!WARNING! KINKYFIC. Weight gain, fat admiration. Don't like, don't read. No flamers allowed!
...
John put down the suitcase and leaned against the cane that had become necessary again to support his aging body. His sixties hadn't been kind to him, with multiple sclerosis making his every movement painful and unkind. Plus, his belly had expanded beyond proportions he'd even seen Mycroft in, but then again that wasn't just a product of age.
Sherlock was chatting animatedly with the crowd of other gay men greeting them at the airport in Bangkok. His smile was sharp and disingenuous, sharklike and inspired. He cast a glance back at John and winked, the strain of pretending to be an extrovert bleeding through for just the smallest second - the only truly authentic moment they had shared since their landing. Too many obsequious worker bees were floating around them to be able to share more than this brief second. And none of them even had the courtesy of taking John's suitcases, at least not yet.
Alas. Sherlock was going to be exhausted by the end of this trip, John knew.
It was time to reconsider whether or not the consulting detective should hang his hat, John felt. He knew he could support them both on the nice salary he drew as a clinical professor at the teaching hospital. There wasn't any need for them to pursue these reckless adventures anymore. But then again, he knew that with the flavor of a third world war in the air, the tensions between the east and west growing to astronomical, previously unconceived proportions, Sherlock wouldn't be able to keep his nose out of it.
Sherlock wasn't able to keep his nose out of many other things, though, John knew. And this was the thing that gave him the most hope that Sherlock might be able to retire in the next ten years.
Sherlock's years of abstaining from food for the sake of maintaining his mind's well-oiled machine were long over. Indeed, John had made it his long-term project (starting the year they got together formally as a couple) to convince Sherlock that eating wasn't a waste of time. Indeed, after ten years of marriage, Sherlock had been thoroughly convinced that regular meals was actually beneficial to his mood, enabling him to control his brain even more effectively than ever. And, to John's great surprise and intense delight, Sherlock had joined the doctor in getting profusely fat.
At sixty, Sherlock was not at his heaviest - he'd lost some of his appetite with the advent of the more high-stakes political dramas in which he'd been participating. But that being said, he was still pretty fucking fat. In an age where most fat people elected to lose weight mechanically through surgery, where most thin people were thin because they'd been vaccinated against gaining weight, and where almost no one chose to remain heavy, Sherlock had joined John in being a renegade exception. While even Mycroft boasted a skinny figure these days, Sherlock was the contrarian who bore an extra hundred pounds. And he certainly wore it well.
...
"Well, it looks like we're here," Sherlock said with exhaustion as they finally were left alone in their hotel room. "The Chinese have a singular ability of making you feel uncomfortable when they're desperately trying to make you feel comfortable. It's just the same as it was before they ruled the world. How odd."f He was pale in the face.
"Yeah," John said, settling down on the bed and staring at the ceiling. "You need some water, my sweet. You look like a bad case of delayed airsickness."
"Nonsense," said Sherlock, but went ahead and poured himself a glass anyway. He drank it in little sips, which was a testament to how nervous and ill he was feeling. Normally he didn't spare the time to do anything but gulp his liquids.
"When you finish that," John said kindly but authoritatively, "come and lie down with me. I'm feeling a bit queasy still. Fucking airplanes. When did they get so fast? I think I left my stomach back in England."
As usual, the word 'stomach' - even in this innocuous context - made Sherlock perk up, as reliably as the ringing of a bell made Pavlov's dogs salivate. In fact, chances are the word stomach made Sherlock salivate. It certainly made John salivate.
"I find that hard to believe," he said, finishing the water and setting the plastic cup down on the side table. "You're looking very fat indeed."
"Whiplash," John went on, "I feel like someone threw me across the ocean. Was it really only three hours since we left England? God. We're getting old, Sherlock. We're at the point we can talk about what things used to be like, and how everything modern is an abomination."
"I certainly don't think everything modern is an abomination," Sherlock said, settling down on the bed next to John, spooning the doctor, grabbing the doctor's thick rolls of belly fat. Their bodies fit so perfectly well together, both well-formed with thick flab that covered them all over.
"Pfft," John said, "Early adopter."
"Says the blogger to the detective."
"Oh, fuck you," said John, turning over with the usual amount of effort, and soon they were kissing tenderly. There was a flavor of desperation in their kisses. They both knew - though neither of them wanted to talk about it now - that this trip could mean something big. Either the beginning of the end of the cold war - or the end of the beginning.
Their flesh soon melted together in gentle cuddles, neither of them having the energy or the emotional werewithal to actually have sex today. Not until everything was all over could they relax enough to get it on.
But at least they could eat together. That was something they could always do, come hell or high water, come impotency and flaccid penises, come old age and the increasing difficulty of intimacy.
"Where the hell are those assholes," Sherlock said as they both got up, wearily, reluctantly, and hungrily. "They were supposed to take us to the best dinner in Bangkok."
"As long as we don't have to breathe the pollution, I'm happy," said John, "I'm not leaving Bangkok with lung cancer."
"Or an STD," said Sherlock with a wry grin. "Unless it's yours. Then I'm happy to contract it."
"Is feedism an STD?" quipped John. "Because, oops, I think I've infected you."
"Oops indeed," said Sherlock with a laugh, putting a wiry hand on his belly.
It was amazing to John how lanky and angular Sherlock remained in some ways even after having gotten immensely fat around the middle. It was something that, John confessed, he'd hoped would change. But perhaps Sherlock's lifestyle was just too active for Sherlock to get fat all over. Still, the enormous, drooping belly was an accomplishment, and John was probably prouder of it than he'd ever been proud of anything. Sherlock wasn't wasting away into a shadow anymore - instead, he was creating them.
John just hoped that this trip wasn't going to be the last shadow a westerner would cast in the east.
...
Dinner was truly superb, all that was promised and more. Sherlock and John dined, drank, and enjoyed the general fawning attentions of the Chinese and Russians who flocked around them.
"This," said Sherlock, as he stood to give the obligatory toast, "is simply the best vodka that could be made. The precision and perfection of the Chinese tastes, combined with the intensity and cloudy litost of the Russians. There is nothing better to get drunk on, in the entire world."
"Aha!" cried the crowd that swarmed around him.
"But, lo, I will not get drunk tonight," said Sherlock with a smile. "I won't be here long. And my time here, I need to keep my mind fresh, as tempting as the charms of Bangkok are. So I thank you all for being here tonight, to support me and my fair opponent."
A cheer arose from the crowd.
The other guest of honor, the wan and narrow Anatoly, simply took a swig from the bottle in front of him.
"Fortunately," Sherlock said with a wry grin, "for the bartender, my comrade, Anatoly, looks like he'll be making up for my relative abstinence. May the best man win."
Anatoly just scowled. The man was much younger than Sherlock and John, fierce and ambitious, though with a dark personality streak in him that made him seem formidable.
"He's scared," said John once Sherlock got down from the table. "Just look at him. Staring into his bottle. Not looking around at anyone or anything. Trying to drink himself into a stupor. Not eating anything."
Sherlock's eyes were alight. "You're certainly right, my beautiful man."
A person tapped Sherlock's shoulder, and he spun his head around, his long graying locks flouncing. Two sweet Chinese-Russian girls smiled at the men.
"You - would you like a fuck?" one asked, carefully pronouncing the words in English. Then they giggled, self-conscious about their English.
John looked at Sherlock and raised an eyebrow. They'd indulged their bisexual temptations once in a while in the past through swinging.
Sherlock wasn't having any of their childish games, at least not today. He looked them both up and down - both of them so, so skinny, it was painful for John to look at them, truthfully - and shook his head.
"I get my kicks from above the waistline, sunshine," he said, focusing on the glass of soda he had in his hand instead. And then he stuffed a handful of fried calamari in his mouth.
They were initially confused by this response, and they nodded expectantly, curtsying with a kind of feudal elegance and standing there, waiting for him to invite them somewhere.
John leaned forward, smiled, gave them a couple of bills each, and gestured for them to go away. They were clearly confused, but their gratitude won out on their faces as they wandered away.
"God," Sherlock said, sighing with relief as a waiter came to refill his soda. "One night in Bangkok has the capacity to make a hard man humble."
"I guess," John responded, "though truth be told, you're not all that hard anymore." With that, he gave Sherlock's love handles a gentle squeeze, his fingers sinking into the soft fat in such a delicious way that Sherlock flushed.
"Devilish tonight, eh doctor?" said Sherlock, sliding up closer to John. Then, with the most gentle of whispers in John's ear, he moaned, "God. I'm glad we chose to be a couple for this case. It makes things so much easier."
"Don't break cover," said John, and landed a sweet, lingering kiss on Sherlock's lips.
...
"So tell me," said their host, Yui, a weedy Japanese-American businessman with a Harvard accent. He was returning to the table after schmoozing with the crowd for a while. "What got you into chess, Sir Gudly?"
"Oh, please, call my Mike," said Sherlock glibly, stroking John's hair absentmindedly. "This and that." There was a glint of humor in his eye as he turned into the dashing, worldly, oh-so-charming and privileged Sir Mycroft Gudly. "I suppose it's just easier to tell you about the things I like. There's a very few things I enjoy in life more than chess. First, I love law. You know, I used to be a barrister?"
"No!" exclaimed Yui, smiling broadly. "So you used to do law and such. You know, my brother's a lawyer, in New York."
"I'm sure he's wildly successful, what with all those Republicans running around with their heads cut off," said Sherlock with a laugh. "Honestly, I don't envy him. If America was a legal quagmire back in the twenty-tens, when I was in law school, I don't even know what I'd call it nowadays."
"Worse than a quagmire, certainly," agreed Yui. "So Sir Gudly, you love law. You love chess. What else do you love?"
"Oh, food, I guess," said Sherlock with a hearty laugh. "It certainly shows, doesn't it? But I attribute my beautifully round body entirely to chess. IN short, chess has made me fat. Chess is such a sedentary activity, I get virtually no exercise. Though of course tell that to my brain! It won't listen. I'm constantly hungry. Chess makes me hungry. Something about the focus or something. I guess years of poring over a chess board, reading and writing about strategy, and going to conferences... well, my belly has grown with my chess acumen, so it appears. And can you believe I've had weight loss surgery *twice!*"
This was a lie, plain and simple, but the character of Sir Gudly was one who tended to exaggerate. Moreover, the thought of Sherlock being so addicted to food that after two weight loss surgeries, he ended up as fat as he was now... well, that turned John on quite a bit. It was unfortunate they had to put in at least another hour or two in the pub.
"That's amazing!" said Yui, with an interest that seemed to really go deeper than politeness. Sherlock spent a few moments flicking invisible flecks of dust off his shirt, and John observed Yui's eyes settle on Sherlock's heavy breasts and rounded shelf of a tummy. It was nice to recognize another fat admirer in this world of stereo-typically fat-phobic easterners.
"Yeah," said Sherlock. "Doesn't help my main squeeze likes me a bit more...squeezy."
John's entire face flushed red, and he smiled with some embarrassment. "It's true," he said groggily.
It occurred to him, as he continued watching Sherlock and Yui interact, that Bangkok was bringing out his less well-trained emotions to the forefront. Even after years of an open relationship, John hadn't gotten the hang of compersion, and as Yui's hand began to creep up Sherlock's thigh, and then settle firmly underneath Sherlock's massive belly, John had to suppress his jealous pangs.
It's just while we're on the case, he lectured himself calmly. Just while we're here in Bangkok.
Seeming to intuit these feelings, Sherlock's own hand began to wander under John's belly, though never breaking his engaging conversation with Yui. John's cock got immediately hard, and soon Sherlock's stimulation was so intense that John had to excuse himself to the men's room, limping on his cane.
Fortunately, Sherlock was not long behind him, and they masturbated each other in a stall together, while the mechanical attendant in the bathroom beeped, "There is someone already in that stall," in seven languages while they fucked each other.
"Are you okay?" Sherlock asked, kissing John's penis and licking the cum from the head.
John nodded. "It's fine. It's all fine." He sighed. "I know we're veterans of this kind of intrigue, Sherlock, but every time I wonder if we know what we're getting into."
"Are you joking?" Sherlock asked with a sharklike smile. "This city doesn't know what the city is getting. Moreover," he added with a too-pleased-with-himself grin, "we just got to bang cocks in Bangkok. I hope you liked it."
The look in Sherlock's eyes was enough to make John melt substantially. "Oh, you," he said wistfully, kissing Sherlock's cum-flavored mouth. "You're so fucking beautiful."
Sherlock just smiled back at him, kissed him, and exited the stall, whereupon the mechanical attendant finally stopped its chanting.
As Sherlock washed his hands, shook them off (in lieu of using the hand blower - too noisy, he always said, no need to alert your enemies when you were about to leave the bathroom), and left the restroom, it occurred to John that there was very little separating the feelings of despair and ecstasy - and one night in Bangkok was enough to make these feelings trip against each other with the futility of two fat sea lions trying to fuck each other in the dark.
...
After leaving the bathroom, John saw Sherlock talking with Anatoly, trying to sweet-talk his opponent into being a little more forthcoming. Trying to understand what made Anatoly tick.
They'd spent so many hours watching tapes of Anatoly play, it was surreal seeing the Russian in the flesh. And Sherlock, expert camouflager and sociopath as he was, acted like he had just met the most fascinating and interesting person in the world, and had never encountered such a man before. Anatoly was surly, monosyllabic, and wide-eyed. And he was having none of Sherlock's massaging.
"I do not like to talk about my strategy," he said coldly to Sir Gudly, and Sherlock's smile just got wider. "Can't be too careful with your company."
"Of course, how thoughtless of me. I just forget sometimes that I'm talking to my opponent," he said, gently convincing. "I just get so excited when I get a chance to talk about chess with someone who really understands it unlike anyone else I ever have met."
"I fail to see how I've convinced you of that," said Anatoly with a grimace, downing a shot of vodka. "I think you've got me pegged on a pedestal, just like the rest of the world has got me. And when everyone thinks you're a tough man, you tumble when people least expect."
"Perhaps," said Sherlock as Sir Gudly. He made eye contact with John - a simple covert eyeroll, hidden from Anatoly by a wayward flip of his hair, screamed HELP THIS SOD IS SUCKING MY BLOOD.
John meandered over, one hand in his pocket, the other on his cane.
"Oh, here's my beloved," said Sir Gudly gushingly, and he placed an excited kiss on John's cheek. "Anatoly, you of course know my partner, Hamish Holmes."
"A pleasure," drawled Anatoly, not looking pleased one bit.
"I understand so little of all your chess talk," said John with a somewhat childish petulance. "It's all the same to me no matter where we are - Iceland, the Philippines, or Hastings, or... or this place."
"You're just saying what I always say," Sherlock said with a light laugh, leaning back and putting a hand on his belly in a relaxed manner. "I do feel like one town's very like another, particularly when your head's down over your pieces. Don't you feel the same, comrade?"
Anatoly ignored Sherlock's attempt to engage. "I tire of talking about chess," he said, "Let's talk of something else." He then reconsidered. "No, better - let us drink."
He grabbed two empty glasses sitting idly by, and filled them with splashes of vodka.
"I'm afraid I'll be out if I drink that much," said John as Mr. Holmes. "You know me, my sweetheart, a sip and I'm drunk, a glass and I'm completely bonkers."
"You're such a lightweight drinker for such a heavyweight man," said Sir Gudly, nuzzling John's nose with his own.
"Well, let's drink to something," said John, "if I'm going to drink at all, let it be for something good."
Anatoly did not hesitate to raise his bottle. "To the end of this damnable tension between our nations. Let us have dpeace, and know no more fear of each other."
Sherlock and John cast looks of surprise at each other. It was rare to see a Russian so antipatriotic as Anatoly seemed to be at this moment.
Taken aback, John and Sherlock both muttered "Amen," and they all drank in unison.
"I feel an angel sliding up to me," whispered John. He was strangely reminded of the intensely black-and-white language of Jim Moriarty as he looked at Anatoly. This seemed to be a man who was caught in a fairy tale, just like Jim. (Then again, of course, weren't they all?)
"Ditto," said Sherlock, possibly reading John's thoughts, possibly not. He ended up kissing John either way.
There certainly was a lot more sweet-nothingness between them than usual, tonight, John noticed. He wasn't sure if it was the ebullience of Sherlock's character or the sense of stress, pressure, and ever-present potential for doom that hung over them.
...
"This is the creme de la creme of the chess world," said Yui when he rejoined them. "Sorry for letting them get in the way of our chat. I regret that I'm like a fat cat - when confronted with so many flavors of cream, I can't help but taste them all."
He snuggled up to Sherlock without any further preamble and began fondling Sherlock's genital area. "We've got everyone here. Truly. It's going to be such an exciting show. Siam's gonna be the witness to the ultimate test of cerebral fitness."
"I like how you said that," said Sherlock. "But you're certainly putting a lot of pressure on me to make it...exciting." He left the implied double-entendre with humor in his voice. "I'm trying to think of things to...spice up my play, but I don't feel I've got enough time to construct any clever moves. Time flies when you're traveling, doesn't seem a minute since I was in Tirol playing at the spa there."
"You don't need to try and impress me," said Yui, and leaned in to kiss Sherlock.
Sherlock - as Sir Gudly - reciprocated. Their kiss was long, and deep, but John was satisfied to see that Yui simply wasn't fat, and therefore was likely not actually sexually interesting to Sherlock the person. But to try and read Sherlock's acting, you'd never know it.
"Well," said Sherlock with a graceful, almost coquettish blush, "when you play at this level, you try not to be ordinary. Maybe it's the venue that makes me want to try harder. It's all glamor and glitz. Especially here in Bangkok."
"I find it hard to believe you're not just flattering my adopted city," said Yui with a laugh. "Don't forget I'm originally from the west myself. I just don't advertise my sympathies widely here. It's better for business here, that's all."
"Fine," said Sherlock with a laugh. "You got me. Bangkok's just one more crowded, polluted, stinking town in a collection of thousands the world over."
"That's not fair!" said one bystander, a flashy young woman from Egypt who was known as an up-and-comer on the international chess rosters. "I think it's so boring when you spend all your time looking at the board, not looking at the city. I do my best to make sure I see everything I can when I come to compete."
"And that's why you lost at Vienna last year," said Sherlock, turning swiftly and coldly to the young woman.
She rolled her eyes rudely. "Well, this time round, I'm just here to watch the show. I thoroughly intend to 'get Thai'd.'"
Sherlock laughed at her, wrapping one arm around Yui's shoulders, and one around John's plump waist.
"Well, you're talking to a tourist whose every move's among the purest," said Yui on Sir Gudly's behalf. "I can't remember even seeing you go out for drinks before a match before."
"I felt like telling the welcoming committee 'no' would have meant assured destruction of all white people everywhere," said Sherlock with a laugh. "They gave me so many damned fliers about what to see while I'm here. Never even occurred to them that I might need to prepare, get oriented and used to the playing field. That kind of thing. And I'm entirely sure that when Hamish and I get upstairs later, we'll be met by two very warm and sweet tea girls to suck us off in our Somerset Maugham Suite."
Everyone at the table laughed, having experienced a similar kind of overpowering hospitality.
...
The evening was winding up, Yui had left, and Sherlock and John were easing their way out of the welcome party. As Sir Gudly had debated for an hour about strategies and motives in the game, John had found himself sitting quietly, eating more than he intended. At this point, he was pleasantly stuffed, and quite a bit cloudy of head. He was ready for sleep, though he was afraid that he might not be comfortable enough to sleep well in this foreign bed.
Sherlock was wrapping up his conversation with a group of three hard-core chess players. They had been poring over a board debating methods, but each of them other than Sherlock was thoroughly drunk at this point, and they were arguing about the girls (mostly waitresses at this point) they saw walk by, making jokes about queens with perfect blindness to Sherlock's non-heterosexuality, even with John sitting right there.
"That's the thing about Siam," one of the men, a hatchet-faced, worldly Australian was joking, "It's the kind of place where you find a God in every golden cloister, and if you're lucky, then the god's a she. Which of these goddesses strike your fancy, mate?"
Sherlock laughed. "Well, you guys certainly aren't rating the kind of mate I'm contemplating. I'd let you all watch me and my mate, since you're clearly the voyeuristic types, but I'm afraid the queens that I use would not excite you."
The men all laughed, having an appreciation for jokes that involved their two favorite things: chess, and women.
"Let's go," said John, feeling uncomfortable. It felt so strange that he had once been one of those men who could joke about women and their hotness without feeling strange about it.
"All right, gentlemen," said Sherlock with a longsuffering groan, "my better half wants me to be better. So you better go back to your bars, your temples,
your massage parlors... whatever your poison. Enjoy your time in Siam, see you all at the match in two days."
They escaped with hasty goodbyes and got outside the bar, where they could breathe more deeply.
"It was hot in there," said John, taking deep breaths. "But god, it stinks out here."
"True," said Sherlock, and he leaned against the wall, looking up at the full moon, which hung ominously, orange in the pollution-filled sky. "Want to climb on the roof?"
John laughed. "Aren't we too fat for that?"
"Not yet, we aren't."
Feeling a flush of desire seep through his veins in an instant rush, John allowed himself to be convinced to climb a shaky trellis in order to get up onto the roof of the bar they'd just exited. (Granted, his willingness was probably inspired by the implied promise that Sherlock did intend to allow himself to gain back some of the old weight he'd lost before all this started.) He left his cane at the base of the trellis. Sherlock helped him up as much as possible, to minimize John's pain.
Soon, Sherlock and John were seated on the blue-tiled roof of the urban bar.
"How are you feeling?" asked John of Sherlock, and Sherlock smiled wanly.
"One night in Bangkok, and you are given the illusion that the world's your oyster." He sighed. "I just hope that what we're doing here, I hope it's worth it, my darling. I don't want it to all be for naught."
"I think it's heartening to know that Anatoly is sympathetic to the idea of peace," said John. "Also I just wanted to commend you. Brilliant acting out there. Made me a little nervous, I admit." He chuckled. "But I know you don't like thin men, so I wasn't that worried."
"You're quite right," said Sherlock with a smile. "Thanks, my love." Sherlock leaned forward, and they kissed there in the moonlight, breathing heavily.
Sherlock soon was curled against John's body, and they both kept looking over the city. The smog was lifting a bit, and they could see the waterfront in the distance, and see the bobbing of the ships in the harbor. Their clothes began to feel damp.
"Ultimately," Sherlock said, "thank God, I'm only watching the game, controlling it - and not the one moving the pieces."
"I don't understand you," said John. "Are you talking metaphorically?"
"Obviously," said Sherlock, but the irritation in his voice was cut halfway through the word, as if he was reminded suddenly that this mission, if it failed, could mean the end of the world as they knew it.
"Isn't it fucking mental that the world's so centered around this chess game," said John, "and it's all a charade?"
Sherlock shrugged. "People need something to look forward to, when the world is stuck in limbo. And I think really, the end of American football is the only reason that chess has become the national sport of choice for many."
He sighed. "Still, I really hope that we can come to some kind of peaceful resolution. And god," (he began rubbing his temples), "When you can't predict a man, you either conclude he's a genius or a lunatic. It's clear that whatever Anatoly is doing works. I don't know if he's actually a genius or mad, but I guess it doesn't matter. His methods work."
"Don't get distracted, Sherlock," said John, "you know this isn't about the game."
Sherlock smiled. "No, of course. But I like to do a thing well, when i can."
They wrapped themselves closer around each other.
"When you're ready, I'm ready," John said, glancing at his watch and seeing that the allocated time had come.
"All right."
Sherlock led the way down the trellis, and in their soft-soled shoes they tiptoed back into the now-quiet and dark bar.
And there they found Anatoly, passed out, exactly where they expected him, thoroughly drugged as per their design.
It was a fairly simple matter to pay the bartender handsomely for his role in their drama, and they took Anatoly to the safe house, where Mycroft Holmes awaited them with a warm bed (only for a brief catnap, of course) and new passports to leave the country on the next flight back to England.
In total, they'd only spent one night in Bangkok. And that, in John's opinion, was plenty enough.
~fin~
