Authors Note: Here beginneth the sex. Don't say you weren't warned.


The arrivals tail off. Whatever is going on in there must be in full swing by now. The bouncers have retreated behind the glass doors to the lobby, and are chatting companionably. I can't hear the booming bass of a sound system, so it can't be some kind of up-market drugs party. I run through the clientele, try to picture what such people might be interested in that would involve Sherlock, or that would so worry a man with as few scruples as Mycroft. But I'm not Sherlock, and I know it. The whole thing is a mystery and there's only one way to crack it. I'll have to go in there. It's that, or wait till the morning and try and interrogate Sherlock when he comes out. If he's in any state to talk, which I'm willing to bet he won't be, judging by previous experience.

So I take another drag from my hip flask, tug at my coat collar and cuffs to make myself look a little more reputable, and set off across the road.

The bouncers actually open the door for me. They ask for ID. I give them my drivers' license. They glance at it, not very thoroughly, and check a list.

'Yeah, he's cleared.'

Mycroft's doing, no doubt.

One of them shows me through a small lobby. Beyond that, all the walls are painted black. Everything is black. The air feels thick and dusty. There is a smell of wine. It is cold. The man opens a final door for me, and says softly,

'Enjoy the show, sir.'


There are four rows of seats arranged in a semi-circle around an open space that might be called a performance area. There are harsh spot lights in the roof. The audience is silent, only the occasional cough or the rubbing of fabric to denote someone shifting in their seat. They are watching a show. A spectacle.

A woman dressed in black shows me to a chair near the front. It's a good view.

Mycroft was right. It's a view I don't want.


There is a sawhorse in the middle of the open space. He is bent over it. The unforgiving light gleams on his pearlescent skin. His wrists are tied behind his back, then attached to a rope that goes up to a pulley on the ceiling, dragging his arms back behind his head. His features are criss-crossed by a leather harness. He is strapped down, face towards the floor, legs spread, stark naked. Complicated knots squeeze around his engorged and discoloured penis, distorting it, forcing it down between his legs painfully, like a cow's udder.

A shoal of helpers flutter around him, adjusting the machine that is pounding a huge rubber dildo into his exposed arse. They are keeping it lubricated as it plunges in and out. At his head, two naked men are taking turns to force their cocks into his mouth until he gags, bile and spit slicking his chin, spattering the black-painted floor. They grab his curls, yank his head up cruelly, allow him to suck in a little air through his nostrils before they assault his beautiful mouth again.

Periodically, one of the helpers, another woman dressed in black, will use a paddle to slap viciously at his white rump until it turns an angry red, or unties the rope from its cleat and pulls on it, forcing his shoulders and arms back, closer to dislocation. Someone attaches cruel-looking metal nipple clamps.

Sometimes he is asked if he wants to stop, or if he wants to come.

'No,' he wails. 'No! I don't deserve it!'

He snorts and chokes and gags and coughs and sobs.

And keeps saying thank you.

And we watch in breathy silence.

It is a strange kind of theatre, watching this beautiful man's public humiliation in the most appalling manner possible. I want to look away, but also, I don't. It is like a car crash. I want to watch every last, ghastly moment, see all the blood and gore and horror, even though I want to look away. In fact, I know I should. I don't. I watch with all the well-heeled punters who have no doubt paid extravagantly to watch the degradation of my closest, dearest friend.

Eventually, something of an interval comes, and though no one moves in the audience, the scene is changed.

Sherlock is untied and helped up, his well-being checked. He is given water, examined for wounds, apparently pronounced well enough to go on.

There are metal tracks in the ceiling from which chains dangle. The helpers attach a leather sling, a chain at each corner, two in the middle to support the torso, and Sherlock is strapped into it, whilst the fucking machine and the trestle are cleared away. Someone forces a ball gag into his mouth. He whimpers. Chokes a little. Strains against his bonds. His legs are spread wide. As he swings, helpless, I see the reddened knot of his arse and the tension in his thighs. They inject his anus with lube using a syringe. Then do the same again and again, till he is dripping. Then pronounce him ready.

The helpers start going through the audience, inviting men to stand up and take part. One comes to me. I get up, unthinking, and take my place in the line. The women take our clothing, neatly folded. We stand naked. I realise now what we are going to do. Twenty of us, each with his cock in his hand.

Oh, God.

I hear him crying out through the ball gag as the first man in the queue penetrates him.

All the common-sense medical knowledge is running like a ticker-tape behind my eyes, the pertinent points (HIV, AIDS, Hep, STDs and such like) highlighted in red capitals on the screen of my vision. No one is offering condoms and I realise that is the point. The thrill is in the risk. Have we pushed adrenaline addiction to its obvious conclusion, I wonder, as the man at the head of the queue, the man who is fucking Sherlock's perfect arse, shudders and swears.

One down.

There are another thirteen men in front of me.

I watch each one of them take and fuck the man I love. I watch them put their cocks into his body and use him like a lump of meat. I watch them orgasm. I watch him writhe and squeal through his gag, tears running down his perfect cheeks. His curls are slicked to his head now. As I get closer I can see the sweat running down his body, the tendons over-extended, every defined muscle hyper-tense. His cock slaps wetly against his belly as they fuck him, a clear, tacky string extending from its tip. The helpers ask him again and again if he wants to continue, if he needs to come. He shakes his head frantically. He moans as another man thrusts into him.

He wants this. Nothing could be clearer.

And then it is my turn.

I run my hand tenderly over his stomach.

He seems in a kind of trance, his eyelids heavy, snorting through his nose for air because of the gag, delirious with sensation. I want him to know it is me, which is why I touch him. I need him to know. I want to give him my tenderness in the midst of all this degradation. He raises his head and blinks, pupils dilated, and I know he is barely able to focus.

I whisper his name, I run my hand across his skin a second time, and the muscles ripple a response. He has recognised me.

He moans.

And I want him. Suddenly, desperately, with every cell in my body, I want him.

It doesn't matter that the seed of fourteen other men is oozing from his raw and broken-down anus. It doesn't matter that there are another five strangers behind me. It doesn't even matter that there are a hundred other people sitting in the gloom around us, watching.

I slide into him on a cushion of other men's come. He recognises me inside him with a hungry clench, a guttural groan. I thought he would be loose from all that fucking, but he tightens for me. Perhaps just for me.

He lifts his head and meets my eye as I start to move, to love, slowly pistoning my hips. I grip his waist and will him to understand. He could always see into my soul just by looking at me. Look deeper, Sherlock, I rage inside my head as I lean forward. Look deeper and feel my love.

He cannot touch me, cannot move or respond except with inarticulate noises, and with his eyes, those beautiful eyes that change colour with his mood. Right now they are almost green, and they look up into mine and it is as if I feel him speak inside my head:

'Please?'

I come.

It is that comprehensive, that sudden, that deep. An orgasm is ripped out of my body by his eyes.

My cock spills out of his body on a flood of fluid. My knees are giving out. A helper guides me away, even though I want to tear Sherlock out of that bloody sling and carry him off like some fairy-tale damsel. He does not look at me again; his eyes do not follow me. He has to be fixed on the next fuck. I hear him squeal as the next man forces his way inside.


Dressed and shaking, I stumble out into the cold night air. I reel and stagger along the pavement, expecting at any moment Mycroft's car to appear, but it doesn't. He has washed his hands of me. Of both of us, I expect.

I bend down and vomit into the nearest drain. Then I fall onto my hands and knees like a drunk, and I sob for my beautiful Sherlock and what the night may yet have in store for him.


Tomorrow, John confronts Sherlock...