I really wasn't sure how, or why, I had ended up here. Clutching my cap tightly in both hands, I ducked under the low lintel of the door and into the smoky interior of the bar. The door thumped shut behind me and the man that had let me in gestured for me to find a table. I did just that, carefully winding my way between tables and chairs. I was seriously beginning to regret coming here dressed as I was; I recognized one or two faces through the haze of cigarette smoke, but no one else had come in uniform. I nodded to who I knew before I found a table to myself, in a distant corner of the room, wedged between the curtained stage, the far wall, and the bar counter. Almost as soon as I sat himself down, a waiter appeared to take my drink order.
I stammered out something in my limited German, got a raised eyebrow in return, and tried again in English. The waiter nodded, tucked the folded pad of paper he carried into his pocket, and sauntered off. When my drink came, I sat and nursed it in silence. A few more men straggled in while I sat there, but by the time the clock over the door showed eleven the slow trickle of patrons had stopped. Everyone turned, almost as a single entity, toward the low stage. I didn't have much room to turn, or much turning to do, but I managed to inch my chair around so I could face the stage and see what everyone was expecting.
Whatever I was expecting, it wasn't what I saw. The curtain slid back and my gaze fell on a very tall, very thin, rather unusual looking man backlit by the stage lights. He was perched on a rickety-looking wooden stool, one foot resting on the bar connecting two legs of the stool and the other foot planted lightly on the stage. My eyes followed long, black-clad legs upward, tracing the backlit lines. Those slim legs finally ended at the waist with a shiny patent leather belt, perfectly matched to the man's shoes, and above that a white shirt beneath an unbuttoned, charcoal waistcoat. All innocent enough, at first, until my eyes slid up farther. At least three buttons of that pristine white shirt were undone, baring what could almost be seen as an indecent amount of pale throat. This close, I could imagine I could see the man's pulse beating in the curve of that impossibly long neck. My eyes slid still higher, following the curve of a tendon up to a strong, sculpted jaw and an equally chiseled cheekbone, half obscured by tousled, dark curls. The man wasn't looking at me, but I still got a sense of pale, penetrating eyes that bit too deep.
It was a split second of observation, honestly, all the little facts catalogued away. It was unlikely that I'd ever see this man again, but I was sure to recognize him if I did. There was no forgetting that sculpted face.
And when the man, quite logically really, began to sing, I knew that I was utterly and completely lost. That rich silky baritone, so low it was almost a growl into the microphone, was about as easy to forget as the face. So I lost myself in the music, in the man's voice, and sat and stared. At some point during the music, the singer's eyes flicked to me, and I was momentarily paralysed. That brief sense of pale eyes that saw too much hadn't prepared me for that look. It seemed like those eyes had read me in a moment, and I thought if I could just talk to this singer I could find out what he knew.
I hardly noticed when the music ended. I might not have noticed anything if it weren't for the man on the stage standing up and leaving. I snatched up my cap, scraped my chair back, and managed to find my way out the back door of the smokey little bar. That, of course, required a bit of a bribe from my already shallow pockets, but in short order I found myself out in the alley behind the bar. Leaning against the dingy wall, holding a sputtering match to the cigarette between his lips and swathed in a dark greatcoat, was the singer. He glanced up, startled, as I burst out the door and into the alley. His cigarette eventually caught and he shook out the match, dropping it onto the damp asphalt under his feet.
"I'm afraid you've come out the wrong end of the bar, soldier." His voice was soft, sounding heavily of the London streets under that silky baritone. Surprising, really, in an underground Berlin bar in these times. "Unless you're looking to get out of here in a hurry, in which case you'll have to go that way," he gestured to the end of the alley with his cigarette, "and run very quickly."
"I'm not looking to get away from anything." I felt very plain and substandard compared to this man, even in the sense that my speaking voice didn't sound nearly as nice as his. "I wanted to talk to you."
"To me?" The long, slender hand holding the cigarette gestured again, two fingers pointing at his own chest this time. "What could you possibly want with a simple man like me, Doctor?"
"Doctor?"
"You don't carry yourself like a man who carries a rifle despite that uniform, and there are calluses on your left hand that only come from holding a scalpel, or fumbling with one. You have small scars where you've cut yourself on it on your right hand, so you shake a little when you're under pressure. Conclusion, you are a doctor with the English armed forces. There are small marks on your nose, so you wear glasses, but you're not wearing them now and you're not squinting so you must only need them when you read. Conclusion, you are an educated man but you frequently refer to your books on your off hours, or you read for pleasure." He brought his cigarette to his mouth and inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in his lungs a moment before letting it plume out above his head.
I stood in stunned silence for a moment. "How did you...?"
"Most people only see. I happen to observe." He held the packet of cigarettes out toward me. "Care for one?"
"No, thank you." I twisted my cap a bit in my hands before slipping it back on, taking my time with it to have a minute to think. He watched me the entire while, his silver eyes skimming from my face down over my uniform.
"So what's your name, Doctor? Can't read that off your uniform and your calluses."
"John," I said simply.
"John..." He seemed to roll the name around on his tongue for a moment, taking another long drag of his cigarette afterwards. "So tell me, John, how did a good country boy like you end up a doctor here, and how did a good army doctor like you end up in a Berlin bar like that one?" He jerked his head over his shoulder to the door behind us.
"Ah. It... Was recommended to me. By... By a friend." Without my cap in my hands to twist I settled for pushing my hands into the pockets of my trousers. I hadn't noticed when I came out here, but since the night came full on it had gotten cold. He looked over at me and seemed to notice, because he ground his cigarette out on the ground under his foot.
"I'm done in the bar for the night, doctor, and there's a chill coming on. Would you like to come up for a cuppa?" His eyes moved from me to a window across the alley, then back to me.
I hesitated, following his gaze to the window above us. Then the breeze picked up, slicing through my shirt, and I shivered violently. "Yeah, a cuppa sounds good right about now." I barely finished my sentence before he gathered his coat around him and swept off, leaving me to trot after him down the alley.
A staircase outside the building on the corner brought us up to his room, which was pleasantly warm after the chill breeze that cut down the alley. A small stove stood in one corner, a large bed took up most of the other end of the room, and the warmth seemed to be coming from the little stove. As he hung up his coat on the wall behind the door, I made my way to the stove and held my hands out toward the warmth. He nudged his way past me with a kettle, setting it atop the stove to boil. "I've only got one kind of tea, John, I hope that's alright."
"Yeah, that's fine. I'll drink just about anything these days. Don't have much room to be picky, you see." I took off my cap, looking for somewhere to hang it, and settled on a second peg behind the door. I reluctantly left the warmth of the stove to do it, and when I turned around he had taken my place. "You haven't told me your name, you know."
"Sherlock," he said without turning around. I came up to stand beside him at the stove, close enough to feel the heat coming off it and... The heat coming off him. He was shockingly thin, but he gave off heat like a radiator.
"Unusual name."
"Mmm."
That little noise told me he didn't really want to talk, at least at the moment, so I left him to it and sat myself down on the end of the bed. The water in his little kettle eventually came to a boil and he dropped in a couple teabags, putting it back to the heat for the moment.
He didn't speak again until the tea had steeped and he had poured it into two chipped, mismatched cups. He handed one to me, and I took it gingerly. The china was thin and the heat had seeped through within a few seconds of him pouring it. "Thanks."
"Welcome." He sat down on the foot of the bed next to me, those long hands curled closely around his own cup. The heat didn't seem to bother him since he didn't move his hands at all while he held the cup.
We drank in silence, but he was finished his cup long before I finished mine. I watched him as he got up and put his cup in the white bucket that sat under the washstand on the far side of the room, and I watched as he came back and sat next to me again. He waited almost politely until I had finished my tea, then he took my cup for me and put it in the white bucket with the other. He crossed back to me quite slowly, and stopped just in front of me. "You didn't just come up here for tea."
It clearly wasn't a question, but I opened my mouth to reply anyway. In that moment I found myself with my lap, my hands, and my mouth suddenly very full of Sherlock. He had practically leaped into my lap to kiss me, his mouth shockingly soft and plush against my own. In the moment it took me to respond he had his hands on my tie, pulling it loose and tossing it to the floor. He went for the buttons on my shirt, next, but I caught his wrists and made him sit back. "Sherlock, I did just come up here for tea."
He was very flushed and breathing quickly, and that one kiss he'd forced on me had left his lips slick and red. I wanted to kiss him again, with that look on his face and his mouth so tempting, but his landlady had seen us come up and if she heard anything...
"Please, John. I could see how you were looking at me, even how you're looking at me now." He pulled his wrists free of my grip and went for the buttons on my shirt again, and this time I let him. Thankfully he didn't tear anything, and once my shirt was off I was able to get a hand up, knot it into those tousled curls, and pull him down to kiss me again.
It was better than the first, less desperate and one sided. I like to think I gave as good as I got, biting at those full lips and teasing at his tongue until I had him as putty in my hands. His hands came up to cup my neck and my cheeks, and I managed to get my hands between us to undo the buttons on his shirt that he hadn't done for himself. He had to tear his hands away from me so I could push the white shirt and grey waistcoat back and off his shoulders. He let it hit the floor without a care, and before I could do much more than glance down he shoved me flat and moved up to straddle my stomach.
"John..." He barely breathed out my name, more a gust of air than a real word, and leaned down to kiss me again. I twined my fingers back into the soft curls at the back of his neck, and finally had to tug him up so I could breathe. He leaned his forehead on mine, breathing warm and fast on my mouth and my chin.
"I thought you brought me up here for a cuppa to warm up."
"You had your cuppa, and now I'm warming you up." I had to laugh, though it came out closer to a breathless wheeze than a laugh. I was warm, actually, the chill that I'd felt down on the street completely forgotten.
"You say that like it's a perfectly logical explanation."
"Logic has nothing to do with it, John. It's simple science; two bodies are warmer than one." And then he kissed me again, all slick mouth and questing tongue, his hips rutting against my stomach. I let out a little groan into his mouth, and finally found a place for my hands in the small of his back. I could feel the nubs of his vertebrae against my fingertips, and as I ran one hand up his back I absently counted them off. He had one extra, I concluded, when my fingers reached the nape of his neck again. He had arched into my touch like a great cat, even letting out a rumbling purr into my mouth as my hand traced the line of his spine back down to the waist of his trousers. He seemed quite content to keep his hands where they were, cupping my cheeks and the sides of my neck and occasionally running his thumbs over the line of my jaw. I heard his fingerprints rasping on my cheeks and I absently noted that I'd forgotten to shave that morning.
"John." He pulled back, breathless, his mouth reddened with kisses and his cheeks flushed with blood. "Stop thinking and touch me." It was somewhere between a plea and a demand, but given in that silky baritone it was nothing I could resist. I fumbled with one hand between us, finally getting the buttons of his fly open, and worked his trousers down enough to get my hands down the back. My fingers slid over bare flesh and I stared up at him with no small amount of surprise.
"Nothing underneath?"
"Inconvenient," he muttered, leaning down to catch my mouth again, hands braced on either side of my head. I used my grip on his backside to pull him close, and the moan he gave into my mouth sent a shock of heat rushing south. That kiss was brief, because I kept him tight against me and he kept rocking his hips into my stomach a bit helplessly, and kept giving out the same wanton little moans. I could feel him, hot and hard, against my stomach through the open fly of his trousers, but I didn't dare look down. "John, I thought I asked you to touch me..."
I laughed breathlessly again and slid one hand out of his trousers. "Well, maybe I'd be more inclined if you weren't sitting on my stomach, Sherlock."
He glanced up at me; at some point he must have lowered his head to rest his face on my shoulder. Slowly, not caring that his trousers were unfastened and his shirt was in a heap on the floor, he stood up and stepped back, letting me pull myself up and off the bed. He was taller than me, I noticed suddenly, but he didn't loom over me. Holding my eye, he pushed his trousers off his hips, slipped past me, and laid down flat on his back on the bed. If I had thought he was beautiful just sitting on stage singing, seeing him stretched out on the bed with not a stitch on was better. He watched me with hooded eyes, propping himself up on one of the pillows at the head of the bed and very slightly spreading his legs. "Well, John? The bed's getting cold without you."
His voice sent a chill down my spine, and I stayed standing long enough to fumble my trousers open and kick them off. He stayed quite still as I crawled over him, finally settling over him with one thigh between his. His tongue darted out to moisten his upper lip, and I had the sudden urge to nip at it. I missed his tongue, but I managed to catch his upper lip gently in my teeth and give it a light tug. His hand skittered up my leg to settle on my hip, his fingers stroking lightly along the top edge of my underwear. "Keeping these on?"
"For the moment," I breathed against his mouth. Now that I had him like this, where I never thought I'd get him, I wanted to take my time with this. Chances were good I wouldn't have another moment like this until the war ended, and certainly never again with Sherlock. Slowly pulling myself away from his lips, which were still red and slick and kiss-bruised, I trailed my mouth down over his throat, feeling his pulse drumming against my lips. He arched ever so slightly up, his head tilting back to bare more of that perfect curve to me.
No sane man would resist an offering like that, and I worked my way down to his collarbones with an agonizing slowness. They stood out a little too much from his skin; he was just as thin as he'd looked on stage, and the hand that I now placed on his ribs could feel every ridge of the bones beneath. I traced the lines and hollows of his ribcage with my thumb as I lingered at his collarbone, sucking and biting a small mark into the skin between them. Something that, if he left his shirt partially unbuttoned like he had tonight, everyone in the bar would see. He hissed out a warning, but it sounded half-hearted and he didn't make me stop. I could feel his heart hammering against my hand as I slipped still lower, trailing kisses and small nips across his sternum and his ribcage. The hammering under my palm sped up still further as I finally reached one slightly pink nipple, only a touch darker than the skin surrounding it. I passed my tongue over it, immediately feeling the skin tighten under the touch. Sherlock whined in the back of his throat and arched up a little further, and I felt his hand find the short hair at the back of my neck. He held me there and I indulged him for a while, nipping and worrying at the pert bud until he was shifting restlessly under me. Gently shaking off his hand, I slipped across to the other side of his chest and started over. I earned myself a low moan that was closer to a growl than any other sound and his hand found my hair again, tightening in it almost to the point of pain. He let go only when I finally started to work downward again, his hand falling limply onto the coverlet. I could almost feel him watching me, and I could certainly feel the rapid rise and fall of his diaphragm as he apparently gasped for breath. I followed the slight hollow of his stomach below the arch of his last ribs down to his navel, dipping my tongue into it as I passed it. He made a startled sound and I felt the skin shiver as though he didn't know how to respond.
I worked still lower, my hand sliding down from his ribs to settle on his hip. The large muscles in his upper thigh tensed under my hands as though he knew what was coming; I'm certain he did, but he still gave a hitching whine when I took the head of his cock into my mouth. He managed not to buck, but the shudders that ran through him were telltale of how hard it was for him to hold back. I spread one hand out on his hip to hold him still and rolled my tongue around the tip, drawing another broken whine out of him and making him throb hotly against my tongue.
Slowly, I let my mouth slide down the length of him, letting him rest hot and heavy on my tongue. His heart had sped up to the point where, if I put my hand just so on his thigh, I could feel his pulse drumming through his femoral artery against my thumb. The knowledge that I could put him in such a state was glorious, and I revelled in it the way a magician revels in the oohs and aahs of his audience.
In my case, those oohs and aahs were Sherlock's hitching moans and soft cries, the way he twisted about and tried to buck into my mouth. I kept him firmly held down, much to his apparent frustration, and wouldn't let him thrust up however much he wanted to. It all finally came to a head (no pun intended, of course) when Sherlock breathlessly cried out my name and arched his back up off the bed. I lifted off him with a slight, incredibly lewd pop, and the moment I was far enough up his body he flipped over under me, lifting his hips to grind back against me. I surprised myself (and him, I think) by letting out a long, low moan against the nape of his neck. "Alright, I get it Sherlock. Now do lie still?" He nodded remarkably obediently, and I somehow managed to get out of my underwear.
The most I could do was thoroughly wet two fingers and press them slowly into him, making a small noise in answer to his own sharp intake of breath. He was shockingly tight, and I suspected that he didn't do this often at all. His muscles slowly loosened around my fingers, and the sharp gasps and little noises he was making eased. I took the opportunity to curl my fingers just so against his prostate and I was rewarded with a deep, startled moan and a lift of his hips against my hands. I teased at that spot again, watching as he shifted and moaned again, his forehead pressed against the pillow at the head of the bed.
He actually seemed disappointed when I slipped my fingers out and laid a hand on his hip. Nudging his knees apart with my own leg, I draped myself over him with the intention of speaking quietly and hopefully reassuringly into his ear. Instead, with his height, I ended up speaking mostly to the nape of his neck as I steadied myself with one hand and pushed in slowly.
Sherlock arched and shuddered under me at the first slow press, a slightly pained noise rumbling out of him. I murmured something, I don't remember what, and rocked slowly against him to get him used to the feel of me. His face was pressed into the pillow and into his own arm, his handsome face tight with pain. Sliding my hand around his hip, I fitted my fingers around his length and stroked slowly. That seemed to distract him a bit, as he let out a soft moan and opened his eyes. I stroked him slowly, gently, barely letting my fingers touch him as I finally settled to the hilt. It was almost unbearably hot and tight, and I had to mouth at his shoulder to distract myself and keep from just ravishing him straight through the mattress.
He finally lifted his head off the pillow, his expression softening, and I took that as a good sign to go ahead. My first thrust made him suck in a breath and arch his back, and the second seemed to force the breath out of him in a ragged and startled moan. His expression contorted again, but not with pain. His head fell forward onto his forearm and he let out another of those ragged moans. Thrusting into him, I mouthed at the nape of his neck, tasting a light tang of salt there from the thin sheen of sweat covering his neck and the tops of his shoulders.
After another moment he started rocking back into me, meeting my thrusts with just as much fervour as I gave them. His hands were clutched into the pillow under his head, his knuckles white with the grip he had on the cotton cover.
Most of it after that point is a blur; I remember the heat building between us, and I clearly remember the noise Sherlock made as he orgasmed under my hand and around my cock. The first memory I have after that white heat is laying next to him, holding an ash tray for him with one hand, and sharing one of his cigarettes. His face was still flushed, and a few beads of sweat had stuck his curls to his forehead. Breathing out slowly, and sending a plume of white smoke toward the ceiling, he glanced towards me.
"Better way to warm up than a cup of tea, don't you think?"
And to this day, I cannot truthfully say that I actually remember what kind of tea it was that we drank that night.