Archive of Our Own

“Wrong, John. Wrong in every possible variation.”

John Watson is a small man, which means Sherlock looms over him even when he sweeps back his coat’s heavy skirt and crouches down next to John, already on his knees by the body. They’re in an unpleasant little flat in a dingy row of buildings in Peckham. Sherlock’s intimately familiar with the neighborhood, the buildings. When he was twenty he lived here for seven months after Mycroft convinced Mummy to cut him off until he “came to his senses”. Even before he took up residence in a flat down the hall he obtained drugs in this very building. Sometimes he even used money to buy them.

So the dead junkie sprawled on the floor in front of him is familiar. She’s on her back, her skirt around her hips, her blouse and bra torn open, but that’s dull. Sherlock snaps on gloves and begins to examine her. Lestrade called him in, but he’s not primary. DI Dimmock is, and despite a tendency to draw the precise opposite of the right conclusion, DI Dimmock doesn’t want Sherlock on his case.

“She was kidnapped, she was raped, and she was murdered,” Dimmock proclaims. He’s got his notepad in his hand, and he’s looking around the dingy flat as if the murderer were hiding in the cupboard.

“That is exactly you’d think, if you were an idiot,” Sherlock responds.

Dimmock bristles.

“Sherlock,” John begins.

“She’s got money. Not her own, she’s too young for that, but her family’s connected. Good color in her hair, a good cut, manicure, regular spa treatments. Raised in Berkshire, and a St. Andrews girl, if I’m not mistaken, which I’m not, Cambridge, but sent down.”

“We know that,” Dimmock says, throwing a glance at Anderson. Sherlock can feel him roll his eyes. “This is Lady Jane Ainsworth. She’s been missing for four days. We kept it out of the papers for the family’s privacy.”

“She wasn’t kidnapped, or raped, or murdered,” Sherlock continues as he removes Lady Jane’s rather garish shoe. “It’s a simple exchange. Sex for drugs, then she OD’d.”

“Sherlock,” John repeats in the tone he uses when he wants Sherlock to settle down, “This was brutal.” His rumpled face bears a tightly restrained sorrow as he indicates the bruising on her thighs and neck, the bite marks on her breasts, then lifted one slack wrist to expose her unmarked arm. Presented with a violated, pretty girl, he wants to see a kidnapping, an assault, a violent crime. So does Dimmock, not out of John’s solicitude but because the reality will set off a great cracking nightmare for the Yard. “There’s no evidence of drug use.”

“For God’s sake, look at her!” Sherlock snaps. “Good cut, yes, but grown out too much. Quality color, but look at the roots. Touched up herself. The manicure? Also touched up. A girl in her circle wouldn’t touch up either, she’d get it redone. That bag is last year’s Dior, but her set changes bags at least every season. She could claim sentiment, but she wouldn’t. Too fashion-conscious. Her shoes,” he says, holding up her left Louboutin, “blue and teal and orange, unfortunate combination, are new, because shoes matter. She’s rationing money — they’re monitoring her funds — she might have the wits to steal without getting caught but she’s done it before so they’re onto her — trying to salvage appearances and convince her family she’s clean but still get her fix, so she used another form of currency to buy the drugs.”

With that he spreads her toes apart. A cluster of injection sites appears in the white skin between each of her toes. He repeats the process on her other foot. John ducks his head and mutters something under his breath.

“She’s hiding her habit, trying to get back in her family’s good graces. Her dealer doesn’t live here — they never do because then he can claim they weren’t his drugs — he uses this flat for transactions with more desperate clients. They had rather ruthless sex — or he did — he gave her the drugs she’d just…purchased…but something was wrong with the formulation. Really, John, I expected more from an Army doctor.”

The flat goes silent except for the heavy tread of the woman who lives the next floor up and the grating whine of her two small brats as they follow her up the stairs.

John’s very still as he looks at him, his blue eyes dark. A muscle jumps in his jaw, then he looks away.

John Watson is ordinary, which means he lacks Sherlock’s sweeping range of vision, his vast storehouse of a brain, his preternatural ability to make sense of a hundred disparate pieces of information with a glance. An A&E doctor might think to search for hidden injection sites. Perhaps John would have, eventually, after he came to terms with the obvious signs of sexual trauma. John’s compassionate as well as ordinary. Sherlock left out the diatribe young Lady Jane likely heard as she paid for her drugs slut filthy slut little whore you like that don’t you suck it shut it and spread your fucking legs. Explaining this rather exquisite courtesy to John likely won’t make up for belittling him in front of the Yard.

Belittle (v): to make unimportant, or small.

At first glance, it wouldn’t seem possible to make John Watson smaller. He’s shorter than Sherlock, Anderson, Sally Donovan, all of the forensics techs except the one shaped like a hard boiled egg, and barely as tall as DI Dimmock. Interrupting him to denigrate his medical and investigative skills might do the trick, though.

Sherlock knows ordinary people stop talking to allow another to interject, disagree, respond, to establish a presence in a group. They stop when their audience indicates boredom or dissatisfaction or hurt feelings. They validate each other. He’s observed this. He just sees no reason to mimic the behavior especially when there’s a case, even a dull one, and Dimmock to annoy and Anderson to infuriate, or Mycroft to enrage. Why should he? After all, is he not the most brilliant, most unique individual walking the streets of London?

John thinks so. John uses words like amazing and brilliant and fantastic. Not freak. Not the other words people use. He invited John to the pink lady’s crime scene only because Anderson refuses to work with Sherlock. But he never expected John to follow him to the school. In the back of the ambulance when Sherlock connected his deductions to the short man standing at parade rest just outside the police tape and realized John shot the cabbie, the next thought to present itself was most astonishing.

Here is a man willing to kill to keep Sherlock from killing himself when most people who knew him crossed the street to avoid him, and others go out of their way to wound him, or try to control him.

How unexpected.

How diverting.

How very, very useful.

People do seek out Sherlock. Clients, with their petty problems and their pedestrian brains. There’s Lestrade, who likes Sherlock, oddly enough, and absolutely needs him, but effectively manages both of those emotions with the occasional use of a drugs bust to keep Sherlock in line. Sherlock respects the tactic, because he’d do the same. After all, he stepped on a dying man’s bullet-mangled shoulder to get information, and felt nothing but impatience until he wailed out a name.

But John is different. He follows Sherlock, feeds him, writes up his cases in exceptionally flattering terms. He watches, seems unable to stop doing so. Sherlock’s edges blur a little when John’s watching. He doesn’t feel so invisible, which is an impossibility. He’s tall. People stare at him; certainly he’s compelling, perhaps even beautiful. But somehow John watching him brings him into greater focus.

Dimmock and his minions trot off to perform mundane investigative tasks like toxicology reports and a shakedown of the building’s residents. Sherlock and John get pho, then return to Baker Street. They have a routine, one Sherlock’s come to rather like, much as he likes a perfectly tailored suit or an absorbing experiment, one John welcomes now they’ve worked out that bit about affection. Sherlock isn’t opposed to experimenting with emotions. If kissing sharpens Sherlock’s drive during a case and keeps John close, keeps him in that pleasantly available frame of mind, Sherlock will give him what he needs.

Inside the front door they shed their coats, then Sherlock takes the stairs two at a time. John follows, but more slowly. Not his leg. Something else, something Sherlock will sort out after. He closes the door and bends to kiss John.

John turns his head to the side and leans away. Tension sparks between them like electricity running on high voltage wires, but there’s a different undercurrent, a different signal in the noise. John’s silence during the meal, his attention focused out the cab’s window, the downturned corners of his mouth as he climbed the stairs sharpen into a hum Sherlock recognizes. He runs a tab with people, adding more and more to the debit side of the ledger, until the bill comes due. The presence of this signal is familiar, even if John waited longer than most.

It’s time for Sherlock to pay for what he is.

Sherlock could refuse, of course, but he doesn’t. He closes his eyes briefly. “All right.”

He remains still when John reaches up and lays his blunt, deft fingers on one side of Sherlock’s jaw, and his thumb on the other. His eyes are shadowed and too dark to read when he’s backlit by the streetlights from Baker Street. He backs Sherlock into the wall beside the door.

It’s a rather pedestrian attempt on John’s part to assert dominance, to mark his territory. It’s so unimaginative. It might even be embarrassingly laughable, given that John’s fourteen centimeters shorter than Sherlock.

But John doesn’t shove Sherlock to his knees. Instead, his hand slides down Sherlock’s throat, pauses briefly with his thumb on Sherlock’s pulse only slightly elevated then releases each straining button of his shirt in a measured fashion until he reaches Sherlock’s belt. Moving at an equally unhurried pace he tugs the shirt tails from Sherlock’s waistband. With a hand on the bare skin on either hip, John leans in just enough to nudge his mouth up at Sherlock’s.

The resulting contact isn’t even a kiss, but rather a skimming, open-mouthed caress that sends sparks skittering along Sherlock’s nerves. Almost immediately John ends it by looking down. His mouth rests against Sherlock’s bared collarbone as he leans his hips into Sherlock’s pelvis, then backs off again. This time when he tips his head up he breathes heat and humidity onto Sherlock’s mouth before his tongue slides across Sherlock’s lower lip. Then he looks down again.

John’s not bringing Sherlock down to his level with a fist in his hair, or forcing him to his knees. The data stream distracts Sherlock.

John’s not thinking about the difference in our height at all. He kisses up as if he’s done this before and it’s utterly irrelevant who’s taller because he knows how to angle his head, capture a mouth from below, make skin and nerves hum with the desire to bend for more. John is 169 cm tall. The average British male is 175 cm tall. The average British woman is 162 cm, but John wouldn’t use a meaningless measurement like height to determine if he found a woman attractive, and he’s brazen enough to pull a woman taller than he is. Or a man.

Don’t think about the men.

John in uniform, kissing a fellow soldier.

A younger John in med school, kissing a fellow student, taking a laughing, hands-on approach to anatomy and physiology lectures.

John laughing.

Why do people laugh?

Sherlock jolts back into the moment when John lifts that narrow mouth again for glancing contact. For a man who made an incredible fuss over kissing, John’s not really kissing him. At the moment he’s using his mouth to nudge the fabric almost off Sherlock’s shoulders, then stretching up ever so slightly, offering temptation again. Sherlock’s not used to being kissed like this, mouth offered but not forced.

He’s not used to being kissed at all.

He wants it, though. He doesn’t want to want it, yet still he does. But Sherlock knows what’s coming, and it’s started gently before. Still, when John’s fingers trail along his ribs, heat and scent rising from his nape, Sherlock’s lips begin to tingle. In a moment of weakness he leans forward and uses his chin against John’s temple to indicate desire, sheer dumb animal nuzzling. John immediately lifts his face to Sherlock’s. He opens his mouth, breathing heat and humidity onto Sherlock’s mouth, but draws away before Sherlock can slip his tongue between John’s teeth.

A tremor rolls through Sherlock. He exhales, steels himself, but as a slow minute passes, need returns, and he once again nuzzles into John’s temple. He wants that mouth, that quiet, strong mouth, the mouth that never calls him names.

John somehow echoes his thoughts. “Your mouth,” he growls as he looks up. “Your fucking mouth.”

“You might actually put it to use,” Sherlock says, to see what happens.

He gets a kiss.

There’s a hint of a smile in it. Sherlock realizes John’s not on his toes anymore because Sherlock’s been tempted into bending forward, chasing John’s mouth. John gives him a slow slide of tongue inside his lip before breaking the contact yet again to use his hands. They skim up to Sherlock’s shoulders, exposing more skin before gripping Sherlock’s hip and nape. There’s a moment of full body contact when John leans into Sherlock’s body. Electric heat slides down Sherlock’s spine, lifts the hair on his nape and arms.

John palms Sherlock’s cock through his trousers, and Sherlock gasps. Then those clever fingers work at the button and hook of Sherlock’s trousers. It takes a fair bit of fumbling to open the zip, then work pants and trousers down to the tops of his thighs which is odd, because a trained medical professional who fired a bullet through two windows and into a man’s heart doesn’t fumble. Sherlock realizes John’s making him feel what’s happening, each motion, the separate sensations of John’s fingers on hip and buttock.

That mouth gets offered again, just as John’s hand closes around Sherlock’s cock. Sherlock doesn’t hesitate. He leans forward, into the kiss, into the sheer heat and talent of John’s mouth. This time it’s explicit, tongue gliding against his, drawing his in, then confidently tracing the edge of his teeth before John breaks it off again.

A groan shudders out of Sherlock’s chest. He recognizes these peaks and valleys. He wants. Needs. Craves.

He curves around John, reaches for him before he comes to his senses, remembers what’s coming. John doesn’t seem to notice his withdrawal. He’s looking down at his hand, working Sherlock’s cock slowly. He’s hard, his foreskin almost fully retracted.

Tremors eddy through Sherlock. Hurry this along. “I’m ready, John.”

John says nothing, simply leans his shoulder into Sherlock’s side and bends forward to rest his head on Sherlock’s chest. There’s a soft, wet sound. Sherlock tips his head to the side to confirm what he’s heard.

John has spit directly onto Sherlock’s cock, leaving a pool of saliva on the broad shaft.

Oh, Christ.

John dips the tip of his middle finger into the spit, collecting it before he slides his hand between Sherlock’s thighs. When the wet tip of John’s finger presses against Sherlock’s anus, the throb of his pulse drives a groan from his chest. The ring of muscle contracts, then flares, admitting John’s finger. He works it shallowly, slowly, coaxing Sherlock to open.

More spit. This time two fingers trail through the wetness that is nowhere useful on Sherlock’s cock. The extra slips down the shaft and along his balls as two fingers slide into his arse.

His head drops back against the wall. Muscles move without conscious intent, but thanks to his trousers halfway down his thighs, not far enough. He can’t spread his legs. He needs to spread his legs. He needs to kiss John, too. He ignores most of his body’s urges, but spread your legs and writhe comes from a place in his reptilian brain John’s somehow working at with those two fingers, sending sparks up his spine. He works his fingers into Sherlock’s arse, stroking and twisting and curving until the maddeningly faint pressure on his prostate and sweaty contact between his legs drives him mad.

A faint ripping noise echoes into the flat as a seam gives a little. Sherlock’s wearing a bespoke suit, so ripping the stitches takes some work. John leans his weight into Sherlock, pinning him to the wall, and grips his shaft with his other hand. He turns his face up to Sherlock’s, and with Sherlock bent over, their mouths are level, and oh God, he needs this so badly. The kiss is tongue and teeth and lips working against each other. It’s hot enough to sear his skin and connected on a feedback loop with John’s fingers in his arse.

John works Sherlock’s foreskin over the wet flesh of his glans to the same rhythm as his fingers glide into Sherlock’s arse. The pleasure heats, thickens, draws him to curve around John. He clutches at John’s waist and shoulder, reduced to full-body writhing against the man pinning him to the wall.

“Come on, John.” He’s used the deep voice before, the longing sounds and pants and huffs, to hurry things along and get them over with, but this it doesn’t sound filthy. Something he recognizes wars with the lust, something he thought he’d conquered.

He’s on the edge of pleading. He knows it, even if John doesn’t, but Sherlock pleads for nothing.

John draws back, his blue eyes ocean dark in the unlit flat. He studies Sherlock, and for once Sherlock fears what his face reveals. “Upstairs,” John says.

John’s bedroom is colder than Sherlock’s, the room darker because the window’s smaller. He’s not been in this room since that night, the night he took John apart, then held him through the shudders afterwards. He doesn’t want to need this. He doesn’t. But he does need it. He needs John Watson. The thought of the smaller man finding out exactly how badly would be like John knowing exactly familiar he is with Lady Jane’s circumstances.

“Strip,” John says quietly.

He watches Sherlock divest himself jacket and shirt, then the trousers he’d hiked up to his hips to climb the stairs. John takes off his shirt, but leaves his jeans on. He puts one hand on Sherlock’s shoulder to guide him around and onto the bed, arranging Sherlock on his knees facing the headboard. John kneels between Sherlock’s calves and shifts them wider, then plants a hand on Sherlock’s nape and pushes. “Down.”

His cock and balls dangle as Sherlock goes to all fours. His heart is racing, desire melding with memory to both harden his cock and make sweat break out on his temples and the base of his spine. Unsatisfied with this position, John applies pressure with his palm. “All the way. Hands on the wall. Don’t move.”

Familiar territory stretches in front of Sherlock. Back in the Land of Bored, he flattens his forearms against the wall to provide resistance. Oh yes, he knows this. Knows it well. A hard fuck is a punishing fuck only if the bottom isn’t sliding away with each rut.

John leans forward, bring his hips into contact with Sherlock’s exposed arse as he rummages in the nightstand for lube. Tube in hand, he sits back. Sherlock hears the lid click open, the slight gurgle as the viscous liquid squirts onto John’s fingers. The cold gel makes his anus clench briefly as his brain struggles to adjust to the new, slicker sensation. Everything heats quickly as John slowly works in what feels like three fingers, stretching Sherlock.

It’s not rough. Why is it not rough? It should be rough. It’s always been rough. If the point of this exercise is to punish me for what I am, it should be rough.

But it’s not. It’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, gentle, which is confusing. John’s using his body well, the firm hand on his hip somehow both possessive and purposefully holding Sherlock in place. After all, he’s done this before with no more lubricant than spit and what’s on the condom. Physical pain took a while to materialize, what with the shakes, then the high. It came with the crash, lingers even today in the blackness following a case, subtle psychic mnemonics of shame and ignominy.

What is going on? What is this?

“Do it,” he rumbles, or tries to rumble. He lacks enough oxygen to deepen his voice.

“Shhhh. Not yet.”

Sherlock buries his face in his forearms. The incongruity between his expectations and his moment-by-moment experience would intrigue him if John’s fingers weren’t finding his prostate with relentless accuracy, stroking sensation into his cock and balls. Thought slips away into the bright-burning fire. Sherlock’s panting, but John’s breathing evenly, not rushed or shallow like the others. Even and steady and reassuringly John.

Uncertainty rends his heart, and  forces one hand from the wall to clasp his nape. He’s rocking back to meet John’s fingers and forward to thrust his aching cock into the air. “John, yes…”

John’s fingers slip out. The orgasm building dissipates while John slicks his cock. Sherlock’s so open John’s glans penetrates easily, but when the hard shaft breaches the ring of muscle, John pauses. He rocks, slow and smooth but shallow. Sensation trickles along nerves teased into hyper-sensitivity, but John’s seemingly limitless patience stretches out the moment of entry. It’s the hardest part for Sherlock, the time between when his body belongs to him — and is an importuning vehicle to be used and ignored — and when it belongs to another — and the thing is done. It’s when he’s most vulnerable. Until now. Because John slides deep, his pelvis coming to rest against Sherlock’s buttocks, and the vulnerability doesn’t disappear when John’s inside him.

Unmoving.

The worst is not over. He’d never thought John could be cruel.

“Do you want me to beg? I will.”

Air huffs from John’s chest, but it’s not a laugh. “Shhhh,” he murmurs, stroking his palms down Sherlock’s ribs, over his hips, and back again.

John begins to move, slow, steady pushes and withdrawals that layers sensation over Sherlock’s screaming nerves. His cock is like heated iron, and his arse…he had no idea how hollow he was until John made space for himself inside Sherlock. He fists his hand in his hair whilst bracing the other forearm against the wall as John’s thrusts grow harder, if not faster. It’s too slow for Sherlock to process it, analyse it, categorise it into something he can sort and discard. John’s anchored him in time and space, and he’s making him feel.

He groans, then writhes against John when the exhalation of sound isn’t enough to satisfy his need. His knees slip on the sheets, dropping him lower and stretching the tendons in his groin. John’s cock slides impossibly deeper inside him, and Sherlock cries out.

John leans forward, teeth scraping Sherlock’s flexed shoulder blade, and growls. It’s slow and steady and deep and unfathomable, this thing John’s doing. It’s searing muscle to bone. It’s tightening like a vise around Sherlock’s heart.

It’s unnameable. Unbearable.

He cannot take this. He can’t. He knows what to say. Come on. Harder. Fuck me give it to me fuck me hard. Prepares to say it. But what comes out in a hushed, nearly inaudible whisper is “Please, John. I need you. Please.”

Oh.

His train of thought has derailed. Spectacularly. The locomotive’s crashed into the trees and the cars behind it are a tangle of metal and steam. That is an admission he never meant to make, never even knew he wanted to make. He’s spread open, vulnerable, possessed, trembling with need, and he’s just said something he can never, ever delete.

John pauses, bends over him, warm chest to Sherlock’s back, stroking his hands down Sherlock’s sides. “I’m right here,” he murmurs.

John moves again, this time picking up speed to go with the depth. There’s no more shallow. Each thrust slaps against Sherlock’s buttocks, and when John reaches round to grip Sherlock’s cock, Sherlock gives a deep, helpless groan. He uses the arm pressed against the wall to push himself back into John’s thrusts, and it’s quite possible when his fist loosens from his nape, there will be strands of hair between his fingers.

John’s gasping, one hand on Sherlock’s cock and the other holding his hip. Sherlock’s lost control of everything. His body, his voice, his breathing. Percussive beats of pleasure drive his orgasm up his shaft. His heart slams with bruising force against his breastbone, and his breath rasps hot and harsh in his throat. There’s a moment when everything freezes, then he drops into sensation. Release pounds through him, leaves him sobbing for air.

John groans, then his strong hands grip the tops of Sherlock’s thighs as he lunges forward, burying himself in Sherlock’s body. His shudders run through Sherlock, who’s too slack with shocked pleasure to resist what happens next.

John skims his hand up Sherlock’s damp back. Slowly he strokes his fingers along Sherlock’s, coaxing them to relax so he can lace their fingers together at Sherlock’s nape.

Hot, damp skin, hair, pulse, breathing, connection.

Everything else functioned like a ball peen hammer tapping away, tap tap tapping away at his surface, creating a complex striation of cracks. At this, however, Sherlock shatters. Invisibly, soundlessly, he splinters into little shards on John’s bed.

A long beat of time passes. Without a word John — oblivious, placid John — withdraws and leaves the room. Sherlock lets his legs give way. He folds on his side to face the wall.

John returns to the bedroom. The mattress dips when he kneels beside Sherlock to clean him. He has a good bedside manner, this small, normal doctor. Quiet. Competent. Calm.

John curls up at his back and presses a kiss into Sherlock’s nape. “All right then?” he asks drowsily.

Sherlock doesn’t answer. He waits for John to fall asleep, then leaves the bed. His limbs are sluggish, thighs well-used, entire body reassembling slowly as he showers. Water courses over his body, and a word floats to the surface of his brain.

Seduction.

John just seduced him. Sounds like…deduction, but isn’t. He turns the concepts over in his head. They are two sides of the same coin, the knowing of another human being, the vulnerability inherent in either. One wielded like an iron fist and the other coaxed out with a velvet glove.

Why make the effort? He associates seduction with uncertain acquisition, energy to be expended only if he can’t just take. Sherlock after a case is no different from Sherlock in need of a fix. He’s as sure as sure can be.

Yet John expended the energy.

He’s an idiot.

Isn’t he?

It’s different with John asleep after, the encounter ending without sneers and jeers and a baggie tossed at him, the taste of latex coating the back of his throat, blood welling in a split lip.

It makes no sense.

John here kissing him makes no sense. Even with PTSD people like John, want to help him find a flatmate, deal with Sherlock. The Yard likes him quite well. People spend time with Sherlock and tell him to piss off, fuck off, get the fuck away from me, freak.

He wants to shake John awake, demand answers to the questions tearing through his head. He doesn’t. He watches the charcoal gray of London’s night fade to pewter, then to daylight, and ponders the possibility he doesn’t understand John at all.

Turns out John Watson is not a small man.

Sherlock watches him move around the flat the next morning. Showered and shaved, he makes tea and reads the paper while wearing jeans and a stolidly English jumper as if nothing at all out of the ordinary happened last night. His posture, demeanor, his face, until yesterday as clear as rain are now blank walls to Sherlock.

“Are you going to do that again?”

John looks up over the paper, his brow furrowed. Could be confusion. Could be irritation. Could be concern. John is frequently all three, and more, at once.

“Which part?”

The part where you made me bend to kiss you.

The part where you made me reach for you. I resisted as long as I could, until my hands flexed because the rest of my body was tight with longing.

The part where you made me wait to beg until I couldn’t hide any longer.

“The part where you made me say I need you.”

Irritation disappears, leaving only confused concern, or concerned confusion.

“I made you say that?”

“I certainly didn’t intend to say it.”

John’s brows knit together more deeply. “Something wrong with that?”

“It was new information to me.”

It should not be possible for a man to both frown and lift an eyebrow, but John’s expressive face manages it. “Not to me.”

“You knew I need you.”

“You’re not the only one who can deduce, Sherlock.” John’s gaze skims over Sherlock’s tailored shirt, his suit, his shoes, clothes he’s wearing on a Sunday when he’d normally wear pajamas and his robe as he wades through the papers. “You don’t need help with the rent. As you so precisely demonstrated at the crime scene yesterday, whatever I offer during an investigation is usually wrong. I can’t shoot someone for you every time we track down a serial killer; Lestrade will connect the dots eventually. You could hire security if you wanted a handy, legal, gun. Either I’m an ambulatory version of the skull who’s finally learned to manage the automated checkout at Tesco and therefore keeps you in food, or you need me for me.”

He should tell John that was brilliant. It’s what John would say if he’d done it.

“Bit of a winger here, but something about last night surprised you.”

“You were gentle.”

“Not really.”

“I’ve had rougher.” His voice should be affectless. Instead it is low. Quiet. Telling.

John waits. He’s good at it. He’ll wait for Sherlock indefinitely. Sherlock associates waiting with having his fingernails pulled out with pliers, or fighting the need for a high.

“I humiliated you,” he says impatiently. “At the crime scene. I thought you would want…”

“Ah. A bit of my own back?”

“Revenge.”

John rests his jaw on two bent fingers, his index finger braced just under his cheekbone as he looks at his flatmate. “Sherlock, I survived medical school and a residency supervised by a woman who’d give you a run for your money in terms of both brilliance and arrogance. I then survived basic training and Afghanistan. Don’t take this as a challenge, but better men — and women — than you have humiliated me, and far more publicly.”

Sherlock stares at him."So what was that?"

“You knew those flats well,” John says quietly. “You’d been there. You’d been her.”

The silence in the flat is thin and oddly wavy, distorting the traffic on Baker Street, BBC Radio 4 on in Mrs. Hudson’s flat as he stares at John. Mycroft and Mummy tried to bend Sherlock to their will. He refused to be manipulated. His death via overdose was prevented only by being discovered by the next person due at the flat for a transaction. His state, twenty pounds underweight, obviously sexually assaulted, and addicted almost beyond salvaging, transformed “tough love” into rehab and a more concerted effort to engage his strange, weird brain.

Put succinctly, he’d won. If he didn’t answer to Mycroft and Mummy, he didn’t answer to anyone.

But the memories of himself in that state — filthy, addicted, at the mercy of the cruel, the vicious, the stupid — disgust him. He thought they would disgust John.

He’s wrong. He is so rarely wrong. And John knows. John watches. John sees.

“How did you know?”

“My sister’s an alcoholic, Sherlock. Addictions make people do things they wouldn’t normally do. You are a genius, but you’re no exception. For two totally separate reasons, the odds of you trading sex for drugs with someone who wanted to make love are slim to none.”

He’d ridiculed John for asking for a kiss, and sees the value of it, but the concept of making love is as foreign and remote as the stars and planets. “Is that what we did?”

John shrugs. “Did it bore you?”

“No,” he says honestly. It terrified him, and terror is never boring.

John watches Sherlock closely. “Has anyone ever used his body to make you feel good? Not to take something from you, or teach you a lesson?”

The correct move here is not to answer, because John is playing a game Sherlock doesn’t know. The rules are indecipherable, based on the things he’s successfully shut away: emotions, sentiment, attachments. Need. He doesn’t know what this is. He doesn’t understand any of this. He cannot follow John’s train of thought, his motivations, his decisions. John is opaque to him. What he did, why he did it, what he drew out of Sherlock like a coiled gold wire tempered by time and desire, is entirely new.

John’s expressive face collapses into folds of sorrow and regret and sadness. His exhalation is not quite a sigh. “I’m not going to hurt you like that.”

No. You’ll hurt me in other ways. And I will consume you. It’s what I am. I am a plague of locusts, a wake of vultures, a virus that consumes its host. I take and take and take until there’s nothing left. Don’t you understand that?

He doesn’t. John has no idea what he’s dealing with. Whatever he thinks, whatever he imagines, it’s wrong.

Sherlock knows two things now. First, he needs John to watch him. Second, he does not manage needs well, so this, whatever this is, will burn them both to the ground.

One way or another, this will end them.