Fic for meredydd: Essential
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holmesticeTitle: Essential
Recipient:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
meredydd
Author:yeomanrand and shinychimera
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Wordcount: ~3000
Rating: R
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, OFCs
Pairing(s): Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Warning(s): Jealousy, trust issues
Summary: Sherlock finishes a case — and finds he must go hunting for John
"John! It was the great-uncle!" Sherlock cries, eyes snapping open to his familiar view of Victorian wallpaper and the ceiling of 221B.
Silence answers, a cavernous lack of John in earshot, in line of sight, in a dozen superliminal signs of his presence gone missing. The boil of adrenaline subsides, quick as a pot removed from the hob-ring of the chase, leaving behind an aching warmth with no place to go. Sherlock sits up, reflexively catching the flutter of paper and plastic that slides from his chest: a cheap Tesco orange-and-gold half mask, and a sheet of A4 printer paper with a short note in John's iatrographic scrawl.
He tosses the mask aside — meant to jog his memory and therefore of no consequence — and unfolds the note.
Preposterous. He always needs John (his heart, his lens, his partner), particularly after he successfully unravels such a Gordian convolution: shady inheritances under thickets of forged wills and unbreakable trusts, cross-generational identity theft, and missing-and-presumed-dead children who in fact never existed at all. The thrill of the chase still throbs in his arteries and veins but finding the solution on his own is... disagreeable. Anticlimactic.
Before John, the solution alone would have been satisfaction enough.
Sherlock pushes aside the dregs of fervor and desire, gathers up his phone and stands. He ought to be rapid-firing his deductions at John, seeing confusion spark into excitement as John scents their quarry. Watching for the moment when John catches up to him on the trail: impressed, improbable, impassioned. Instead, in dull silence, Sherlock composes an email to Lestrade (who complains so about lengthy expository text messages) with alternate thumbs as required by stripping the dressing gown off each arm in turn whilst padding to his bedroom in stocking feet.
Still typing, Sherlock glances for a moment at himself in the wardrobe mirror and decides he doesn't need to shower (always the first thing to check when going in public after the close of a case); all he needs are dark trousers, a clean rollneck (for warmth) and a seldom-worn pair of black Chelsea boots (for the right to say he'd made some minuscule attempt to conceal his identity). Every year some host or hostess thinks they are re-inventing exotic intrigue, but a masquerade ball is the most tedious way Sherlock can imagine to celebrate the New Year, if celebrated it must be. Identifying people one frequently socializes with (by voice, laughter, mannerisms, gait) isn't remotely difficult even for ordinary minds; for Sherlock such a ball is an excruciating exercise in simultaneous boredom and sensory overdose.
At least their hostess is defeating the nauseatingly simplistic exposure of entirely-self-chosen costumes (how right The Woman had been that every disguise is a self-portrait): "fancy dress will be provided, no admittance without" indeed.
Sherlock sends the step-by-hand-holding-step solution to the consanguineous conundrum off to Lestrade, and follows it with a text telling him to read his email. Concluded. He folds the case away into a drawer within his mind, and attempts to do the same with the aimless agitation of needing to hunt for John.
He considers the screen just long enough to decide John needs no warning that he's coming, drops the phone into his coat pocket before whirling the greatcoat on, and smiles to himself while arranging his scarf. This test of John's slow-growing observational skills should offset some of the masquerade's inherent inanity.
His taxi pulls straight up the brightly illuminated portico of Lady Prentice's estate; it's nearly half eleven and the other guests have been inside for hours. Still, in the foyer a Regency Dandy doorman and a Mouse Footman welcome him alertly and take his coat. Music thumps loudly from the core of the house and the doorman is looking him up and down appraisingly.
"The blue room," the Dandy says with a nod, and a man in a harlequin suit — no... harlequin body paint? — appears to escort Sherlock into the deserted grand hall (sealed off from the rest of the party it seems) and up the stairs. It takes Sherlock a disturbingly long second to ascertain that the man is, in fact, wearing no Spandex, no clothing at all beyond a bare-minimum thong with no visible hem or seam. He frowns; perhaps this is a more risque party than he anticipated.
With a knowing, off-kilter smile, the Harlequin leads him to double doors slightly ajar. "Blue room, for tall and thin, not many outfits left," he hums. "But allow me to choose what suits you best."
He pulls open the doors on a lavish bedchamber pressed into service as a dressing room; discarded accessories and empty hangers litter the floor, and traces of feathers, glitter, fur dot the teal-and-white duvet covering the mattress. The three remaining costumes — an Anpu/Anubis, a ball gown cut for the male figure, a Jaguar — hang from a cardboard tube encasing and protecting the carvings on the canopy bed.
The Harlequin leans back, attention divided between Sherlock and the limited choices, and Sherlock sighs in annoyance at the theatrical delay, especially as it's likely the Harlequin will opt for the same thing Sherlock would choose for himself. He just wants to get into the party, retrieve John and amaze him with the solution to the case on their way home to a more private celebration. In the meantime, he intrigues his restless brain by considering the type of costume John might have ended up with. Nothing here, certainly; there must be another room for 'short and compact'. And John will have opted for something relatively prosaic, Sherlock calculates; he's unlikely to have wanted someone else, someone not Sherlock, to choose for him.
So strange, the things John does and doesn't trust Sherlock with.
As Sherlock anticipated, the Harlequin reaches for the Jaguar; a carved mask attached to an eared hood and capelet. Between the two of them they get it settled over his head, with the spotted capelet draping halfway down his torso front and back except where it tapers to a narrow suggestion of a banded tail, which his dresser pins to the back hem of his shirt. He turns to leave but the Harlequin tuts at him, lifting a small bag of black claws, and pulls him over in front of the full length mirror. Sherlock shakes his head in protest, but gets a raised finger.
"Sixty seconds."
Sherlock sighs again, but allows the Harlequin to spread his left hand; he swiftly dabs a bit of spirit gum on each fingernail, then switches to the other hand and repeat the process. Sherlock can't help studying himself in the mirror while he waits, and grudgingly decides the costume is pleasing — more essence of jaguar than true-to-life, but neither kitschy nor cumbersome. By the time the Harlequin has pulled the correct set of claws from his bag, the ether has evaporated and the resin in the gum is ready to grip each one in place, protruding perhaps a third of an inch beyond Sherlock's fingertips. True to his word, the last one is in place a mere minute after he began.
"Wait a few minutes before you pick anything up; remove with alcohol. This way, please."
The Harlequin leads him down the hall, away from the grand staircase but towards the thudding music; Sherlock is not surprised when they emerge onto a balcony overlooking a courtyard thronged with dancing and chattering guests. He squints a bit against the noise and commotion, sweeping his gaze over the crowd, expecting to be able to pick John out at once, but none of the guests immediately trip the recognition centers in his fusiform gyrus. Sherlock instantly rules out the four soldiers and three doctors he can see: too tall, too lightly built, and too on-the-nose for John in any event. Beyond that he sees only a typical masquerade, if a bit more imaginative than usual in costume and decor: flirtation, drunkenness, boredom, idiocy; knots of people wound around games of interest or persons of charisma, others secluded in shadowy corners that are best not examined too closely. The music is modern and much too loud.
The Harlequin slips out, back to the foyer and the next late guest, leaving Sherlock to glide down the balcony stairs, eyes narrowed in concentration, blinking away unwanted deductions. He mentally strips away fancy and not-so-fancy dress alike from each individual in turn, and the people underneath are ordinary, boring, shifting away from his piercing gaze in discomfort. He finds himself savouring the predacious potency of a wolf among sheep, jaguar among nervous tapirs; he never intended to make it easy for John to spot him by gait but he barely has to think about modifying his to something more like a prowl as he scrutinizes the crowd.
Some masks and costumes are elaborate, some extremely simple, but most seem well-matched to their inhabitants — essence of clown, essence of law, essence of femme fatale. Their host, resplendent and buxom in the red-tailed jacket and top hat of a turn-of-the-century Ringmaster, starts to turn her head his way, but before he can become more than a suggestion of a figure in her peripheral vision, Sherlock slips away from the main crowd into the shadowy colonnade.
Near a wall fountain at the other end of the colonnade, golden light from the house limns the edges of a Valkyrie with a sword on her back, leaning against a column with her head bent intently toward someone shorter than she; all that can be seen of the other beyond her cloak is the soft, curved edge of a silvery wing. Music drowns out any words, but even in the shadows the body language is clear: Sherlock rests his claws against the wall, planning to pass when they kiss and he can go unobserved.
She leans down, and beyond her shoulder the faint light brushes over fair hair between the crests of wings that flutter backward. Blunt fingers touch her bicep, and Sherlock steps forward to lay his own claws upon her shoulder; his tail would lash if it could.
She turns toward him, shifting so her body is more between him and his angelic prey rather than less — John, unmistakably John, despite blank glowing mask, short toga baring neck, shoulder and legs, and gorgeous silver wings taller than he is. The Valkyrie's brows contract beneath the nose-guard of her helmet, lips a thin line; mid-thirties, city girl by day, and currently the essence of possessiveness. But John does not belong to her.
Sherlock steps even closer, heart pounding angrily with the beat of the music. His snarl is lost in the shadows, and even if she could hear him clearly his voice would give the game away too soon — but the feral danger in his eyes speaks to her and she steps back with chin lifted. John sidesteps into the colonnade, allowing her to retreat into the courtyard to lave her wounded pride and find a more suitable partner.
Sherlock follows just far enough to warn her not to return, then turns back, circling John in a tight prowl. John reaches to the edge of one wing, pulling it around to shelter his body and the featureless mask, illuminated somehow from within, follows Sherlock, tilted in wariness or wonder. Essence of curiosity? Of judgement? Perhaps essence of the unseen watcher, the authoritarian regard.
Sherlock spirals in again, and the wings spread wider as John backs against the broad painted-brick column.
"Pushy, aren't you?" The words are muffled, breathless. Unmistakably John, aroused.
Sherlock smiles to himself, lifts his hand to stroke claws tenderly down John's neck. John stills and his breathing shallows, pulse throbbing beneath the sharp points. Does he know, or guess? Difficult to say, without being able to see his eyes and lips. Would he be this aroused by a stranger who approached this boldly? One more suited to his tastes than the Valkyrie? Sherlock… can't be certain. Something inexplicable, molten and confused, burns through his veins, and John lifts his chin higher, exposing more of the neck that dents beneath the tips of his claws. John's breath hisses out, rasps in.
He must know.
On the hunt for answers once again, jaguar-quick, bent on beating those soldierly reflexes, he grabs John's wrists and pins them against the column through the soft layer of cloth and feathers. Bodies press together. Sherlock's obstructed breath fogs the surface of the translucent mask; at this range he can see through it enough to watch John's eyes flicker through fear and curiosity and lust and...acquiescence, and still Sherlock can't be sure about recognition.
His hands tighten against the thin skin at John's wrists; he dips his head, nips the side of John's neck beneath the jawline of the mask and then bites more firmly at the trapezius just inside the drape of the toga.
"Careful," John breathes out, shifting his weight, pulling minutely away from Sherlock's teeth but sliding his thigh between Sherlock's legs.
Careful. Which John never is. Which Sherlock never is. The molten pressure builds, curling his lip, squeezing his eyes closed, scraping his carved jaguar face against John's empty mask, with his head still bent over John's neck and shoulder. Careful, as in don't leave a mark. As though Sherlock would need such mundane evidence to know that John had done more than drink or dance at this party.
What if you can hide it? What if you've done this before and I haven't seen because I haven't wanted to look, haven't observed, haven't believed you would ever want to deceive me?
What if John's heartfelt "yours" is merely a way to placate Sherlock's insistent "mine"?
Sherlock presses forward hard, his breathing rough against John's chest. John tilts his head back further and momentarily tugs against Sherlock's confining hands, trying to raise his own. To touch, to feel, probably to slide them beneath the turtleneck for the mutual pleasure of skin-on-skin? Or to push Sherlock — or this bold stranger — away?
But surely if his advances were unwelcome John would already have put him on his arse?
Very well. Let's see how far you'll take this.
He lifts John's wrists higher, pins them briefly against the upper crest of the wings while he tongues a wet stripe up beneath his jawline, then lets them go so he can reach fingers beneath the hem of his toga, the black claws harrowing through the hair on his upper thighs on their way to more dangerous territory. John shudders under the touch, makes a soft, frustrated noise in his throat: want.
Angrily, Sherlock pivots his hand below the cotton of John's pants, surrounds his scrotum with threatening claw points. John's Adam's apple bobs and he quiets, fingers dimpling the skin of Sherlock's lower back.
Sherlock feels John's heartbeat thumping hard against his, holds the tension in his hand before unbending the claws, flattening his palm, stroking upwards against the hard erection. John's hips jerk into the touch; his head drops back against the column between the wings that flutter with his agitated movement.
He caresses several times, slow and then faster, watching John's familiar arousal consuming this alien form. With his free hand, he works the back of the pants down over hips and buttocks, until he has to pause in his strokes to lift the damp cloth free at the front.
This time, John's barely audible keen is all about desperation. A sound Sherlock has always heard as yearning for him to give John more: touch me, Sherlock, or kiss me, damn it, or fuck me, please please, Sherlock please.
What if it isn't specific to Sherlock at all? What if this is a sound John makes any time he yearns to get off?
Head bowed, he wraps his fingers around the cock John has said over and over again is "yours, only yours", tensely aware of the claws he could bring to bear so easily, knows John is aware as well for different reasons.
John needs danger like other men need air; he needs the thrill or he gets bored.
Do I bore you?
A growl escapes Sherlock; his breath wrestling the belabored pulse in his throat, his extremities gone chill even as he jerks at John's cock. John finds Sherlock's flies, struggles and manipulates for access, and Sherlock is too caught up in the bitter things annealing in his chest to redirect or withdraw before John's hand cups his penis, barely hard within his pants.
John's hand stills. The music pounds, distantly, voices and drunken shrieks and happy laughter, but between them all is unsettled and silent. Then his other hand lifts to tilt the faceless mask back, to raise Sherlock's chin, to trace his lower lip with his thumb.
"Yours, Sherlock," John says, pitched to reach his ears alone. The illuminated mask perched atop his hair like a hat casts brightness over blue-hazel eyes, over the warmth and sincerity folded into ordinary features. "Only you."
Sherlock searches John's face, throat constricting, mind ratcheting through a thousand reinterpretations in the time it takes him to heave a shaky breath, squeeze John a little tighter. John nods, only a brief pause for surety before he strokes Sherlock confidently in return — the rolling touch and slight twist he knows steals Sherlock's breath, makes his ears burn and his penis twitch.
Beyond their sphere of intimacy, the crowd and its noise gather in the courtyard, meaningless excitement resolving into a raucous countdown. Sherlock's breathing accelerates as John brings him up to — no, changes the direction of the speed he was already racing — he pushes John firmly against the column again but the force driving his actions is different, the leaden lump melting anew in the calcining essence of John's grace.
Recipient:
meredyddAuthor:
yeomanrand and shinychimeraFandom: Sherlock BBC
Wordcount: ~3000
Rating: R
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, OFCs
Pairing(s): Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Warning(s): Jealousy, trust issues
Summary: Sherlock finishes a case — and finds he must go hunting for John
"John! It was the great-uncle!" Sherlock cries, eyes snapping open to his familiar view of Victorian wallpaper and the ceiling of 221B.
Silence answers, a cavernous lack of John in earshot, in line of sight, in a dozen superliminal signs of his presence gone missing. The boil of adrenaline subsides, quick as a pot removed from the hob-ring of the chase, leaving behind an aching warmth with no place to go. Sherlock sits up, reflexively catching the flutter of paper and plastic that slides from his chest: a cheap Tesco orange-and-gold half mask, and a sheet of A4 printer paper with a short note in John's iatrographic scrawl.
He tosses the mask aside — meant to jog his memory and therefore of no consequence — and unfolds the note.
S —
Because I can't join you in your mind palace, I'm bored. And because I've no doubt you've deleted the invitation, I am reminding you of the 'dull' Prentice masquerade tonight. If you come up for air and need me, you can find me there.— J
Preposterous. He always needs John (his heart, his lens, his partner), particularly after he successfully unravels such a Gordian convolution: shady inheritances under thickets of forged wills and unbreakable trusts, cross-generational identity theft, and missing-and-presumed-dead children who in fact never existed at all. The thrill of the chase still throbs in his arteries and veins but finding the solution on his own is... disagreeable. Anticlimactic.
Before John, the solution alone would have been satisfaction enough.
Sherlock pushes aside the dregs of fervor and desire, gathers up his phone and stands. He ought to be rapid-firing his deductions at John, seeing confusion spark into excitement as John scents their quarry. Watching for the moment when John catches up to him on the trail: impressed, improbable, impassioned. Instead, in dull silence, Sherlock composes an email to Lestrade (who complains so about lengthy expository text messages) with alternate thumbs as required by stripping the dressing gown off each arm in turn whilst padding to his bedroom in stocking feet.
Still typing, Sherlock glances for a moment at himself in the wardrobe mirror and decides he doesn't need to shower (always the first thing to check when going in public after the close of a case); all he needs are dark trousers, a clean rollneck (for warmth) and a seldom-worn pair of black Chelsea boots (for the right to say he'd made some minuscule attempt to conceal his identity). Every year some host or hostess thinks they are re-inventing exotic intrigue, but a masquerade ball is the most tedious way Sherlock can imagine to celebrate the New Year, if celebrated it must be. Identifying people one frequently socializes with (by voice, laughter, mannerisms, gait) isn't remotely difficult even for ordinary minds; for Sherlock such a ball is an excruciating exercise in simultaneous boredom and sensory overdose.
At least their hostess is defeating the nauseatingly simplistic exposure of entirely-self-chosen costumes (how right The Woman had been that every disguise is a self-portrait): "fancy dress will be provided, no admittance without" indeed.
Sherlock sends the step-by-hand-holding-step solution to the consanguineous conundrum off to Lestrade, and follows it with a text telling him to read his email. Concluded. He folds the case away into a drawer within his mind, and attempts to do the same with the aimless agitation of needing to hunt for John.
He considers the screen just long enough to decide John needs no warning that he's coming, drops the phone into his coat pocket before whirling the greatcoat on, and smiles to himself while arranging his scarf. This test of John's slow-growing observational skills should offset some of the masquerade's inherent inanity.
His taxi pulls straight up the brightly illuminated portico of Lady Prentice's estate; it's nearly half eleven and the other guests have been inside for hours. Still, in the foyer a Regency Dandy doorman and a Mouse Footman welcome him alertly and take his coat. Music thumps loudly from the core of the house and the doorman is looking him up and down appraisingly.
"The blue room," the Dandy says with a nod, and a man in a harlequin suit — no... harlequin body paint? — appears to escort Sherlock into the deserted grand hall (sealed off from the rest of the party it seems) and up the stairs. It takes Sherlock a disturbingly long second to ascertain that the man is, in fact, wearing no Spandex, no clothing at all beyond a bare-minimum thong with no visible hem or seam. He frowns; perhaps this is a more risque party than he anticipated.
With a knowing, off-kilter smile, the Harlequin leads him to double doors slightly ajar. "Blue room, for tall and thin, not many outfits left," he hums. "But allow me to choose what suits you best."
He pulls open the doors on a lavish bedchamber pressed into service as a dressing room; discarded accessories and empty hangers litter the floor, and traces of feathers, glitter, fur dot the teal-and-white duvet covering the mattress. The three remaining costumes — an Anpu/Anubis, a ball gown cut for the male figure, a Jaguar — hang from a cardboard tube encasing and protecting the carvings on the canopy bed.
The Harlequin leans back, attention divided between Sherlock and the limited choices, and Sherlock sighs in annoyance at the theatrical delay, especially as it's likely the Harlequin will opt for the same thing Sherlock would choose for himself. He just wants to get into the party, retrieve John and amaze him with the solution to the case on their way home to a more private celebration. In the meantime, he intrigues his restless brain by considering the type of costume John might have ended up with. Nothing here, certainly; there must be another room for 'short and compact'. And John will have opted for something relatively prosaic, Sherlock calculates; he's unlikely to have wanted someone else, someone not Sherlock, to choose for him.
So strange, the things John does and doesn't trust Sherlock with.
As Sherlock anticipated, the Harlequin reaches for the Jaguar; a carved mask attached to an eared hood and capelet. Between the two of them they get it settled over his head, with the spotted capelet draping halfway down his torso front and back except where it tapers to a narrow suggestion of a banded tail, which his dresser pins to the back hem of his shirt. He turns to leave but the Harlequin tuts at him, lifting a small bag of black claws, and pulls him over in front of the full length mirror. Sherlock shakes his head in protest, but gets a raised finger.
"Sixty seconds."
Sherlock sighs again, but allows the Harlequin to spread his left hand; he swiftly dabs a bit of spirit gum on each fingernail, then switches to the other hand and repeat the process. Sherlock can't help studying himself in the mirror while he waits, and grudgingly decides the costume is pleasing — more essence of jaguar than true-to-life, but neither kitschy nor cumbersome. By the time the Harlequin has pulled the correct set of claws from his bag, the ether has evaporated and the resin in the gum is ready to grip each one in place, protruding perhaps a third of an inch beyond Sherlock's fingertips. True to his word, the last one is in place a mere minute after he began.
"Wait a few minutes before you pick anything up; remove with alcohol. This way, please."
The Harlequin leads him down the hall, away from the grand staircase but towards the thudding music; Sherlock is not surprised when they emerge onto a balcony overlooking a courtyard thronged with dancing and chattering guests. He squints a bit against the noise and commotion, sweeping his gaze over the crowd, expecting to be able to pick John out at once, but none of the guests immediately trip the recognition centers in his fusiform gyrus. Sherlock instantly rules out the four soldiers and three doctors he can see: too tall, too lightly built, and too on-the-nose for John in any event. Beyond that he sees only a typical masquerade, if a bit more imaginative than usual in costume and decor: flirtation, drunkenness, boredom, idiocy; knots of people wound around games of interest or persons of charisma, others secluded in shadowy corners that are best not examined too closely. The music is modern and much too loud.
The Harlequin slips out, back to the foyer and the next late guest, leaving Sherlock to glide down the balcony stairs, eyes narrowed in concentration, blinking away unwanted deductions. He mentally strips away fancy and not-so-fancy dress alike from each individual in turn, and the people underneath are ordinary, boring, shifting away from his piercing gaze in discomfort. He finds himself savouring the predacious potency of a wolf among sheep, jaguar among nervous tapirs; he never intended to make it easy for John to spot him by gait but he barely has to think about modifying his to something more like a prowl as he scrutinizes the crowd.
Some masks and costumes are elaborate, some extremely simple, but most seem well-matched to their inhabitants — essence of clown, essence of law, essence of femme fatale. Their host, resplendent and buxom in the red-tailed jacket and top hat of a turn-of-the-century Ringmaster, starts to turn her head his way, but before he can become more than a suggestion of a figure in her peripheral vision, Sherlock slips away from the main crowd into the shadowy colonnade.
Near a wall fountain at the other end of the colonnade, golden light from the house limns the edges of a Valkyrie with a sword on her back, leaning against a column with her head bent intently toward someone shorter than she; all that can be seen of the other beyond her cloak is the soft, curved edge of a silvery wing. Music drowns out any words, but even in the shadows the body language is clear: Sherlock rests his claws against the wall, planning to pass when they kiss and he can go unobserved.
She leans down, and beyond her shoulder the faint light brushes over fair hair between the crests of wings that flutter backward. Blunt fingers touch her bicep, and Sherlock steps forward to lay his own claws upon her shoulder; his tail would lash if it could.
She turns toward him, shifting so her body is more between him and his angelic prey rather than less — John, unmistakably John, despite blank glowing mask, short toga baring neck, shoulder and legs, and gorgeous silver wings taller than he is. The Valkyrie's brows contract beneath the nose-guard of her helmet, lips a thin line; mid-thirties, city girl by day, and currently the essence of possessiveness. But John does not belong to her.
Sherlock steps even closer, heart pounding angrily with the beat of the music. His snarl is lost in the shadows, and even if she could hear him clearly his voice would give the game away too soon — but the feral danger in his eyes speaks to her and she steps back with chin lifted. John sidesteps into the colonnade, allowing her to retreat into the courtyard to lave her wounded pride and find a more suitable partner.
Sherlock follows just far enough to warn her not to return, then turns back, circling John in a tight prowl. John reaches to the edge of one wing, pulling it around to shelter his body and the featureless mask, illuminated somehow from within, follows Sherlock, tilted in wariness or wonder. Essence of curiosity? Of judgement? Perhaps essence of the unseen watcher, the authoritarian regard.
Sherlock spirals in again, and the wings spread wider as John backs against the broad painted-brick column.
"Pushy, aren't you?" The words are muffled, breathless. Unmistakably John, aroused.
Sherlock smiles to himself, lifts his hand to stroke claws tenderly down John's neck. John stills and his breathing shallows, pulse throbbing beneath the sharp points. Does he know, or guess? Difficult to say, without being able to see his eyes and lips. Would he be this aroused by a stranger who approached this boldly? One more suited to his tastes than the Valkyrie? Sherlock… can't be certain. Something inexplicable, molten and confused, burns through his veins, and John lifts his chin higher, exposing more of the neck that dents beneath the tips of his claws. John's breath hisses out, rasps in.
He must know.
On the hunt for answers once again, jaguar-quick, bent on beating those soldierly reflexes, he grabs John's wrists and pins them against the column through the soft layer of cloth and feathers. Bodies press together. Sherlock's obstructed breath fogs the surface of the translucent mask; at this range he can see through it enough to watch John's eyes flicker through fear and curiosity and lust and...acquiescence, and still Sherlock can't be sure about recognition.
His hands tighten against the thin skin at John's wrists; he dips his head, nips the side of John's neck beneath the jawline of the mask and then bites more firmly at the trapezius just inside the drape of the toga.
"Careful," John breathes out, shifting his weight, pulling minutely away from Sherlock's teeth but sliding his thigh between Sherlock's legs.
Careful. Which John never is. Which Sherlock never is. The molten pressure builds, curling his lip, squeezing his eyes closed, scraping his carved jaguar face against John's empty mask, with his head still bent over John's neck and shoulder. Careful, as in don't leave a mark. As though Sherlock would need such mundane evidence to know that John had done more than drink or dance at this party.
What if you can hide it? What if you've done this before and I haven't seen because I haven't wanted to look, haven't observed, haven't believed you would ever want to deceive me?
What if John's heartfelt "yours" is merely a way to placate Sherlock's insistent "mine"?
Sherlock presses forward hard, his breathing rough against John's chest. John tilts his head back further and momentarily tugs against Sherlock's confining hands, trying to raise his own. To touch, to feel, probably to slide them beneath the turtleneck for the mutual pleasure of skin-on-skin? Or to push Sherlock — or this bold stranger — away?
But surely if his advances were unwelcome John would already have put him on his arse?
Very well. Let's see how far you'll take this.
He lifts John's wrists higher, pins them briefly against the upper crest of the wings while he tongues a wet stripe up beneath his jawline, then lets them go so he can reach fingers beneath the hem of his toga, the black claws harrowing through the hair on his upper thighs on their way to more dangerous territory. John shudders under the touch, makes a soft, frustrated noise in his throat: want.
Angrily, Sherlock pivots his hand below the cotton of John's pants, surrounds his scrotum with threatening claw points. John's Adam's apple bobs and he quiets, fingers dimpling the skin of Sherlock's lower back.
Sherlock feels John's heartbeat thumping hard against his, holds the tension in his hand before unbending the claws, flattening his palm, stroking upwards against the hard erection. John's hips jerk into the touch; his head drops back against the column between the wings that flutter with his agitated movement.
He caresses several times, slow and then faster, watching John's familiar arousal consuming this alien form. With his free hand, he works the back of the pants down over hips and buttocks, until he has to pause in his strokes to lift the damp cloth free at the front.
This time, John's barely audible keen is all about desperation. A sound Sherlock has always heard as yearning for him to give John more: touch me, Sherlock, or kiss me, damn it, or fuck me, please please, Sherlock please.
What if it isn't specific to Sherlock at all? What if this is a sound John makes any time he yearns to get off?
Head bowed, he wraps his fingers around the cock John has said over and over again is "yours, only yours", tensely aware of the claws he could bring to bear so easily, knows John is aware as well for different reasons.
John needs danger like other men need air; he needs the thrill or he gets bored.
Do I bore you?
A growl escapes Sherlock; his breath wrestling the belabored pulse in his throat, his extremities gone chill even as he jerks at John's cock. John finds Sherlock's flies, struggles and manipulates for access, and Sherlock is too caught up in the bitter things annealing in his chest to redirect or withdraw before John's hand cups his penis, barely hard within his pants.
John's hand stills. The music pounds, distantly, voices and drunken shrieks and happy laughter, but between them all is unsettled and silent. Then his other hand lifts to tilt the faceless mask back, to raise Sherlock's chin, to trace his lower lip with his thumb.
"Yours, Sherlock," John says, pitched to reach his ears alone. The illuminated mask perched atop his hair like a hat casts brightness over blue-hazel eyes, over the warmth and sincerity folded into ordinary features. "Only you."
Sherlock searches John's face, throat constricting, mind ratcheting through a thousand reinterpretations in the time it takes him to heave a shaky breath, squeeze John a little tighter. John nods, only a brief pause for surety before he strokes Sherlock confidently in return — the rolling touch and slight twist he knows steals Sherlock's breath, makes his ears burn and his penis twitch.
Beyond their sphere of intimacy, the crowd and its noise gather in the courtyard, meaningless excitement resolving into a raucous countdown. Sherlock's breathing accelerates as John brings him up to — no, changes the direction of the speed he was already racing — he pushes John firmly against the column again but the force driving his actions is different, the leaden lump melting anew in the calcining essence of John's grace.
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Date: 2013-12-21 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-12-22 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-12-22 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-12-22 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 04:57 pm (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 2014-01-02 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-23 10:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-26 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-12-26 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 04:59 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for the comment!
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Date: 2013-12-29 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 05:00 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for the lovely comment!
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Date: 2014-01-03 02:13 am (UTC)I still remember fondly your "Appassionata" and the AU with the animal spirits.
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Date: 2013-12-31 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-02 05:00 pm (UTC)