Chapter Text
The rest of the week carried on as if nothing was out of the ordinary, both of them apparently ignoring the invisible, but quite obvious, shift in their relationship. John could feel it whenever he got within Sherlock’s personal space or caught his eye over a mug of tea, and still didn’t know what to make of it all. He couldn’t deny or fully disregard what he’d done with Sherlock, and although some of it confused and unnerved him, he also thrilled at the majority, almost proud of himself for rendering the great Sherlock Holmes a gasping mess more than once.
Sherlock was one of the most receptive people that John had ever been with, or at least from what he could remember. The thought alone enkindled heat up his spine. Sherlock’s reaction to kisses and to touch had boosted John’s self-confidence and inflated his ego to as big as it had been before Afghanistan, perhaps larger.
Since John had met him, known him, Sherlock hadn’t seemed swayed or distracted by anyone, be them man or woman, so to have him looking at John the way he did, to have him losing his normal stoicism, to have him moaning and submitting under John’s ministrations, was probably one of the most libidinous things he had been the cause of for some time. The sight and sound of Sherlock in the throes of orgasm would forever haunt the deepest corners of John’s mind, he knew. Replay behind his eyes every night. A privilege he was sure very few people had ever had the pleasure of witnessing, of being the reason behind such mind melting, primal urges.
John was greedy for more. Almost filled with a possessive need to be the only one who had the honour, the power, to take Sherlock to such heights with such base pleasures. To exclusively be the person who was given permission and trust to see him at his most carnal, most compromising, most malleable. It was imprudent and downright pathetic when one looked at it from certain angles, yet John craved it like he had frequently craved a betting slip, with a compulsive, burning, overpowering need. Willing to gamble with feelings and lives for just a thrill, that heady spark of a win far too tempting to turn away from.
In the late evening, during a new case, John found himself distracted by that bubbling need as he watched while an irritated Sherlock paced before an unimpressed Lestrade, animatedly gesturing around the crime scene as he went, ignoring the scowling face of Anderson and pushing back a few errant forensic photographers. John wanted him, even at that moment. Wanted to get high on affection and lust alike, fully gorge himself on the way they looked, touched and pressed at each other.
“Why, precisely, are you all just gawking?” Sherlock sneered with bite, hands a blur of motion as he spoke and eyes aflame with frustration. Those hanging around the doorway, snooping and judging and whispering, quickly scattered with raised eyebrows. “I dread to think what it must be like at the yard if this is the best you can provide, Lestrade.”
With a furrowing brow, Lestrade hissed out a breath of displeasure, “Yeah, yeah, alright--”
“I mean, honestly, where is the expertise? The dedication? The will to live!”
“Just get on with it, will you!”
Sherlock exploded into a spin with arms out and teeth bared, “Look around you! It’s simple. It’s all so simple. This doesn’t even scrape the bottom of my scale of interest, Lestrade,” he grumbled, beginning a new pacing path, “She knew her killer. They met up and walked through a park, Regent’s going from the petals left from the tread of her shoes. Tulips, pink and yellow, newly planted last week in a nice little line.”
Pausing to bend for the noticed petals with gloved hands, he held it out to someone nearby to bag before he continued, following an unseen route into the kitchen, “They got take-away on their way back, McDonald's, finished what was left of it in here where they then disposed of the wrappings – you’re sure to find the receipt, but it’s clear from the amount that it was for more than just her.”
He flicked at the rotating flap of the bin, exposing the clump of grease-slicked packaging for a moment with a wrinkled nose, then walked back out of the kitchen again, “And then they came to the living room, where they sat on the sofa for some considerable time – It’s worn, old, and the upholstery has seen better days. The cushions and seats easily crease and bow and remain so even after the occupants have got up.”
Moving his hands, tracing the shapes of the two bodies that had once sat before him, Sherlock then turned on his heel to face the rest of the room, “She got up, headed for the door to wish them goodnight and they came up behind her, chocked her with some force, enough to hold her up from the ground so she would ultimately asphyxiate herself. It was sloppy and quite possibly their first kill. She struggled but faltered—”
“Wait,” Lestrade interrupted, much to the man’s annoyance, “you mean she’s dead? Not just missing?”
Sherlock sighed, loud and obnoxious, “Obviously she’s dead.”
Plastering an exasperated expression on his face to mollify Lestrade and play his role, John waited until Sherlock was better within reach and stepped into his path with determination, an apologetic twitch of his mouth relaxing the inspector’s shoulders. John was going to act. It was the perfect opportunity to strike, to take, to indulge, and John wasn’t going to let it slip away from him. He was far too ravenous and out of his mind with the need for his friend to let it go, and he had warned him, he supposed. Yes, it had to be now. It worked brilliantly.
“How are you not able to see it? Are you all blind?” Sherlock sneered, eyes flickering with a quick flash of confusion as they landed on John. “What?—”
Grabbing him by the lapels of his big, stupid, swishy coat, John hauled him close and dragged him out of the room, “We’ll be right back,” he told Lestrade, delighted that it met with no complaint, just a thankful exasperated lift of hands and grateful nod. “Won’t take long.”
Stumbling as he was pulled along, Sherlock huffed and grabbed at his wrists, “John!”
“Shut up.”
“What are you doing?”
Looking around, John led them outside, under tape, through dithering cops and around a corner, into a small alley at the side of the building. Out of sight and finally alone, he yanked Sherlock around to fully face him, meeting the deep furrow between the man’s eyebrows with an impatient and promiscuous rise of his own, glad to see the confusion dissipate fairly quickly. In its place disbelief and a waking blush unfurled, like the blooming of an eager, pretty flower, and John let his lips tick up into a salacious smirk.
Swallowing heavily with a fleeting glance to the alley entrance, Sherlock exhaled a breathy laugh, “Here? Now? - Isn’t that rather…”
“Probably,” he agreed with a chuckle of his own.
“And yet?”
“And yet.”
Sherlock smoothed his thumbs across the skin of John’s knuckles, “I had thought we weren’t doing this. You’ve been awfully silent on the matter. Not to mention unmoved. - And I’m working.”
“Hardly,” he snorted, beginning to back him into a wall to tuck them further from sight. “You solved it. You hate it. And you’re being a massive arsehole.”
“Aren’t I always?” Sherlock countered with a bored and arrogant sigh, shoulders rolling.
“More or less.”
“Hm. That do it for you?”
John was powerless to stop his smirk from widening and so pulled Sherlock down by the back of his neck to hide it in a rough and passionate kiss, “You’re being more of an arsehole than usual and I don’t approve. You should behave.”
“Oh please—”
Spinning him suddenly around to face the wall, John pressed his nose into the coat collar and tried to control his ardency, “Open your trousers.”
“… Surely this is more praise than punishment?”
“Do it.” Pulling open Sherlock’s coat, he wasted no more time and grappled to ruffle up his shirt, drawing it up from where it had been neatly tucked into his trousers so he could covetously shove both hands up Sherlock’s tensing middle to palm at his nipples.
They strained beneath his touch with Sherlock’s loud hitching inhale and he scrabbled at his arms, “John!”
“Sh-sh. Open your trousers,” he repeated, taking his time in teasing the puckering flesh under his fingers.
Already breathing hard, Sherlock struggled to force himself to stand still for a moment, barely able to keep his hips from sharply twitching, then dropped his hands to fumble his belt open, “I… want it… on record, that this is… extremely uncalled for,” he got out between panting, “and next time I’d prefer… not to be… in a dingy alleyway!”
“And after this, I want you to go back in there and apologise,” John retorted, amazed at how calm and steady his voice was considering the shaking want that threatened to take him apart. He traced the rough pads of his fingers around both nipples, down over heaving ribs, and caressed the soft edge of a navel. “Understood?”
Sherlock bit back on an obvious whimper, “Don’t pretend like—”
“You don’t have to apologise to Anderson, of course.”
Laughing around a moan, he arched his neck to shoot John a sideways glance, a grin carving through his feigned pout, “How very generous of you…”
“It is rather,” John said with a shameless dip of his finger into the crease of his belly button, before he walked his fingers roguishly back up the length of lean torso. Each and every inch of him was hot with arousal and vibrating with coiling tension. “I’m often very generous.”
“God… you’re also very licentious!”
“Oh very, yes.”
Faintly sweating, Sherlock dropped his head back, exposing the redness of his face and throat, “And… and apparently one for public displays wherein we could get caught at any time—”
“Not necessarily,” John interrupted him in amusement, enjoying how tight his forearms were being held onto, more so when he skimmed the edge of a fingernail along the shape of a pectoral and tapped the erect tip of each nipple. Every reaction spurred him on, making the need in him flare ever hotter, ever brighter. It was ridiculous how badly the thing between them had got. “I just… couldn’t wait.”
“Wh-what?”
“And you deserve to be brought down a peg or two right now.”
Moaning under his breath, Sherlock scuffed his shoes against the floor in an overeager writhing, “I am… up the right number of… pegs…” he argued, bucking forwards with a bitten back whine and losing his composure completely when John took his nipples between thumb and forefinger and pinched. Limbs and body both trembling and flailing, Sherlock arced backwards and forwards in an ever increasing frenzy. “Ah!--”
“Yeah,” John whispered, basking in the change and skimming the length of each digit, and the width of each palm, achingly slow across Sherlock’s chest for more of it. Taken with the power and trust to do so. Dizzily and painfully hard with it all. “That’s it…”
“Evil bastard,” Sherlock hissed, trembling almost violently, caught up in a tsunami of pleasure and nearing climax. He thrashed, thighs quivering and knees close to buckling.
Nosing at dark curls and a pinked ear, John turned his face into the upturned collar of Sherlock’s coat with a wide smile and then removed one hand quickly to lick two fingers and push them back up Sherlock’s torso, fondling his left nipple wetly and rolling the right under his callused palm until Sherlock rocked zealously with a stream of gasps and low moans and then thrust twice, going rigid.
“You coming?” John asked with a gruff tone, noticing his left hand trailing down Sherlock’s contracting stomach as if with a mind of its own.
Sherlock nodded strongly and then threw his head back, covering his mouth with one hand clumsily as he groaned deep and loud once the first strip of ejaculate spurted highly up the wall, followed closely by a second and a third. Sherlock’s entire body was going into a spasm and John swallowed hard whilst he watched over Sherlock’s shoulder as he splattered the bricks thickly.
“John… God…” Sherlock rasped unable to keep himself upright and collapsing against John in a shaking heap, a few more bursts of ejaculate splashing on the pavement, barely missing one of his shoes. “I… I can’t…”
John stumbled backwards with a grunt, holding Sherlock up by his bared waist and gritting his teeth, “Shit… didn’t think of this part,” he muttered with an amused quirk of his mouth. “Sherlock—Christ, your heavy! I should have planned this out better…”
“I can’t feel my legs,” Sherlock slurred with a confused and overcome giggle. “My legs, John! Why is it always my legs? I need my legs…”
“Remind me to never try this again—”
Sherlock sluggishly slipped himself away and then messed with his trousers as John propped him up against the opposite wall, “Help me… my belt,” he murmured huskily.
John swatted Sherlock’s hands out of the way, briskly tucked in his shirt again, zipped and buttoned him up, then buckled his belt, “Right—All right. Done,” John mumbled, using Sherlock’s scarf to dab at the sweat lining Sherlock’s forehead and upper lip, and then massaging his thighs carefully, easing the tremors from them. “Can you walk?”
Shrugging, Sherlock pushed from the wall and swayed on his feet for a few moments, breathing through his nose and trembling, his hips still faintly twitching. John watched him silently, walking a tightrope of emotions and urges. He wanted to kiss him again, wanted to thumb the stubbly line of Sherlock’s jaw and open his mouth with his tongue; and so took an unsure step towards him, picking up on the musky scent of him as the wind picked up.
After another moment, Sherlock straightened fully, adjusted his coat, glanced over at John with his blush receding, and walked back into the building, “Lestrade,” he said croakily as he entered the room again, clearing his throat when Lestrade’s eyebrows jumped and John trailed in after him. “I’m… sorry. It’s not your fault that you’ve been surrounded by imbeciles for so long that stupid seems to have seeped deep enough to damage your brain.”
Lestrade’s eyebrows went an inch higher, “Um…”
“That’s as good as you’re going to get, I think,” John smiled as he moved to stand beside Sherlock, trying to look as neutral and nonchalant as he could with Sherlock still vaguely vibrating.
Sherlock flashed Lestrade a matching smile, reached out to suddenly tweak John’s ear without looking, and then clasped his hands together, “Let’s continue, shall we?”
John, having successfully muffled his gasp, tried to ignore the confused look that Lestrade shot his way and cleared his throat, “Yeah, let’s…” he replied, giddy with the thought of future endeavours and from the promising gleam in Sherlock’s eye.
The game really was, indeed, on.