holmestice | Fic for ruyu: Obsession, Appassionato

Title: Obsession, Appassionato
Recipient:

ruyu
Authors: [to be revealed]
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson; brief bonus Lestrade
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~4,200 words
Warnings: Jealousy, love-bites; otherwise, I don't think anything here should be triggery unless you have a thing about stairs.
Summary: John is late, and he hasn't called, and Sherlock works himself into a state.

John is late.

Sherlock tries to resist the thought drawing him from his microscopic inspection of the kerf-marks he'd created using a small hand-saw on the boiled soup bone John had left in the freezer for him. Not without complaint, but with affection in the curl of his voice and the short how-do-you-always-know shake of his head at Sherlock's rebuttal. Marrow could be cooked and served in a number of ways, but Sherlock never cared for any of them and he suspected its presence would make a difference to the behaviour of the bone, and there it is: traces dragged along by the blade, different in character from a dry or burned bone.

John. His mind insists. Late.

Sherlock doesn't need to glance at his watch but he does anyway: well after midnight and on the way to one. His pulse jumps a little and he tugs his phone from his jacket pocket.

Coming home tonight? — SH he types but deletes before sending. He gets up from the kitchen table and paces. No sense in panicking, John's a man grown, a soldier, well able to take care of himself. Moriarty —

He can't stop the reflexive shiver chilling down his spine to curl his fingertips. Startled, to feel contracting muscles in hands still longing to grasp and punch. Two months later, and still this irrational, pointless wish to go back in time. To squeeze the trigger when he should have, stop Moriarty from threatening John and damn the consequences.

Those consequences had been too dire to do anything other than what he'd done, but none of his pristine reasoning can soothe him when he knows the man is still out there, plotting even more devious ways to burn the heart out of him...

Enough. Time and past time to let this go. Watch for clues, and wait. No matter how much he hates waiting.

Sherlock forces a slow breath in, and out again, staring at the illustration of a skull on the wall: calming regular planes of bone; eye sockets and cheekbones suggesting Caucasian, and robust points of muscle attachment indicating male.

Perhaps not the best aid for regaining his equilibrium.

He turns back to the kitchen, back to the familiar organised chaos of beakers and pipettes.

The day began normally enough: Sherlock woke at two and came downstairs to entertain himself, but managed to keep his restless movements and the rattle of glassware to a minimum; he wanted the quiet time, and he didn't want to wake John. One or the other. Maybe both.

He'd had a definite sense of accomplishment, though, seeing John's sleepy sunlit smile at half-past six, beneath the fist rubbing at his eye socket, rather than hearing his unique low growl of "Sherlock!" in the pre-dawn darkness.

And the rest of the day was ordinary; boring, with no cases, but he filled it well enough between teasing John and Mrs Hudson with a merciless dissection of crap telly and a research trip for which he insisted he needed John's medical expertise (plumbing a somewhat senile taxidermist's mind before he inconveniently took ancient trade secrets to the grave).

John's reaction was far more interesting than the taxidermist, though; distinctly uneasy, keenly aware of the forty-seven pairs of beady glass eyes attached to the beautiful dead things surrounding them, some of them decades old but all well-maintained. And he'd tried to hide his gentle sigh of relief, leaving the workshop.

John's phone chimed when they were almost back at the flat, and Sherlock had frowned. Obviously wasn't him. Mycroft might be willing to work with John but he would reach out to Sherlock first, and he'd call. Sarah would also call rather than text, and it was a bit late for her, anyway; she preferred to make plans around lunchtime, though she was tolerant of John showing up out of the blue when he and Sherlock had a row. Which they hadn't, not for days now.

"Lestrade," John told Sherlock, tucking the phone back in his pocket. "Apparently, he wants clarification on something in my statement about the smuggler and those unfortunate Russian girls. You've got that bone you want to pick at, anyway; I'll pop 'round and see what he needs."

But John had left for the NSY building hours ago.

Sherlock sat, and raked fingers through his curls, listening to the empty flat before picking up his phone again and trying to compose some suitably casual inquiry.

Having fun? —

Backspace, backspace, back, back, back, back.

What are you

Back, back, back.

No, no, this is useless. John is a responsible man, choosing his own pleasures as he should. Sherlock's flatmate, not his...

So touchingly loyal...

Sherlock growls, and slams a hand on the table. The glassware jumps, chiming with alarm, and he stifles an extravagant urge to sweep the whole lot onto the floor.

Damn Moriarty. So many things he'd twisted. Quiet things, like John's bravery and devotion, forced out into the open and then mocked. Private things, like the Gordian trust Sherlock has in John, brutally exposed in that moment of revolt when he'd thought John was Moriarty, had been all along, somehow — a terrifying betrayal, like an infarction of the soul.

Embarrassing things, like the heart-pounding protectiveness that had coursed through him, driving him to strip the Semtex so fiercely from John's body. Relief and rough camaraderie had somehow dimmed that consuming feeling to a dismissive joke about ripping John's clothes off, one John would never have made if he'd known how close —

Sherlock stands abruptly, paces to the window and looks out, seeing but not observing, tapping the corner of his phone rapidly against his lip.

Where are you?, he types and doesn't send, and paces back toward John's chair. Madness, to let himself get manic with worry when there is no evidence at all that trouble is afoot. Who are you with?

Back, back, back, back.

He turns again, tosses the phone onto his own chair, and picks up the violin case, then thinks better of it and retrieves the phone, double checks that the messages he'd typed have been erased, and sets it face-up on the couch next to him.

He unpacks his Stradivarius with care, lifts it to his chin, rummages in his musical memory for something calm and soothing, and begins to play.

The Debussy flows over him and he concentrates on pulling pure notes into the air. Smooth as a meadow stream, his violin teacher murmurs in the back of his mind, un-deletable, and he supposed the simile sounded more poetic than smooth as rain over a window or the like, but he had been a child of the city: continually alone in appreciating the complex accidental beauties of civilisation, and resentful of irrelevant examples.

Late. And getting later.

John might be with Sarah, back to on again, or enjoying benefits, or however it worked between them. Preoccupied enough that he'd simply forgotten to let Sherlock know.

Gently, gently. Tranquillamente, not a passage to be played with such energy.

It isn't as though John has many other friends. Acquaintances at the police station, yes; though he's grown much more comfortable with Lestrade, and Sherlock had even seen him smiling in the hallway with Donovan once, handing her a cup of tea.

He's been renewing his friendship with Mike, as well, when they encounter each other at Barts; and Molly's impossible but John is kind to her no matter how often she 'forgets' his name.

Sherlock pulls a childish face, closing his eyes, letting the music morph as it will.

It's no good. John is an easy-going man with a trustworthy face. No matter that almost no one will see the essential steely calm at his core — everywhere they go, people warm to John. If he chooses, he can make friends and pursue lovers as easily as breathing.

The music falters and breaks.

And who else can Sherlock talk to?

Almost no one.

He lays the violin and bow at his side, picks up the phone, switches the recipient to Lestrade.

How are the prostitutes? — SH

He sends, and waits, counting off the seconds past just-woken-up, past interest, past exasperation, past lethargy, almost into very-busy or deciding-not-to-answer.

Off duty. Piss off. — GL

He frowns, tries to imagine where Lestrade could be, what Sherlock has interrupted.

Are you on a date? — SH

Maybe. Piss Off. — GL

Sherlock sits, stunned.

Maybe. An answer completely uncharacteristic of Lestrade.

He might say yes, hoping Sherlock will have the decency to leave him be. He might say no, hoping Sherlock will think him boring, rather than lying. But maybe — that said...what does that say?

It says maybe Lestrade is spending time with someone he likes, but isn't sure where it will lead. (One in the morning, though; hardly a disaster.)

Or it says maybe he's with someone he doesn't want to discuss with Sherlock. A relationship he thinks Sherlock will be difficult about. One or the other. Maybe both.

He goes still, chin pulled back.

It's always something.

Blindingly obvious, this one. An officer of the law and a soldier. War stories in common, if different types of wars, and the two are similarly phlegmatic in temperament. Well-suited.

He stares at the floor.

Hope you're enjoying yourselves — SH

He hits the key with decisive force, sending it to both of them, picturing their phones beeping in near-unison.

His phone tries to do the same; two incoming messages almost in one chime.

PISS OFF. — GL

Sherlock, for God's sake! — JW

He closes his eyes. Theory confirmed.

Sherlock stands and kicks aside the chair in front of the music stand, before pulling out a folio of sheet music buried beneath the aviation references on the third shelf of his bookcase. He needs something intensive to demand his focus, the whole of his attention, something he can't play from memory.

This calls for Ysaÿe, the Sonata #2 in A minor.

He lifts the violin, checks the tuning, takes a deep breath, and begins. The bow pounces along the strings, never far from another attack, and he storms his way through the prelude, loses himself in the swirl of notes. No tranquil brook for dear Eugène; no, here Sherlock can be appassionato, agitato, furioso con bravura...

The Malinconia, the Danse — he's well into the Furies before he hears the downstairs door close beneath the music. John takes the stairs two at a time, and on the beat — John always takes the stairs two at a time, unless they've been on the go for days. Sherlock keeps his back to the door, works the harsh notes on the D-string and watches the blurred reflection in the window through narrowed eyes. John pauses at the sitting room door, slightly winded, London air and the faint odour of Irish stout travelling in with him.

Brows pulled together, John looks from the sheet music on the stand to Sherlock's ferocious hand on the bow and up to meet his reflected gaze. John doesn't speak, he doesn't ever break the music's spell, but his hand continues to hover uncertainly against the doorjamb. Waiting for Sherlock to finish playing, or to be sure he won't.

No choice there; Ysaÿe hasn't given him a fifth movement and Sherlock's shoulder and arm jerk precisely, savagely into the final ascending notes, left hand arching near the end of the fingerboard.

Breathing fast, he lets the bow drop to his side, and then lowers the violin. He dips his head and tries to pull on some semblance of calm before he turns to the sofa, to nestle the Stradivarius back into its case, but John leaves the doorway, takes a careful step toward him.

"Sherlock?"

So quiet, his voice, rough with confusion and concern. But his posture, that's all wary restraint — ready for Sherlock to snap at him, just as ready to pull back into that lip-tightening frustration Sherlock's seen so often, when he responds to a call and then judges the things Sherlock asks of him unimportant...

Sherlock's fingers tremble as he closes the case. He's not asking this time.

He faces John, nostrils flaring, and a shadow of confused alarm flits across John's eyes in the time it takes Sherlock to close the two strides between them and seize the back of his neck.

Once he's moving he can't stop, his momentum carries him right into a kiss, clumsy and hard and thick with Guinness, only Guinness — carries them right up against the wall by the door. Backspace, back, back, back, his mind chatters, there are supposed to be words first; John curls his hand into Sherlock's shirt at the small of his back, not kissing back, still in shock, but he's not put Sherlock in an armlock on the ground, either, and...

Sherlock is not in control, frantic, fingers clutching at the back of John's head, tilting his face up, his hair so soft and fine, his lips so warm, so different from — he doesn't know what he expected. John's other hand comes up to his ear, his cheek, soothing, and somehow Sherlock manages to pull back, pressing his forehead against John's.

"He can't have you," Sherlock says, and how can his voice be breaking?

"Oh," John says softly, thumb stroking along Sherlock's cheekbone, "you silly bugger."

"No one else can have you. You're mine." He's breathing hard, neck bent down, his body pressed tensely against John's, clothes doing nothing to protect their curves from this wild, dangerous intimacy. "Please, you have to be mine...."

"Sherlock..." The softest huff, but John's also breathing unevenly and his fingers thread into the hair at the nape of Sherlock's neck.

"What was he drinking?"

"W-what?"

"What was Lestrade drinking?"

"You think Lestrade was snogging me at the pub?" he says, with dry incredulity, but his brow creases again, responding to the intensity of Sherlock's gaze. He shakes his head. "White Horse Bitter."

John's answer — John's easy precision — shouldn't make Sherlock feel better, it hardly rules out all the possibilities but he kisses John again urgently, eyes closed against a nonsensical sting, tasting John beneath the brown warmth of the stout.

And John kisses back, strong and controlled, no longer in stunned retreat against the wall. It's fine... it's all fine. John wants — John doesn't think — this isn't out of the question, for them. His hand flattens on Sherlock's spine, a broader point of contact, small finger just brushing the edge of his belt. Not pulling him closer, precisely; if anything, preventing him from pulling away as his body's desire begins to make itself evident through his mind's clouds of turmoil.

Where do we go from here?

John's mouth slides apart from his, in some easy way that isn't a rejection at all, that ends with another quick reassuring brush of the lips. Envy churns low in Sherlock's throat; John's kissed others often enough to have built this casual skill, and it's those others he hates, not John's experience, not his own lack.

John looks up at him with a quiet smile, sympathetic, but there's an edge there, too, a glitter of desire in his changeable eyes.

"Tell me what you want, Sherlock."

"I need — I want —" He can't be forcing this, knows they ought to talk, sensibly, but John wants too, and relief and terror and awe and too many other things pound through Sherlock's chest, flashing him back to the moment by the pool when John had put his own life on the line and cried Sherlock, run!

Still pressed close, Sherlock lowers his head, looks hotly into John's eyes, bares his teeth. "I want to rip your clothes off."

John's breath stops hard in his lungs, his eyes flare like sodium in water, and the gentle nudge of his erection goes iron-hard. Yes. Sherlock seizes the front of his jacket, pulls outward so that the zip rumbles open down the front, pushes John out into the hallway at the same time. Stripped off John's wrists, the jacket falls onto the descending stairs, but Sherlock shoves him up the ascending side, toward the bedrooms. John stumbles backwards up the stairs one riser at a time as Sherlock advances, unfastening John's shirt buttons.

John's panting, hand groping along the banister, tongue swiping tantalizingly across his lower lip. His skin is flushed from his cheeks down his neck and beyond, pink spreading across the smooth bare chest Sherlock exposes in a widening vee.

Intoxicated, Sherlock is rapidly losing his coordination, fingers fumbling at the last button so that the tension holds John on his step, until Sherlock growls in impatience and yanks. The button goes flying, and John sits down hard on the landing between floors. Laughing, he reaches up to grab a fistful of Sherlock's shirt, pulling him down into a mad scramble, half torrid kissing, half inching across the wooden floor toward the last nine stairs up to John's bedroom door, hands clutching anywhere they can take hold, knees and elbows in each other's way, skin hot where it's been bared to the air. One of Sherlock's shoes thumps down the staircase behind them, the other gets left on the landing. He kneels up, whips John's belt out of the belt-loops and flings it aside, then grips his ribcage beneath the arms, stands, and pulls John to his feet at the same time.

"Christ, you're strong," John whispers, chest heaving between the open sides of his shirt.

Sherlock grins, pushing him back and up again, breathing heavily himself. "Very motivated."

John pounds up the steps two at a time, and Sherlock hurries after, unbuttoning his cuffs and the placket of his own aubergine shirt as fast as he can.

"Let me..." John reaches for him, at the top of the stairs.

Sherlock's already peeling the Dolce shirt off, tossing it towards his bedroom down the hall, but he lets John strip up the ribbed vest underneath. Whatever pang of self-consciousness he anticipated, exposing his bony torso for the first time, it's drowned out by his trembling contact with John's naked skin, chest to chest and navel to, well, belt buckle.

He cups John's jaw and bends for another kiss, sloppy and quick because John's open shirt has to go, right now; Sherlock's hands slide down John's neck — provoking a fascinating shiver — and over his collarbones to push the shirt back off his warm shoulders.

John's clawing at Sherlock's belt with one hand, bumping the doorknob open behind him with the other, when Sherlock's fingers hesitate over a patch of rough wrongness above John's left shoulder blade. John breaks the kiss, shaking his head, eyes still awash with that glittering heat.

"Later," he pleads. "Irrelevant."

Sherlock nods; his eyes can't help dropping to the neat cratered pit below John's collarbone, the ballistic mirror image of the mass of scar tissue on his back, but he forces his mental image of the pain and the trajectory away, faced with John tugging him by his belt toward the bed.

God, the bed, and half naked already, and Sherlock doesn't know exactly how this will go, has to trust that John does, but it doesn't matter, his body doesn't need to know anything, just more and closer and now. John's shirt hits the floor, and Sherlock's belt, and he bulls forward, bearing John back onto the duvet before uncertainty can dim the feverish momentum they've built up.

Flat on his back beneath Sherlock, John pulls him into another hot kiss, deeper and wetter this time, tongues pushing and exploring, and it's all so strange...John tugs their hips together, hard against hard, hungry and unashamed. Of course. This isn't strange to John. He's been here before, God knows how many times, and Sherlock finds himself gripping fingers at the top of John's head, short hair caught between his knuckles, pulling his chin back so that Sherlock can kiss savagely at his throat.

The roughness draws first a grunt out of John, then a raw moan that — if the full-body shudder that follows is anything to go by — startles John as much it does Sherlock. His head falls back to the left, crown pushing into Sherlock's palm, further exposing the vulnerable pulse fluttering beneath the mole at the corner of his jaw. His blunt fingertips drag across the smooth skin over Sherlock's shoulder blades.

Sherlock pushes against him, riding the length of John's erection with his own, and the remaining clothes between them have to go but he can't stop mouthing up the line of John's carotid artery. "You never answered me," he breathes, around his eager kisses.

"I — what? God, don't stop." John's hands settle on his arse.

He nuzzles the delicate skin of John's throat, takes a thin fold between his teeth, and John arches beneath him, hips thrusting up, responding far more vigorously to the minute threat than Sherlock expects.

He growls around the captive skin: "Are you mine, John?"

"Yes, oh yes." Hot triumph floods through Sherlock, blood rushing through his capillaries to flush his skin; John hitches a short, sobbing breath beneath him. "You do things to me...only you."

He nips, just to see what John will do.

"Fuck!" John's grip tightens, momentarily, and then his hands scrabble around Sherlock's waist, frantically trying to squeeze between their bodies. Sherlock fights having the fierce pleasure of their contact broken at first, but relents, breath heaving in his chest, and pushes up slightly on hands and knees so that John can undo his flies and Sherlock's.

Sherlock groans, feeling John's hands near, brushing, pressing right up against his penis, and this is so different, so much more urgent, than anything he's felt before, in his rare solitary pleasures. He tries to anticipate, cooperate, with the way John pushes trousers and pants down, wriggling out of them, but Sherlock finally has to collapse to the side, kicking impatiently.

"No, god damn it, god damned shoes," John snarls, but quickly enough he's pried the shoes off and got them both bare, and Sherlock forsakes the urge to scrutinise every inch of him in favor of a quick glance that sums up everything he already knows about John: smooth, simple, unassuming, with lean power hidden underneath. They tumble together on their sides, arms and legs touching, chests almost brushing but not quite close enough for the straining erection that's overwhelmed all Sherlock's other senses. Apart from the obvious, John's desire is powerfully evident in his muscular tension, his pounding pulse, in irises thinned around wide pupils, but he's staring, arrested in mid-motion, as stunned as Sherlock that they have come to this place together.

All of John's bravery, his devotion, his abandonment of sense and restraint for Sherlock — his expression is so raw and unguarded that Sherlock's heart swells with demanding protectiveness. John's supposed to be private, to keep himself hidden, using ordinary like a dust jacket over the true cover of a book, and Sherlock wants to sweep him into safekeeping so no one else can ever read him like this.

Mine!

He surges forward, rolling John onto his back again and crouching over him so that he's bound in the cage of Sherlock's arms, and John's shuddering, overwhelmed, wide-eyed — reaching for more.

"Mine," Sherlock growls again, staring straight into his eyes.

"Yours," John agrees, and his hands guide them together, hard against hard again, but explosively sensitive now.

Their mouths fall together, involuntary noises escaping from one to the other; Sherlock feels wild, unable to think, rocking and rubbing and pleasure, oh pure intense pleasure, his pleasure, John's pleasure, radiating through them both. Foreskins glide, skin and muscle cushions their bones grinding together, and the heat, he never anticipated the heat...

He doesn't know what to do with the power of what he feels, the immaterial brought to earth, senses magnifying every bead of sweat, every scrape of stubble, the smell of John, the taste of his neck. More, and more, and he can't take any more, he can't go beyond this but he does, he grinds down just as John thrusts up and oh, yes, there; he bites down on John's throat, almost without volition, but only almost, knowing in the darkness of his mind that he's purposefully leaving a mark, and the only question in his mind, in the obliterating surge of his climax, is whether John knows it too.

Sherlock struggles, hundreds of heartbeats racing through his blind collapse before his breathing begins to slow, before he can shift enough to look at John's face. Lax with contentment, he's clearly reached his release too, though Sherlock's not sure when. He shifts carefully to the side, for the moment more concerned about their exquisite post-coital sensitivity than the messiness between them; he nestles John close within his possessive embrace, and strokes the hair at his temple.

John watches him with drowsy, sated eyes, exhilaration and relief and worry and simple determination mingling across the open lines of his face. He lifts a hand slowly to explore the reddened mark on his neck, soon to be purple or black, and surely painful; Sherlock licks at his lips but John looks...happy.

"You know," John finally says, "I've wanted this since our first date."

Sherlock frowns in surprise, confused by a reference to something he's not sure they've had. He shakes his head. Later.

"How did I not know?"

John smiles gently. "Married to your work, and quite monogamous. Also, because you're an idiot."

He reaches to kiss the tip of Sherlock's nose.

"Then again, nearly everyone is — about this."

❧