Good. Now, follow my instructions,’ John says.
He takes Sherlock by the shoulders then drags him into an upright sitting position in the centre of the bed, feet dangling over the edge. When John straddles his thighs, settling into a kneeling position, Sherlock tries to thrust himself forwards a little so that their cocks meet, but John takes him by the hair and pulls his back straight.
‘Great handle, this stuff,’ John says. He drags Sherlock’s face down again, to position it in the dip between his own shoulder and neck. ‘Now, kiss and suck, medium hard.’
Origins and conclusions have lost their meanings. John simply is, and Sherlock is forced to pleasure him. Again and again John issues an instruction and drags Sherlock like a puppet so his mouth is positioned against earlobe or clavicle or neck, and Sherlock kisses, licks, nuzzles, feeling the vibrations from John’s growls of approval, occasionally flexing his hands or feet in their cuffs and feeling again how totally he’s restrained. John reaches his free hand right down to Sherlock’s arse and digs his nails in, and Sherlock winces, the shudder drawing new throbs of pain from his clamped flesh, until oh god John presses their bodies right up together, his cock rubbing against Sherlock’s in a blissful confusion of chains, pain, warmth, pressure.
‘You wanted to feel everything I do to you,’ says John, and his voice is shaky. ‘God, I like feeling it as well. When I hurt you, and you take it… well, fuck.’
Sherlock searches inside himself for words. ‘Not… much option,’ he manages.
‘No,’ breathes John. ‘None.’
Nails drag slowly all the way up Sherlock’s back, and he moans, trying to shrink from the new pain, but there’s nowhere to go. As his hand crests Sherlock’s shoulder, John rises up on his knees and pulls Sherlock’s head right back, then bends in and bites his throat, fisting both hands in his hair. Sherlock stares at the white ceiling; stares and feels.
Finally John’s left hand leaves Sherlock’s scalp and delves down between them. With a jolt of fire the clamps tighten and John groans with pleasure as Sherlock hisses with pain, and god he can guess what is happening… Yes: John shoves his head downwards, and he sees how the chains are now looped over John’s cock, and John’s hand is wrapped around chains and flesh together, tugging at himself, hurting Sherlock with every pull. Sherlock’s own cock juts neglected between them, weeping pre-come.
Sherlock feels John trembling; he’s getting close. Then suddenly John lets go of his cock but keeps hold of the chains. The arm still holding Sherlock’s head straightens, and he is wrenched backwards, away from John. The clamps stretch Sherlock’s nipples with a sickening burn then slip off and he flounders in a wave of agony, and John has let him go entirely so that he screams and collapses backwards onto his bound hands, the endorphins crashing in so that the room spins crazily as his head tips back off the edge of the bed, looking upside down at the madly ordinary dresser, and god he’s laughing and sobbing and his raw back smarts against the sheets, and the clamps are still on his bollocks and John is still pulling the chain.
‘Yes,’ says John - just that - looming over Sherlock on hands and knees, and there’s a vicious light in his eyes. One of his hands wraps around Sherlock’s throat, not hard enough to choke or silence, not quite, but the promise is clear. Sherlock co-operates as best he can as John drags him a few inches so that he’s fully on the bed, and then the weight of John’s body descends on him, warm and solid. They rut together violently, Sherlock’s wrists protesting under him but fuck his cock is tangled in chains and caught between John’s erection and thigh. Sherlock’s orgasm is rising up through the heat and the helplessness, an inexorable bliss riding all the pains that assault him, harnessing them to pitch higher and higher as John bites his shoulder, snarling against him… and Sherlock comes with a strangled shriek, pressing his neck up into John’s clutching hand.
There are light bursts and ringing, ringing ecstasy as Sherlock convulses up against John’s hard cock and hip, and exquisite pleasure takes him and wrings him out… and when it passes it is not quite over, because John is kneeling above him now, bucking and moaning as he brings himself off.
‘John,’ whispers Sherlock, meaning everything by it. That fierce blue gaze sweeps over the wrecked expanse of Sherlock’s come-stained, welted body and up to his face, owning everything it touches. Sherlock’s own cock twitches again at the sight, and seconds later John spasms, wide-eyed and exultant, come shooting out to stripe Sherlock’s chest and the sheets.
Spent, John tips forward onto one elbow, and their faces come very close together. He smiles as he rolls aside to lie on his back, next to Sherlock on the ravaged bed.
His hand rests on the left side of Sherlock’s chest.
*
In the aftermath, John pulls himself together and removes the two remaining clamps as quickly and steadily as he can. Sherlock jerks away and John winces as well, picturing the blood rushing back into newly-released flesh. Post-orgasm it must be unadulterated agony.
‘Ssh,’ soothes John, and kisses the top of Sherlock’s head. ‘It’s done now. Roll over and I’ll get the eights off your wrists.’
John’s blood is still singing. His mind’s eye is full of images of Sherlock suffering rapturously, for him, so he doesn’t really register that Sherlock has tensed up. John smiles as their eyes meet... and Sherlock glares at him, as hard and watchful as when they were strangers, each probing for what he might find in the other’s face.
John stalls.
‘All right. What is it?’ he asks, drawing his arms back. He will not let this happen.
Sherlock’s gaze drops to the bedclothes. It stays fixed there as he hitches himself awkwardly up onto his side.
‘Sherlock…’ John prods cautiously. He wills himself to relax: this isn’t a fight.
‘Hold me a while longer,’ Sherlock says. ‘Please, John. I want to… not go back yet.’
John understands. Such a simple, momentous request.
‘OK,’ he says lightly.
The stiffness leaks out of Sherlock’s posture as John lies down again. He presses up to Sherlock, who flexes luxuriously against his chest, letting out the occasional hiss as a raw spot is chafed. Gently John traces a finger down Sherlock’s back, across the welts and scratches that must be showing there, pink and red. His own wounded shoulder is twinging a little, from the effort of spanking, and he feels pleasantly dazed.
‘You smell good,’ says Sherlock a little smugly, as if the fact is his own doing. Which it kind of is.
‘I feel good,’ John admits.
*
Sherlock rests.
John holds him.
John holds him.
Sherlock rests.
On to the Epilogue