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Chrring!

FREE Vodafone Msg: Reinvent
yourself with The Network.
Offer expires soon!

John frowns at the text. He doesn't often get spam.

*

Chrring!

IMPORTANT FINANCIAL ALERT
ENCLOSED: You could be overpaying
THOUSANDS in bills each month.
Text SCAM for further information

And see, that one is annoying because it goes off when he's stuck in an endless queue at the bank, and the sound bite is insanely loud amid the silent, disgruntled swarm of patrons, all of whom send sly little looks of derision his way.

John spends the rest of the wait trying and failing to figure out how to block the number.

*

Chrring!

Free Currys Giftcard Available
For A Limited Time.
Text Back "IOU" To Redeem

John glares at his phone, tries calling the number back but it's disconnected. Looks it up on WhitePages and 411 and every other reverse phone search engine he can think of and finds nothing.

*

Chrring!

Would you like to double
your salary in just minutes?
Text DOUBLE to begin now.

John bites the bullet and texts back.

Who is this?

He's sure he'll get some kind of error message at any moment, but it was worth a—

As ever, you see
but you don't observe.

John nearly drops his phone aaand hang on, yes, he has in fact dropped it. The distant chrring of the next text is even more absurd than usual. It ought to be a dramatic chord of some description, possibly featuring an organ. But this just feels like a malicious rim shot.

I did tell you a phone cover
would be prudent.

*John thinks long and hard about it over the next few days, and is munching his breakfast so violently that the other coffee shop patrons are inching away from him when he decides enough is enough, and he may as well just text back. What's the worst that could . . . well, better not think on it, actually.

This is unbelievable.

Is it? Why won't
you just think?

This is some trick
of Moriarty's.

Possible.

But wrong.

John stares intently at his phone, willing it to elaborate. It's a pathetically long while before he remembers that frowny facial expressions don't translate to the digital realm.

Prove it.

That would exceed
your hilariously
archaic texting limit.

Think of it like a tweet.

What?
Too difficult?

But John's afraid of a too-clever retort, shoves his phone in his pocket and ignores the chrring on his way out the door. He walks down the sidewalk, waits until the blare of sun and the bite of wind has helped him regroup his sanity before he looks at the text.

You shot the cabbie.

Moriarty could easily
have known that.

Hours pass. Mindless news and mindless dinner and mindless internet surfing, and still no text. John is a bit frustrated, but then again it really can't be healthy to entertain this little fantasy just because—

Chrring!

MeganFox

Sorry, wrong number.

And I'm not a woman.

Hamish

020371

“Oh. . .”

Whiskers

4815162342

Qwerty.
Really, John?

LLAP

1234jam

…---…

nobodycanbethisclever

sherlockisawanker

ashtray

d33rstalker

Cantata2

Care to stop me before
I start in on your
bank accounts?

And John's felt like he's floating, now, but it's decidedly not in a good way. Feels paralyzed by hope and sick with reality.

He types fumblingly, artificial clack of keys gone grossly amplified.

Anyone could've got
access to those.

Then, realizing he’s holding his breath:

Meet me.

You're an idiot.
Could be a trap.

Taps his foot and glances around his empty, loathsome flat.

Then it's a trap.
I don't bloody care.

Around 2 AM he gets another text. John reads the address, blinking against the blinding bluish glow of the screen. He blinks at it for a very long time, scrolls up through olds texts, then extremely old texts, blinks, thinks, fights the impulse for despair rising like bile in his throat and doesn't get back to sleep until daylight's creeping.*John pulls open the door to the restaurant, hasn't even adjusted to the dim lighting when his phone buzzes against his thigh.

Polo.

John frowns at that, glances around haplessly. Says, rather loud, “Marco!”, and is subsequently met with the palpable disdain of the diners. He gives them a wide berth as he wanders through the tables, says again in a hiss, “Marco?”

Polo.
Getting warmer.

The texts continue, along with the diners’ growing concern for John's mental health, and well, they're not far wrong.

Warmer.

Colder.

Colder.
What's wrong with you?

Warmer.

Yes.

Very warm.

Positively scalding.

John stares at the lavatory door like it leads beyond the veil. Which is a terrifyingly appropriate metaphor. He studies the grain of the wood, wonders what sort of oh-so-telling information a he's supposed to glean from it, from the fingerprints on the handle. Wants to know.

There's a muffled, echoing sound. It sounds like someone saying 'Polo'.

John sucks in breath, nods to himself, pushes through the door.

There’s this feeling like blacking out, his mind gone blank for a minute before he understands that there’s a Sherlock-shaped figure standing in the middle of a dingy lavatory like it owns the place. He can't quite believe what he's seeing, but that might actually have more to do with Sherlock's regrettably patterned pullover. And Sherlock seems to have followed his train of thought, because the first thing he says is, defensively, “I'm incognito.”

John goes utterly still while words echo. They continue staring at one another for a small eternity.

. . . Until finally John snaps and shoves Sherlock back against the tiled wall. “Fuck you,” he says quietly. Then, “Fuck you! God . . .” Which feels epic and satisfying but in fact echoes embarrassingly in the tiny room.

Another bout of staring that ends with Sherlock's mouth quirking up at the corner. And then John laughs, somehow—it's startled out of him by an impulse he can't distinguish, grief or rage or perhaps just genuine amusement.

It’s at this point that John realizes they've been moving gradually closer for some time, that Sherlock's eyes aren't unseeing, as they had been before—they're teeming with thought, and close, and closing in. There's a tense upbeat where Sherlock starts to angle his head, but then John just grabs his face and kisses him.

It doesn't even feel good, it just feels painful—mash of mouths and carelessness noses, errant tooth digging into John's bottom lip and Sherlock's kissing him back so hard John that can't respond. Can't breathe. Can't let it stop.

John seizes Sherlock's wrists, pulls himself impossibly closer, lightheaded with the touch of skin under his fingers because it isn't cold or slick with blood—it's hot and heartbeat-ridden.

Sherlock makes an exquisitely low sound, muffled and vibrating, and his breath’s sped up, too—desperate puffs against John's cheek and when John opens his eyes just to see Sherlock's blurred expression it's all intensely furrowed brows and tight-shut eyes and brilliantly flushed skin.

John tilts his head to lessen the pressure and Sherlock gasps silently at the same time, which then leads to a swiftly deeper kiss. Sherlock licks into his mouth meanderingly, sucks on John’s tongue and presses his body against him and John can't work out how he can make this ever be enough . . .

The door creaks.

“Oh, sh—”

Sherlock wastes no time in slamming John against it, which is clearly the most practical solution provided that some poor sod’s fingers haven’t gotten in the way, and John doesn’t hear any cursing at the moment, so it’s all right, probably.

Anyway he doesn’t much care, what with Sherlock in his hideous pullover keeping him unyieldingly still against the door, kissing him like it’s to silence any protests. Bit of a waste of effort as John isn’t inclined to protest, and has in fact mostly lost the capacity for speech, tongue inextricably entangled with Sherlock’s and Sherlock’s fingers digging into his arms and the heavy dark edge of arousal caught in his throat and groin and tingling skin.

However for some reason John does find it vital to ask, “What happened to your coat?” Its absence is oddly disappointing. He'd wanted to fist his hands in it or rip it off or something, and really this was something John had contemplated in a non-sexual sense for rather a long time. The man wore it in mid-July or inside or even occasionally to bed. It was infuriating.

“Incognito,” Sherlock repeats, kissing down John's neck and finding a spot to bite and suck and bite again. John shivers because of this, but mainly because he'd forgotten just how luscious Sherlock's voice could be, wishes he'd talk more, even if it was just deductions or reciting the damn alphabet or whatever. . .

Sherlock's thigh hard between John's legs and John groans, finds himself babbling, “Talk more, would you. . .”

Sherlock snorts. “What about?”

"I don't care. . . mm, well, actually, you might start with how the hell you aren't dead.”

“We’ve got to have some secrets,” Sherlock shrugs, goes to kiss him.

John responds for a minute, on the threshold of melting into it, but tears away to say, “We have an extraordinary amount of secrets. In general. And at the moment, especially.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I have secrets,” Sherlock says offhandedly. "I know all your secrets.”

John nods, because, yep. Sherlock tilts his chin up for a kiss, and this one descends rather quickly into that dizzy desperate place where it’s nearly an out of body experience, except that your body is singing with sensation and pure raw want.

There comes a rapping at the chamber door.

“Oh, bugger off,” John says, and Sherlock laughs at his vehemence. John laughs back in the beat before their mouths have smashed together again, and the way the mood modulates is a thing that jumps sharply in his chest.

Sherlock backs off a bit and John follows, dumbly trying to preserve the kiss. Sherlock’s hands busy with John’s belt, sudden upping of the ante and infinitely appealing. John can’t help but gasp at Sherlock’s fingers bumping against his cock as he undoes John’s trousers, slips past pants and grips straining flesh in a way that brooks no argument.

John figures he’d better reciprocate before he finds out exactly what Sherlock can do with those long elegant fingers. It’s a near thing, but John does manage to undo the fly of Sherlock’s jeans (sorry, what?), wraps his hand around his cock, too, before the slow strokes of Sherlock’s hand on him become overwhelming.

It doesn’t take long for this to happen, because Sherlock is indeed observant and skilled with his hands, and tastes excellent and smells like Sherlock, like rosin and that slightly burnt smell after ironing and his snobby brand of deodorant, a silly triumvirate that nevertheless makes John’s heart fucking ache because it means that this isn’t some cruel dream or random bescarfed pedestrian, because it means that John’s unquenchable faith, secret and subdued but ever present, that it was real, this is real, is real, God . . .

“God yeah,” John is muttering between kisses. “God keep doing that. . . just a little. . .”

“More?” Sherlock’s trying to be all tall, dark, and sexy, but his voice has gone tremulous, and that’s somehow sexier. John thumbs over the head of Sherlock’s cock and kisses at his panting mouth, trails his lips directionlessly along Sherlock’s jaw and loves Sherlock’s moan escaping by his ear.

Sherlock stokes faster over John’s cock and John rolls his hips in tandem to get more friction, tries in vain to match Sherlock’s rhythm and do a decent job on his end but it’s all too distracting—he ends up just barely grasping him until Sherlock cants his hips beggingly

Sherlock’s breath accelerates once John’s adapted to multitasking, has a death grip on John’s arm and keeps closing his eyes abruptly, then opening them, wide and glazed over, and even an ordinary person like John can deduce that he’s close. Jerks Sherlock’s cock faster, harder, follows Sherlock’s gasps and unintelligible strings of words— “Ohthisexactlysogoodsogood,” “YesI’mmmmJohnnngk . . .”

Sherlock’s still remarkably focused on John, though—taunting flicks under the head of John’s cock and glorious pulls from base to tip. Sherlock presses his face into John’s neck, tickle of hair and his erratic exhales and “Yesyesyes,” as he spills warmly between John’s fingers, silent breathless tension followed by an almighty sigh.

John can’t stop grinding against him. “Sherlock, plea—”

Sherlock’s got the most guileless expression John’s ever seen, kisses him deeply and has John coming a few perfect strokes later.

They pant against each other against the door for a long while until eventually Sherlock straightens up, chest still heaving and generally disheveled. Stare at one another in something like shock.

John lurches suddenly forward—

Sherlock shuts the door again with lightning speed.

John’s eyebrows climb at his intensity, and Sherlock frowns at this, staring at one another again until it’s too ridiculous and they simply have to laugh.

*Chrring!

Nail Girls, 50 Cross St.
Be there at 7.

Lol!
Good idea.

Yes.

Never say ‘LOL’ again.

Do try not to splurge on a
manicure before I get there.

I shall restrain myself.

Wait.
This is a booty call, isn’t it?

Wait.

HOW is this a booty call?

Make a deduction.

And don’t be late.

*