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The smell of cinnamon welcomes him at the door. Sweet and spicy, like a breakfast pastry, only better, and it takes him from hungry to ravenous in the space of a breath. Mrs Hudson makes excellent cinnamon swirls, and Sherlock has no cases on right now. John takes the stairs two steps at the time.
In the kitchen, Sherlock looks up from where he’s bent over the table.
“Ah, John. Good. I need you to try this.”
John toes off his shoes. There are no cinnamon swirls on the table. There are none on the counters. But there is no empty tray, either.
“Here,” says Sherlock, and holds something out.
John looks at the table. Jars, cups, beakers, bowls. Paper towels, stained in red, green and yellow. Spots of colour on the wood, melted ice sliding onto the floor.
“John,” says Sherlock.
John crosses the kitchen, reaches across the table, and takes what Sherlock is offering. It’s a misshapen lump of something blue, on a short wooden stick.
“Ice cream,” says John. He blinks. “You’re making ice cream. How are you making ice cream?”
Sherlock looks at him. Then he bends to the side, picks up something from the floor, and lifts it – a large metal canister with a handle. Sherlock is not touching the side of it. He holds the handle and the bottom rim, tilts the canister, and pours the contents slowly into a small bowl. The contents are liquid. The bowl starts steaming, and a white cloud floats onto the table.
John feels a chuckle bubble up from his throat. God. Figures. This is Sherlock.
“You’re making ice cream with liquid nitrogen,” says John. “Jesus Christ. Do you still have all of your fingers?”
Sherlock stops pouring, sets the canister back on the floor.
“When you vaccinate patients at the surgery,” he says, “do you often stab yourself in the eye?”
John laughs. Of course Sherlock is intimately familiar with all the possible precautions, and takes none unless they are absolutely essential. And of course if Sherlock deigns to make ice cream, he will use a method that is least time consuming, scientifically sound, and dates back to the nineteenth century.
John contemplates the blue lump. It’s frozen solid. Minus two hundred Celsius? Thereabouts. He doesn’t remember exactly.
Sherlock waves his hand at him. “So?”
Slowly, John brings the lump to his mouth and tries it with his teeth. He doesn’t trust it enough to risk freezing off the tip of his tongue.
The lump tastes sweet. No, more than just sweet. John tries again. The texture is silky smooth, but he has never tasted this flavour of ice cream before. It’s sweet, but it’s also a bit salty. Watery. John frowns.
“Blue,” says Sherlock.
“What?” John swallows a small piece.
“Blue,” says Sherlock. “I’m making it taste blue.”
Ah, he’s lost it, thinks John, not surprised in the least. Sherlock, no cases, liquid nitrogen, that's your tipping point, right there. John pops the rest of the blue lump into his mouth, crushes the salty-watery-blue between his teeth. He drops the stick onto the table, and walks round to stand next to Sherlock.
“What else have you got?” he says, because when was the last time John Watson was completely right in the head?
Sherlock beams at him. “Try this one.” He lifts a wooden stick out of the bowl he just flash-froze, and hands it to John. The lump at the end of the stick is purple. John looks at it. He imagines plums, or grapes, or maybe a hint of blueberry.
The taste is nothing like any of these. John closes his eyes.
“It’s bitter,” he says.
“Mmm,” says Sherlock. “Does it fit?”
John tastes more, rolls it over on his tongue. Inhales, to take in the smell, and exhales to combine it with taste, and there it is, a bitter flavour, deep and somehow… organic. Like mould, with a hint of decay, but nothing definitive, nothing he can identify right off.
It’s working, John thinks. Whatever Sherlock is mixing, it works. It doesn’t quite taste like purple, but then again, colours are just labels, and the sense that connects them to taste is unique to every person on Earth. What Sherlock perceives as purple might taste like magenta to John – and look at him, he’s lost his mind already, and he hasn’t even been in the flat for ten minutes.
Sherlock has that effect. Granted, he’s had time to inflict his particular brand of insanity on John for longer than this, but then John hadn't been entirely undamaged to begin with.
When John opens his eyes, Sherlock is watching him. His eyes are intent, searching. Waiting.
Well, scientific advances can’t wait. John pops the stick out of his mouth.
“It tastes like the morgue,” he says, and he can’t help but laugh at Sherlock’s quizzical expression.
“Interesting,” says Sherlock, when he’s regained control of his face. John hands him the half-eaten ice cream.
Sherlock closes his eyes when he tastes it too. He slides the whole thing off the stick, rolls it around in his mouth.
“Mmm, I shee it,” he says. “Too shweet.”
Yes, it would be, thinks John, with fondness. Mould and rot and cadavers is what Sherlock does for sugar and spice and everything nice. Of course the morgue would taste sweet.
Sherlock drops the leftover stick on the table, picks up a beaker of blue fluid, and spatters a few drops into the bowl. John watches him. Red goes next, then some milk and cream, a splash of pasteurized egg, a drop of a white liquid John doesn’t recognise. Some sugar, and another liquid, colourless. A sudden smell of strawberries fills the air. Sherlock whisks the mixture, then picks up the nitrogen container again. John thinks about protective gear. Liquid nitrogen slides off your skin, but it doesn’t do well in clothes. A third-degree burn or a sting of frostbite – not really that different if you’re missing a finger.
Sherlock whisks, and John looks at the other bowls on the table. Some of them are empty, some contain half-melted colours – a whole rainbow of them; Sherlock is trying to get them all right. There is a green one that looks like it might be edible. There is no stick in the bowl, so John picks up a stick from the table and uses it like a spoon.
The green tastes like blood. John almost spits, but his upbringing holds firm. He sets the bowl carefully back on the table, and picks up another, full of something orange – because how bad can it possibly be, and damn his sanity anyway.
“Here,” says Sherlock. “Try now.”
Sherlock is holding out another frozen purple blob on a stick. John’s hands are occupied. He leans over and closes his mouth over the top of the ice cream. He closes his eyes, and allows the sensations to flow.
“Mmm,” he says. “Yes, that’s better.” He opens his eyes, looks at Sherlock, intends to elaborate on the taste of stolen blackberries at night, some overripe, some rotten with fungus, and the purple and blue stains on his fingers, nearly black in the light of the torch—
Sherlock is looking at him. He is still holding the ice cream, but his eyes are fixed on John’s mouth.
The look spirals down and blooms in John’s gut like ice crystals, tearing through his skin. It awakens the dormant need inside him like an electric shock to the heart.
Jesus Christ.
John swallows. Stolen berries chase the taste of blood on his tongue.
“Sherlock,” he says, but he runs out of breath halfway through it.
Sherlock is still watching his mouth. His hand, still holding the ice cream, is motionless in the air, inches from John’s lips. Sherlock watches John’s mouth, and then he raises his chin, just a fraction – his lips part slightly with the movement – and he tips the ice cream and rests it against John’s lower lip.
It’s the most blatantly sexual thing John has ever seen him do.
“Say yes,” says Sherlock. His voice is low, raspy, like he’s been eating raw ice and it’s torn the soft tissue in his throat.
John closes his eyes. His heart is flash-frozen, cracking beneath his sternum with each beat. Dear God, he thinks. It’s been less than ten minutes, and he hasn’t been right in the head for much longer than that, but Sherlock has never done anything like this, never said anything like this, so John has never allowed himself to think about it, he has never considered—
“John,” says Sherlock, with urgency. “Say yes.”
John keeps his eyes shut. There is a faint smell of cinnamon, still in the air. Is it from the orange bowl? Did Sherlock try to make orange smell like fire? God, John doesn’t even remember the point of this anymore. Colour, taste, smell, all blend into one, into a syrup of heat that flows between the ice crystals and melts them into flame in his stomach. Sherlock has asked him a question, but John takes all the necessary precautions, and the habit is too hard to break. He keeps quiet, and hopes that Sherlock will see, that he will understand, because that’s what Sherlock does.
“All right,” says Sherlock, after what feels like a very long time. Something clinks; Sherlock has dropped the purple ice cream onto the table. John doesn’t open his eyes. He is aware of every millimetre of the space between them.
Warm hand touches his. Extricates the bowl from his fingers. Another clink, Sherlock setting the bowl on the table, and then another touch, fingers encircling his arm, and John shudders at the precision, at the intent of that touch – Sherlock is taller, he is stronger, and John can’t do much, not on the vertical axis, if he happens not to agree—
“If you tell me to stop,” says Sherlock, quietly, “I will.”
John huffs out a laugh. It sounds like a gasp for air. “I know.”
There’s a whiff of breath at his temple. Sherlock is very close now. “How?” He sounds curious. Interested. Like he really doesn’t know.
Because I trust you, thinks John, with desperation. You are holding me down by the arm like you own me, there’s a container of hazardous material on the floor by your feet, and I have no idea what you’re going to do, but I trust you anyway.
He opens his eyes. Sherlock is watching him. His eyes are a terrifying pale blue, and John wonders: what does this shade of blue taste like? Did Sherlock get to this one yet? John thinks he would like to try it. The thought fills him with an irrational urge to giggle.
Sherlock is very close now. Kissing distance. John licks his lips, and the terrifying blue eyes flick down to his mouth, then back up. The hand at John’s elbow tightens. Sherlock lifts his other hand, slides it to the back of John’s neck, fingers scraping up into his hair, and John feels his skin heat up. No one has ever touched him like this. Held him like this. Held him down.
“John,” says Sherlock. “How?”
John smiles. It feels more like baring of teeth. Sherlock is asking how, like he really doesn’t know, like John’s defences all these years really meant something, like Sherlock really doesn’t see the restless need that John had caged and locked up inside him, like he doesn’t see that there is nothing John wouldn’t do now, that he’d gladly give himself over even though he’s never done this before—
God, he’s never done this before.
“Does it need saying?” John rasps, and Sherlock’s face contorts, a brief, uncontrolled spasm, and then the fingers at the back of John’s neck tighten and pull, and Sherlock’s mouth clashes against his.
Sherlock tastes like purple mould with a touch of decay, and underneath, blood and cinnamon and salt, and this, this is all the sugar and spice John will ever need. He opens his mouth, allows the intrusion of tongue and teeth, and Sherlock makes a sound, raw and sharp, and bites John's lower lip so hard John sees black spots behind his eyelids.
“Fuck,” says John, because shit that hurt, and he wrenches his head away. It occurs to him, quite belatedly, that he has no idea what Sherlock does or doesn’t do in this… context, and there’s still the liquid fucking nitrogen right there on the floor.
“Turn round,” says Sherlock. There is blood, trickling from his lips, or maybe it’s artificial colouring, John isn’t sure anymore. He backs away, just a little, but apparently it’s the wrong thing to do, because Sherlock tightens his grip on John’s arm, and ah that hurts too.
“No,” says Sherlock. “Here, like this.”
He pulls and twists, and John goes with the movement, faces the mess on the kitchen table. Sherlock relocates his hands, to John’s right elbow and, Jesus fuck, round his throat, and Sherlock is now at the back of him, John stretched upright, and it really isn’t comfortable like this, it really isn’t something he wanted to do when he thought about this, when he forgot he was not allowed and thought of it anyway, and it wasn’t exactly romantic, per se, but it was decidedly more mutual—
Sherlock lets go of his arm, folds around his side, and swipes at the beakers and bowls. They clatter onto the floor, and John barely has time to draw in a breath before the grip on his throat slides again to the back of his neck, and Sherlock is pushing him down.
Jesus.
John goes. His elbows hit the table, and that hurts too, pain shooting up his bones to his shoulders, white and blinding. Sherlock presses against the back of his thighs, one hand still at John’s nape, the other pulling at John’s belt buckle.
John can’t think. He doesn’t want to think.
“Sherlock,” he says, and he is amazed he can still make words.
“Yes.” Not really a question. Sherlock unbuckles John’s belt, flips open the button and tugs down the zip, and then he’s pushing and shoving John’s trousers down his thighs, and tugging at his underwear, and God, John can feel it, all of it, Sherlock’s hand against him, against bare skin now, not touching, not on purpose, just a rough brush of knuckles as Sherlock pulls his underwear down to where he wants it, and then the back of his hand again as Sherlock undoes his own trousers behind him, behind him, this is where Sherlock is, pressing tight against the backs of John’s thighs, and it’s all skin on skin now, warm and close and disarming, and John takes a sharp breath through his mouth, and he feels orange burning into his lungs, bright and hot, from the overturned ice cream bowl, and Sherlock really did make it taste like fire.
“Keep saying it,” murmurs Sherlock, into his spine, and John heaves out a breath that might be a laugh or a sob, because that voice goes straight into his core, and it guts him. The ice crystals spill to the floor and he is empty.
“Sherlock,” he whispers, weak.
Sherlock kisses the top of his shoulder, and then his weight shifts, and it’s gone, everything except the warm press of his hips. Dishes clatter on the counter behind them. John closes his eyes. The restless need burns inside him. The back of his neck feels strangely bare without Sherlock’s hand.
A trickle down the small of his back. Warm, sluggish. Not water, not the liquid fucking nitrogen, thank God. Oil. It’s oil. Christ. Sherlock’s hand returns to the back of his neck, and John exhales in relief, and drops his forehead onto the table.
Sherlock handles him as he would an inanimate object with which he is intimately familiar. He coats John in quick, efficient swipes, up and down between his buttocks, then applies pressure, hard fingers against slick, sensitive skin, and pushes inside him, and fuck that hurts too. John hisses in a breath, tries to keep his muscles relaxed. Fails.
If you tell me to stop, I will.
God, he should. He should stop this right now. The smell of cinnamon is still in his nostrils, the taste of purple still on his tongue, and he distantly remembers he was hungry, he was ravenous, and he was hoping for pastries, but then Sherlock made him eat out of his hand, and filled him with ice and fire, and the only thing he wants now is this, for Sherlock to take him like this.
Sherlock breathes down the back of his neck. “Keep saying it, John.”
“God,” says John, out of breath, and Sherlock pushes his fingers in harder, the flat of his palm now pressed tight against John’s body. He twists his hand, and the pain inside John blooms and transforms, diffusing into warm pleasure, and of course Sherlock would be good at this, of course he would know how.
“Sherlock,” John says, obedient, and feels a tremor go through the man at his back. The fingers on his neck tighten, release. John keeps his eyes shut.
Sherlock pistons his fingers, in and out, a few more times, and then takes his hand away. John drags in a breath. His skin is raw and tender. He feels like he’s about to take off, like he’s having an out-of-body experience.
He hasn’t felt like this in a very long time.
There is a clink, then more oil, and Sherlock’s fingertips again, spreading a new coat over him, then moving away, and then there is pressure, blinding pressure, and Jesus Christ—
John slams violently back into himself. “Oh God,” he grits out. “Sherlock.” Instinct takes over, and he tenses, pushes up, tries to wrench himself away, because fuck, this is too much, and he’d gladly give himself over in theory, but God, he’s never done this before, and turns out his body doesn’t very much like to be invaded like this, and no matter how much he wants, he has physical limits—
The hand on the back of his neck pushes him down, grinds his forehead against the table. Colour explodes under his eyelids, like sparks in the black, and it tears a broken sound out of his throat. Sherlock’s other hand is on his hip, fingers dug in like claws. The terrible, searing pressure peaks, then eases, and Sherlock’s hips push in hard, once, an oily glide inside him until their bodies are pressed tight against each other against the edge of the table.
Sherlock stills, stretched against John’s back. His hands are still holding onto John, neck and hip, but they don’t press anymore, they don’t push – and John emerges from the black into a new plane of sensation: crushed and caged, split apart, he trembles under Sherlock’s weight, under those three bright points of contact, until the pain ebbs away, the fear settles down, and the physical limits dissolve into nothing.
Sherlock breathes slowly, warm mouth against John’s back through the fabric of his shirt, and John sucks air into his compressed ribcage, one lungful at a time, and breathes with him. He allows his muscles to relax, and his eyes to fall shut. He can feel Sherlock’s heartbeat, slamming in his chest, and against the ridge of John’s spine.
“Can you come like this?” says Sherlock, into his back, and John feels empty laughter shaking out of him like air bubbles, because shouldn’t Sherlock have deduced this, like he did everything else?
“I don’t know,” he says, because he truly has no idea.
Sherlock hums against his back, then shifts. His hand lifts from John’s hip, and his arm goes around John and down to his front. John opens his eyes, his head upside down, and looks down along his chest and stomach to where Sherlock is touching between his legs with such ease, such experience, as if it’s their hundredth time, not their first.
Sherlock’s fingers are slick with oil, and stained with the food colouring, the patches multihued, like symptoms of some exotic disease. He coats John slowly, root to tip, and then closes his fingers around him and starts stroking. Pleasure blooms, spills into John’s gut like honey.
Say it, John remembers, because he doesn’t need to be told.
“Sherlock,” he says, and feels Sherlock twitch inside him, feels his fingers tighten, then resume their glide, up and down. It’s a tremendous kick, this, it’s dizzying to know that John can say his name like this, and it will go straight to where Sherlock can’t help it.
(He immediately resolves to use it at crime scenes.)
Sherlock braces against the back of his neck and begins to pull out.
Sensation returns, sharp and sudden, going from the soft lull of insistent pressure to a bright slice of pain. John opens his mouth. The edges of his vision seep into black. Sherlock pulls back until he is almost out, and then he pushes back in, just barely, and then he does it again, and again, and he adjusts the rhythm of his hand, and John’s breath punches out of him with the shock of it, because Sherlock is moving shallowly, in and out of him, not aiming at his prostate, but instead scoring against where the tissue is most sensitive, and most bare – but it doesn’t hurt anymore. Instead, that slow, leisurely glide lights up all the right nerves, a bright tendril of pleasure, sharp and sweet, and Sherlock’s hand works in double-time over John, right over the tip of him, and the combined sensation of it takes him from zero to sixty in eight seconds flat.
He feels his orgasm start in the tips of his toes. It rushes through him like a current, like an injection of high-octane fuel, pooling into his abdomen and then heating in flash of white light.
He comes. He keeps his eyes open, watches himself streak white over Sherlock’s multi-coloured fingers, onto the stained surface of the table. He forgets to breathe, somewhere in the middle of it, but that is all right. Autonomous response of the body. Lizard brain. He will be all right.
Sherlock strokes him through it, slowing down. His hips go still at the most shallow point. John can feel him trembling, hips and thighs and hands shaking with restraint.
Restraint. Jesus Christ.
“Go,” John whispers. He shifts, braces his forearms against the table, dips his spine. “Go on.” And then, “Sherlock,” and Sherlock whines against the back of his neck and slams back in.
It doesn’t hurt. Not really. Over sensitised as he is, he can take this. Sherlock grinds his hips against him, glides in and out, and John is vaguely aware of the table creaking, of something metal clattering onto the floor. The liquid nitrogen is still next to Sherlock’s feet, but Sherlock is very steady, and he takes no wrong steps. He’s let go of John’s nape, his hands now gripping John’s hips, and it should feel alien, John thinks, it should feel wrong, being held and opened and taken like this, but it feels right, it feels perfect, and he didn’t even have to ask for this, because Sherlock saw, and he understood, and he took John like he owned him, and he pushed him over to the other side and then wrenched him back, tumbled him headfirst into pleasure, and this is why John trusts Sherlock, with his life, with his body, with his mind.
“John,” says Sherlock, suddenly broken, and the rhythm of his thrusts stutters and slows, and he shoves in, tight, with that last push John knows so very well – and it’s enlightening to feel it from this end, Sherlock’s hips warm and wet with perspiration and oil, his thighs trembling – and that twitch, that pulse, deep inside John, one, two, three.
Then nothing.
They stay like that, for a little while.
Different flavours of pain start creeping in. The hard press of the table will be a dull red bruise across John’s stomach, the blood inside sugary sweet; his battered elbows flare up in sharp white, bones inside skin that is salty with sweat. His legs are trembling with a deep, fiery tingle of nerves inside muscle. John sucks in a breath, and Sherlock shifts above him, and lifts away. Gentle fingers against his backside, and then Sherlock is pulling out, and they both make a sound, raw and sore, and John laughs.
“Jesus fuck,” he says, forehead still against the table.
Sherlock grunts, not really a word, and moves away. John can hear him kick a bowl with a clatter, and then there’s a bang, and a thud, Sherlock sliding against the cabinets and sitting down hard on the floor.
John lifts himself off the table. He tucks himself back in, doesn’t bother to button back up. He is very tired. Also ravenous, now that they’re done. He straightens, stretching his spine, slotting bones back into proper alignment. The floor is too far away, so he slides a chair over, and lowers himself down. He takes a deep breath, and looks at Sherlock.
Sherlock is leaning against the cabinets, legs straight out, hands in his lap. He hasn’t bothered to dress.
It’s a singular sight, John thinks. Sherlock Holmes, post coitus. There’s a shine of sweat on his face, and a red flush has crept up onto his neck. His chest is still shuddering with a too-fast breath. His bare hips are bony and narrow, his pubic hair is dark, and his fingers, curled over his genitals, suddenly look very fragile.
John swallows.
“So,” he says. “Blue.”
Sherlock looks at him. He holds John’s gaze, and then he blinks, like he’s context-switching, and has to go several layers down. He licks his lips.
“Yes,” he says. He sounds scratchy, and John thinks about raw ice again.
“And liquid fucking nitrogen,” says John. “Jesus, Sherlock.” He feels a chuckle rise from his throat. He lets it out.
Sherlock tips his head back against the cabinet and closes his eyes.
“Yes,” he says. His mouth twitches, and John laughs, he can’t help it. He brings his hand to his mouth, but it doesn’t help. He feels his eyes water. His chest is shaking.
Sherlock’s laugh, when he joins him at last, is deep like gold and warm like cinnamon and honey.