Chapter Text
John’s legs protested as he climbed the stairs to the flat. The dull ache of being on his feet all day, sharpening into needles as they reluctantly carried his weight up the steps. Today some git at Channel 4 Morning News had decided to run a scaremongering report on West Nile, and the inevitable wave of hypochondriacs had continued for most of the day, on top of the usual cough and cold patients. He hadn’t managed to leave the surgery until three hours after his shift had finished.
John paused before unlocking the door, rolling the apprehension out of his shoulders and savouring the quiet sanctuary of the hallway for a moment. When he stepped inside, Sherlock was pacing though the lounge, coat half on and dangling from one arm, flaring out behind him in the wake of his movement. He bounced his mobile excitedly in one hand.
“John! Finally! Lestrade just called; a double murder in Kensal Green and he wants us there.”
“He wants you there.” John, on the other hand, wanted to sit down.
“I can’t do it without you. I need an assistant.” Sherlock caught John’s wrist before he reached the chair and pulled their bodies together. John felt him slowly inhale and push his chest against John’s ribs, edging him backwards a fraction; not enough for him to become unbalanced or step away, just a quiet assertion of dominance. A foot slid between John’s and edged his feet apart. He recognised this for what it was, though; an appeal. Sherlock had always wanted John to want it like he does; the thrill and the physicality of the chase, the rush of putting a person behind bars, to capture them and control them like a pinned butterfly. But it wasn’t the same for John.
He could feel Sherlock staring down at him, eyes narrowed and intense. His fingers squeezed tighter around John’s wrist, nails biting into the skin. John forced himself not to flinch at the pain; Sherlock was already anticipating the game, had slipped into his role as hunter, and John must show no weakness. This was a test; their entire relationship was just that, a series of tests. Tests of strength, tests of dominance; their own private battlefield, John Watson had simply moved from one war to another.
Studying him closely, Sherlock dipped his head until his lips met John’s ear, dark hair brushing lightly against his face, and whispered a barely audible, “please.” His breath was warm and close down John’s neck. Intimate, even now.
John would have jerked back, except Sherlock had manoeuvred them so that pulling back would break his wrist. “I’m tired,” he said instead. “I have a big appraisal at work tomorrow and I need to read through a mountain of paperwork before I can even think about going to bed. No, Sherlock, not tonight.”
“An hour. That’s all I ask, John.” His brow furrowed and softened in an instant, eyes suddenly gentle. John liked to think he could see past Sherlock’s act, that artificial fascia that projected shallow facsimiles of learned emotions. He liked to hope that at least a small fraction of that casually feigned feeling was genuine. And that hope was getting in his way now: it had been a mistake to make eye contact with him.
He was too tired to fight, he decided with a sigh. Any misguided attempts to assert control now would have repercussions later on and John’s body was complaining loudly enough without any outside assistance. He dipped his head in acquiescence.
“Forty-five minutes, and I’m getting a cab with or without you.” His wrist dropped back to his side, stinging and sore; a memento of his own resignation.
Sherlock rubbed his hands together, as if to restore their circulation. “Plenty of time! Let’s go.” He shrugged his coat the rest of the way on and dashed from the flat, leaving John to turn the lights off and close the door behind them.
The cemetery stretched out in front of him, visible within the cocoon of artificial light and quickly dissolving into the inky blackness beyond. He was distracted by the icy night nipping at his skin and the accompanying shivers jittering out to his extremities. John leaned against the police car, wrapping his arms around himself and looking in at the small huddle of people from the sidelines.
The police lights hit the headstones and casting harsh shadows which criss-crossed up the gravelled path. He checked his battered wristwatch again. They’d been there 42 minutes already. He scratched at the fraying leather strap.
He shouldn’t have left the flat at all. He was here to play the obedient assistant, to watch in awe and praise Sherlock as he wowed the police officers. He was there to pass the time (Sherlock’s) and prove a point (also Sherlock’s); removing himself from the scene would be missing the point in rather spectacular fashion, in Sherlock’s view. Now he would be angry when John left, boiling under his nonchalant and focused exterior. Genius needs an audience, after all.
He thought wistfully about his chair and the burning heat of a cup of tea, and he pushed himself off of the police car.
“They worked in the same place; possibly a nightclub, they were dancers or escorts of some kind...”
“Sherlock, I’m off, yeah?” Sherlock didn’t look over at him or reply, just flicked a single gloved hand towards him before bringing it back to weave and dance over the bodies in front of him, shaking his head the way he always did while operating the problem-solving cogs in his brain.
For a moment John paused, biting his lip in disbelief, before shaking himself out of it and leaving to hunt down a taxi.
He stood in the sickly yellow glow of a streetlight, picking at the curling paint of the old cemetery railings whilst casting his eyes up and down the quiet street for any signs of a cab.
He knew for certain that no one else would have seen it. Of all the witnesses silently watching, not one of them would be aware of the festering anger inside Sherlock. An audience wasn’t the same as a crowd. Sherlock didn’t care about people, dead or alive: people didn’t matter to him; they were parts of the equation, inanimate puzzle pieces. Tools to be used and manipulated and discarded. No, Sherlock didn’t care about people, but he did care about John, in his way. He wanted him there by his side, to bask in his intellect.
His life’s work, all the people whose lives he’s saved and all the criminals he’d put away, it wasn’t for the police. It wasn’t for the safety of the general public or the greater good. It was something Sherlock did for himself, to keep his brain active and alive and to keep it from collapsing in on itself. And now for John too.
The second written warning at work had been an early indication that their relationship couldn’t keep up that pace indefinitely; you can only fall asleep at your desk so many times and expect to keep your job. But the time he really realised the change in his life had come later. Sherlock had been perfectly still on the sofa for nearly two days. He was working on a case, and as the legwork was being adequately handled by the police, all that needed to be done was to tie the remaining facts into a coherent timeline. This was proving much trickier than anyone had anticipated, hence the silence. It was the weekend, and John wanted to use his rare free time to go out and do something. Anything.
He picked up his mobile. Scrolling through the contacts, there was no one there who he could feasibly invite for a swift half at the local pub. He’d ignored many of them outright. Among those he hadn’t, some he’d cancelled on at the last minute, others he’d abandoned halfway through the first pint to chase after a case; he hadn’t heard from any of them in months.
The only person he’d spent any time with in the last year was lying in a near catatonic state on the sofa.
Things needed to change.
John didn’t know what the time was when he felt Sherlock roll into bed beside him. Sherlock pressed himself against John’s back, the warmth of his skin seeping through his thin t-shirt and coaxing him back to consciousness.
Must have solved the case, then.
John let out a murmur of acknowledgement before settling into the embrace and trying to get back to sleep. The hand that crept up and under his t-shirt was cold, scattering prickling goose bumps across his flesh.
Slow and uncoordinated, he reached for the inquisitive hand, lacing Sherlock’s fingers with his own and setting them back on his stomach with a sigh; the silent question and answer.
But this time, the answer wasn’t good enough. ‘Wrong,’ he could hear in his head.
Clamping John’s fingers between his own, Sherlock led their hands into John’s shorts, stroking and coaxing him into arousal while pushing his own hardness against John’s thigh.
When the evidence was bagged and the handcuffs closed around guilty wrists, it was always like this. John realised that he’d been hoping that the evening’s events would be more challenging, maybe stretching out to a few days, giving him some much needed rest.
In the times when they both felt it, when the burning need was sparking and palpable between them, it was almost overwhelming. They would lie afterwards (in bed, on the floor, on the sofa), drunk on an endorphin high and simply being. They could stay there for hours in comfortable silence, touching and kissing and luxuriating in basic human contact; there was no struggle for dominance, just the tender feel of skin on skin.
When the levels tipped out of balance, things got more complicated.
John shifted to face him, to protest against the disturbance to his much needed rest, but as soon as his face was turned, Sherlock was there with teeth and tongue in desperate exploration. Clearly the thrill of the chase was still alive in his veins as he clawed and scratched at John’s skin.
“Sherlock, I... Sherlock!”
“It’s fine, you can apologise later.”
John grabbed Sherlock’s face and lifted it from where he was biting a line down John’s neck, bringing them eye to eye in the translucent darkness. “Apologise for what, exactly?” John growled, anger rising. Sherlock smiled, narrowing his eyes and pushed him onto his back with a strong, controlling hand, climbing over his still sleep-heavy frame.
“For leaving me.” He placed a kiss on the hollow of John’s throat. “For not telling me I’m fantastic,” moving lower and pressing his lips against the dip beneath his sternum, “or brilliant.”
“Sherlock, I’m going to sleep.”
“Fine, I’ll do all the work,” he purred, in a truly misguided attempt at teasing.
His stomach churned as insistent hands tugged his shorts from his hips and shoved his legs open. This had gotten out of control.
Without further hesitation, Sherlock slid John’s half hard cock into his mouth. John’s erection wasn’t the result of arousal; it was a combination of sleep and physical stimulation, and this was all wrong. He didn’t want this, not now.
The bile rose in his throat and he tried to jerk his hips away. Strong hands held him in place, never pausing their relentless ministrations.
Sherlock let out a moan when John’s hand twisted into his hair, accompanied by a surprised cry when the hand wrenched him away.
“I said no.”
Sherlock said nothing as John left the bed, simply staring at him, running a finger obscenely round his lips and licking it slowly with a smile.