Chapter Text
January 29th, 2010
When John Watson limped into St. Bart’s and saw Sherlock Holmes for the first time, his first thought was nothing more than a spark of gratitude that it was not another one of his med school colleagues. Seeing Mike Stanford again had been one more indignity in the unending series of painful non-events that had been his life since being invalided out of the RAMC. He did not relish the thought of explaining his present circumstances to someone else who remembered him from his days as a hot-shot surgery resident, back when he was young and whole and his life was full of promise.
That spark grew into something else, something that warmed the cold and parched places inside of him when the stranger handed him back his mobile and looked at him for the first time.
“I’m a Wolf, I play the violin when I’m thinking. Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”
John was struck momentarily dumb, and had to give himself a mental shake before he was able to respond. “No, I mean… Who said anything about flatmates? We don’t know a thing about each other; I don’t know where we’re meeting; I don’t even know your name.”
The man’s eyes raked over him for a long second before he launched into an array of deductions that left John dazzled. To have someone look at him, really look at him, was intoxicating and if John was honest with himself, more than a little arousing.
In retrospect John wondered if Sherlock’s barrage was intended to woo him or just to distract him from the revelation of his Lycanthropy. While it was true they didn’t burn Wolves at the stake anymore, people still tended to be uncomfortable to discover that someone who looked ostensibly ‘normal’ could transform in the blink of an eye and rip your throat out.
John’s own gran would have rolled in her grave to hear her grandson was looking at a flat with one. Until her dying day she cultivated wolfsbane in a fenced-in corner of her garden. Never mind that it was poisonous enough to kill anyone, human or Wolf, but the old ways die hard.
Honestly, when it came down to it, it really made no difference to John. A couple of the blokes in his unit had been Wolves and they bled red like the rest of them when the Taliban came.
***
The next day, over a plate of pasta e fagioli, John realized that he would do anything to keep Sherlock Holmes in his life, to be able to soak up the warm sun of his genius. For the first time since he limped off the plane and into a life he no longer felt a part of, he could feel the future opening up before him like a flower unfurling, the claustrophobic bedsit already fading from his memory. He licked his dry lips and leaned forward, cock already semi hard in his trousers.
“So. Do you have a pack then?”
“No, not really my area,” Sherlock replied, attention still fixed across the street.
‘Mm. Oh, right. Were you bitten then?”
Sherlock’s head snapped towards him, his attention no longer on the window. His face was a blank mask.
“Which is fine, by the way,” John continued lamely.
John realized then that maybe he had blundered into sensitive territory. There was still a lingering prejudice against the bitten. Popular opinion being that Wolves born and raised in a pack were more stable.
“I know it’s fine,” Sherlock replied, voice still carefully free of emotion.
If John could have been swallowed by the earth at that very second he would have done it gladly. Meeting Sherlock was the first interesting thing that had happened to him in months, and he could feel it slipping through his fingers like vapour.
John plastered a smile on his face and tried to steer the conversation back into safer waters. “So you’ve got a mate then?”
“No,” came the brusque reply.
“Right. Okay. You’re unattached. Like me. Fine. Good.” John licked his lips again, and looked around nervously, starting to regret his direct approach.
“John, um ... I think you should know that I consider myself a ‘lone Wolf’ if you will. If that is going to be a problem for you…” Sherlock replied, looking profoundly uncomfortable.
While that was an improvement over mortally offended, it was still miles away from what John wanted.
“No,” John interrupted forcibly, cheeks burning in embarrassment. “I wasn’t trying to…I was just saying…someone who looks like you, with those cheekbones and that turned up collar, I mean… I’m just saying, it’s all fine.”
Sherlock looked at him for a moment, and then, apparently coming to some inner decision, nodded sharply.
“Good. Thank you. I…I misunderstood.” Sherlock paused and took a deep breath before continuing.
“While we are apparently ‘doing’ dull personal questions, I was bitten by a Wolf while I was in Uni. My partner’s father had some unsavoury business dealings in the past. An old ‘friend’ went after the son to punish the father. To make a long and tedious story short, I was turned. You can understand why I stay well clear of pack politics.”
Before John could sputter his way through another awkward apology, Sherlock spotted their mark across the street and the game was on.
John showed him exactly how fine it was later that night as he took him in hand pressed up against the wall in the entranceway of Baker Street.
***
The longer John lived with Sherlock the more he came to believe that Sherlock had a complex relationship with his Wolf side.
For someone who fancied themselves an ascetic, eschewing food and sleep when he was on a case, he was shockingly sensual. John had never met a man who took so much pleasure in luxurious fabrics, well cut suits, a drawn out shag, or even a properly made cup of tea.
It would seem natural for him to take pleasure in his dual nature, but that did not appear to be the case. For a Wolf, he spent a shockingly small amount of time in that form. Outside of the nights when the moon was full, Sherlock only ever turned once or twice a month, and then only grudgingly, always retreating behind closed doors to transform.
While it was true that John was no expert, he remembered the Wolves in his unit turning at least every day, to help patrol, stretch their muscles, or even just to playfully chase each other around the camp.
One memorable time he had even surprised Murray and Stevens rutting behind the mess tent, silhouetted by the cold stars of Lashkar Gah. Something about the uninhibited lust, the celebration of life in a desert watered with blood had made an impression on John. Before meeting the bullet that would send him home, he had passed more than one long night alone in his bunk touching himself to that image.
Maybe it was just the boredom inherent in a long military campaign, but they seemed to take an almost sensual joy in it that Sherlock did not seem to share.
John couldn't help but wonder if Sherlock's past struggles with drugs were merely a symptom of this. An overcompensation sublimated into chemical excess as a reaction to the constant struggle to restrain his base desires and instincts.
March 29th, 2011
It had been almost 15 days since Sherlock last turned and John was at his wits end. Even the endlessly sympathetic Mrs Hudson had lost her temper after a four hour violin massacre. She had marched up the stairs, thrown a freshly baked Battenberg sponge at him, and stomped back down in high dudgeon.
“Sherlock, I don’t mean to push you,” started John as he swept up cake crumbs, “but wouldn't you feel better if you changed for a bit?”
“It is just transport John,” shouted Sherlock before rolling off of the couch. Even though it was not even 9:00pm Sherlock stalked across the flat to their bedroom to throw himself facedown across the bed, a sad trail of marzipan still marking their landlady’s direct hit on the back of his suit. John followed and cautiously lay down next to him. Eyes carefully fixed on the ceiling, John finally asked the question that had been plaguing him for months.
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened… I mean… with the way that you are?”
Sherlock rolled over to face the window and for a second John thought he was not going to answer his clumsy question, but then the rough baritone continued after a long pause.
“Do you remember what Sebastian Wilkes said at the bank? Everyone in Uni hated me. Everyone except for Vitthal,” Sherlock paused, his voice tinged with regret.
“Who?”
“Vitthal Trivedi, Victor Trevor. He was always Vitthal to me though,” Sherlock continued thoughtfully. “He was the first real friend I think I ever had. We met at Cambridge while I was reading chemistry. He had faced down more than his fair share of small mindedness in the past himself. His family was from India, and he was openly gay so I think he went out of his way to make other people feel comfortable. I had known for ages that I was gay but I had never… I mean… He was beautiful and kind and we both knew it wouldn't last but it was…” Sherlock paused then to try and find the right word, “nice.”
John swallowed hard to try and get rid of the lump in his throat. Something about the distant way Sherlock was speaking made his stomach clench unpleasantly.
“When Vitthal's father was a young man he had cheated a business partner in Australia. It took 35 years but it finally caught up with him. We were in Vitthal's flat when two men burst in. I think they meant to change him but they made two serious mistakes. One, they didn't know I would be there, and two, they did not take into account Victor’s haemophilia.”
“Why did they want to change him?” John asked, genuinely puzzled. He had seen first hand what a threatened Wolf was capable of doing. It made as much sense to him as bursting into the flat to hand the son of their enemy a loaded gun.
“You know how it is here John, people sometimes cross the street to avoid us. In Mumbai it is so many times worse. In 1955 when the law was changed to prevent caste based discrimination against the Dalits , the law preventing Wolves from holding public office or owning property was left in place. For the Trivedi family, having their first born son turned would have been a public humiliation. I think it was meant as a message to Mr Trivedi. That everything he had built would be destroyed. We were in the middle of studying when the doorbell rang. Vitthal answered it and suddenly he was on the ground with a monster on top of him. I was trying to pull it off when I was bitten. I don't think he meant to. For them…for us,” Sherlock corrected himself, absently rubbing the silvered scar across the back of his wrist. “Reflexes are so much harder to control. Either way it was done. The change happens so fast… I tried to fight it, I tried to explain that Victor was a haemophiliac and that he needed medical attention but there was no time. I could feel the change taking me.”
“Jesus Sherlock…” John imagined the change had been awful, but the scope of the tragedy still took him by surprise.
Sherlock continued, his body rigid, muscles tensing in remembered pain.
“They took off running and I was left there in a new body for the first time watching an animal that used to be my boyfriend bleed to death. I couldn't change back, I couldn't call for help and I couldn't even open the door to get out. Do you understand why this is hard for me John? I am a man of science and five nights a month I can't even work a fucking door knob,” he spat.
The profanity, more than anything else, was what really drove home his partner’s distress. John once watched Sherlock accidentally catch the sleeve of his dressing gown on fire in front of Anderson, and that had warranted only a ‘blast’ muttered under his breath. John reached out with a trembling hand to touch Sherlock’s back, to try and offer some comfort no matter how inadequate, but Sherlock was already rolling out of bed and stomping towards the toilet. John could hear the scuffling as he stripped down. The charcoal Wolf that emerged a few moments later gave him a baleful look before clattering off down the stairs.
Sherlock was right. John didn’t understand.
***
Later that night, John rolled off of Sherlock, muscles trembling, and carefully pulled off the condom before tying it up. On creaking knees he padded to the loo to bin it and to grab a wet flannel. The look Sherlock gave him as John turned away was equal parts hunger and something undefined.
When he returned, Sherlock had his eyes closed, fingers steepled, ostensibly in his mind palace. With a soft sigh, John gently and efficiently cleaned the lube off Sherlock’s cleft the best he could considering the prat might as well have been dead for all that he was helping. With the worst of it cleaned off, John gave a desultory wipe at the mess on Sherlock’s belly before giving it up as a bad job. If Sherlock did not want to wake up with dried semen flaking all over his stomach, then he could remain in the land of the living for longer than 30 seconds after they were done having sex. With a tetchy grumble at odds with the bone deep lassitude that comes with having a brilliant fuck, John climbed into bed next to his catatonic lover and turned to face the wall.
John, being a British man of a certain age, was never prone to deep introspection, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Sherlock was still holding back. From the start, their sex life was nothing short of spectacular. As they progressed from that first frantic hand job to the day John slid inside him for the first time, the passion had been there. Sherlock was endlessly inventive and laser focussed, but somehow John was more often than not left with an ineffable sense of sadness. Like the ghost of perfume lingering in the room. As he drifted off to sleep he couldn’t help but ask himself - they were happy weren't they?
***
Time passed. By day they worked in tandem, and three weeks a month they slept side by side. Every fourth week Sherlock would answer the call in his blood and John would pretend to sleep until Sherlock returned, sliding into the bed at the break of dawn like an apology. On those mornings they would make love, Sherlock lying sweet and pliant beneath him. And yet… somehow in the tumult of hot breath and burning kisses, John could not shake the conviction that an emotional subterfuge was taking place, a legerdemain of the heart that he could only glimpse from the corner his eye.
This feeling grew and grew like stones gathering in the pit of his stomach. It was the worst on the days when Sherlock was restless, stalking around the flat like his humanity was an ill-fitting suit. On those days when it got to be too much he would leave his Belstaff crumpled in a heap on the sitting room floor and go run by himself in Regent’s park. John told himself that being left behind did not hurt. He told himself that on two legs, even freed from his limp he could never keep up. He told himself that enough times, that when a madman called Moriarty showed up to play he had almost started to believe it.
Besides, how could you doubt someone’s love for you when they were willing to die with you in the chlorine scented dark of an abandoned swimming pool?
November 20th, 2011
Months later, looking at the black Wolf broken at the foot of St. Bart’s John knew that he was wrong. Being left behind did hurt.
November 4th, 2013
John limped up the 17 steps after another gruelling double shift. He didn't need the money, not anymore, but it beat the alternative of sitting alone in an empty flat wondering what it would take to convince Mycroft he was stable enough to have his SIG Sauer back. He pushed the door open and was hanging his coat up on the peg when the sound of someone clearing their throat behind him interrupted his dark reverie.
‘Christ’ he thought to himself. Mrs Hudson had probably bullied Harry or Greg into coming over to check on him again. With a sigh he turned to admonish his unwanted guest but the words turned to dust in his mouth. Sherlock was standing in the kitchen. John blinked twice. He was a little thinner, maybe more of the wild clinging to him, but his eyes were the same. It was Sherlock and he was alive. John felt the blood rush away from his face as comprehension raced through him with a shock so stark it was like being doused in ice water.
“You utter bastard, how could you do that to me?” John croaked out, rage and grief distorting his voice into something unfamiliar. “I saw you broken on the pavement. How? How?”
Sherlock looked uncharacteristically uncertain as he began trying to explain in a hushed voice. “It was a true wolf that went off the roof not me, you have to understand John, Moriarty had it all planned out. Either I fell or he would kill you and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson.”
John stumbled then, darkness rushing in from the corners of his vision. For a second he was not sure if he would vomit or black-out. Bracing himself with his back against the ancient wall paper, he took deep shuddering breaths until the ringing in his ears abated.
“You are saying you did it for me? Do you have any idea what I went through Sherlock, do you have any fucking idea?”
“I can explain John. I…”
John couldn't take it any more. He felt like he was clinging to his sanity by his fingernails. He raised a trembling fist, ready to to punch those cheekbones when instead he found himself grabbing silky curls with his fingers and falling forwards to taste that soft mouth. It tasted like tears, a hint of the scorched iron of anger, and underneath all of it home.
Pulling away, John panted into Sherlock’s mouth. “Don’t for a second think this is over. I am so angry with you I can’t even… I just… Can we just have this? Now?”
Sherlock gave an uncertain nod and they fell again, this time together. When John ground his hardening cock into Sherlock’s leg it elicited a growl so low that John could feel the rumbling deep inside his own chest, in the atrophied space where his heart used to beat. In response, John grabbed Sherlock’s lapels and half pulled half dragged him to their old bedroom and shouldered open the door.
Sherlock stumbled to a halt, eyes darting from place to place, reading the sad history of the room. Maybe dust was eloquent, but the tale it told here was one of abandonment. A time-capsule of grief. The room had been left empty, undisturbed since the last time John and Sherlock had slept entwined almost two years before.
“Oh John…” Sherlock’s face crumpled before John’s eyes, and that just would not do.
“No,” John hissed. “We are not doing this now.” John toed off his shoes and began to shed his clothes, casting his trousers and jumper aside carelessly and shimmying out of his pants. “You listen to me Sherlock Holmes. It has always been your bloody way. We are going to do this my way. We are going to fuck until you can't see straight, and then I am going drink whiskey until I can look at you without wanting to break your nose, then we are going to talk.” With that, John threw himself backwards onto the stale sheets and reached over into the bedside table to extract a dusty bottle of lube.
Sherlock just stared at him, mouth agape, speechless for the first time in their acquaintance as he watched John squeeze a generous amount out on his fingers and begin working himself open with aggressive thrusts of his fingers.
“I.. I don’t understand… usually we…” Sherlock stuttered, still at a loss for words, eyes dark and luminous in the gloom of the room.
“Shut up Sherlock. I need this, I need to feel you inside me,” John cut him off breathlessly.
“I don't know, I have never…” Sherlock replied, his cautious tone at odds with the large bulge in his trousers.
“Please,” John whispered. Willing Sherlock to understand that he was falling apart and he needed something to hold onto before he broke.
Sherlock was quiet for a long time before he nodded solemnly. “For you John, only you.”
***
They started slow, relearning each other as cautiously as though it were the first time. In a way it was. When Sherlock finally pushed in, John’s eyes drifted shut in pleasure. He felt like he could die, like the misery that lived in his bones would just float away, burned off like mist in the sunlight of Sherlock’s presence. Flat on his back, Sherlock’s warm body between his legs, John released a breath he felt like he had been holding for the last 1 year, 11 months, and 16 days. Eyes still shut he lost himself in the slowly sparking pleasure inside his core, kindled by the susurrus of Sherlock’s panting breaths, and the grounding rhythm of his lover’s beating heart.
When Sherlock stopped his gentle thrusting, John opened his eyes to catch Sherlock’s gaze, to make sure that he was all right. He only had a split second to realize that maybe he had made a mistake.
That was all the warning he had before Sherlock pulled out and brutally flipped him over onto all fours.
John’s surprised protest was lost as Sherlock slammed back into him and his breath was punched out of him with a grunt.
It was all John could do to keep his balance and prevent his face from slamming into the headboard.
“Sher- uhh what-”
His protests died in his throat as he felt a crackle of energy erupt through the air like gunfire. His elbows began to buckle under the sudden pressure of 79 kg of wolf on his back, hot breath on the nape of his neck and the soft tickle of an undercoat against his skin. The stretch was incredible, his cock jumping, as Sherlock’s respectable 6” was suddenly much, much more.
All he could muster was a shocked “umph” before he felt sharp teeth slicing through the gnarled tissue of his shoulder, right where a bullet had punched its way out 5 years before.
It was then that things really went sideways. The very colour seemed to leach from the room. The last coherent thought that John had before a bolt of sensation tore up his spine and he began ejaculating violently all over the dusty sheets, was that there were worse ways to die.