"So which was it? Afghanistan or Iraq?"
John forced himself not to look up at his first-ever client. "I – Afghanistan, sir." The curiosity rose like bile in his chest, but it wasn't a servant's place to question the person buying his services, so he kept his lips tightly pressed together and left "How the fuck did you know that?" stay unsaid. Along with "Who the hell are you, anyway?" and "I don't actually know what I'm doing, you know" and a whole host of other things which would probably have gotten his contract at Adler's canceled and his sister's mountain of debt returned to her.
The man caught John's jaw in a tight grip and forced his face upwards. "Look at me."
John looked.
And the man's expression softened. "Interesting," he murmured. "Wounded in action, then. Not the leg – back? Shoulder?"
"Shoulder," John confirmed. "Sir."
"You've been back two – no, three months. Came home to find a brother had been pissing away the family fortune. Drugs, probably, or alcohol. Not that there'd been that much fortune to begin with, but enough to set you back more than your army pension would account for. Selling yourself as a personal servant was the most expedient way to get paid up-front rather than over time, which was necessary because he would have gone to prison otherwise. How am I doing so far?"
John huffed out a stunned breath. "That's . . . astounding. Brilliant, actually."
And it may have been his imagination, but the man sat up slightly straighter. Proud of himself. "Shall I keep going?"
"Sister," John muttered.
"Pardon?"
"Harry's my sister." John couldn't look his client in the eye anymore, had to settle for staring somewhere in the vicinity of his chin. Technically following orders, but infinitely safer than letting those piercing eyes look right through him any longer. "I did spend four years in Afghanistan, I did get shot in the shoulder, I did come home three months ago, and Harry did drink herself into a pretty big hole while I was gone. But I have no brothers - it's just the two of us."
"Ah." The man contemplated him for a moment. "What's she doing now?"
Drying out at Clara's, hopefully. "We're not close."
"And yet you traded a year of your life – of your freedom – to save her. Fascinating." He paused a few seconds longer, lost in thought, then stuck out his hand in what had to be a parody of a handshake. "Sherlock Holmes."
John eyed it with suspicion. He was a pleasure servant, a submissive, a glorified prostitute – there was no reason to-
"Take it," the man – Sherlock Holmes – commanded. "You're new to this, and you feel more natural exchanging a greeting as equals rather than the more traditional methods between contracted servant and client. Plus it would be awkward to go through Mycroft's interminable benefit without actually knowing each other's names."
He took it. "John Watson." And then almost forgot to add the rest. "Err. John Watson, bond-servant to Irene Adler's House of Pleasure, personnel number 4267. Sorry. First time I've ever had the occasion to introduce myself properly. Sir."
"You'll find very little 'proper' about me," Sherlock Holmes replied. "As long as you keep my interest, you'll do fine."
The taxi rumbled to a stop in front of a small shop on a somewhat quiet street. Sherlock Holmes paid the cabbie, unlocked a neatly-painted door adjacent to the shop labeled "221," and ushered John inside. The stairs presented a bit of a problem but not an insurmountable challenge, and John managed to climb without making any actual verbal noises of discomfort.
Whatever he might have been expecting from his new client, the flat ("221B" according to the internal door) was definitely not it. The man in Madame Adler's drawing room had looked so put together – not a likely occupant for the hurricane-wracked disaster they were standing in once they reached the top of the stairs. Sherlock barely paused, though, merely swept off his greatcoat and indicated with a nod of his head for John to follow him further into the flat. Bedroom, presumably. At Madame Irene's, he'd indicated he only wanted John as a consort for some sort of public function, but did this mean-
"Hurry up," Sherlock called. "We've only got forty minutes before we need to leave, and I still need to dress you."
Having another man's hands on him was odd, but given what John had been expecting to do for the evening, it could have been much worse. Sherlock stripped John quickly, all the way down to his horrible too-sheer red pants (the closest thing to a "uniform" Madame Adler required of her employees), leaving him embarrassed and chilled and a bit turned on and nude except for the simple chain bearing his dog tags which he never took off and had been hoping to avoid dealing with. It was probably inevitable, given his new profession, but four weeks of nobody showing interest meant he hadn't had to address the issue so far.
He should have known that wouldn't last - Sherlock's eyes lit up when he saw them, and he immediately extended an imperious hand.
"Give."
John hesitated - surely he wasn't obligated to give up his personal possessions just because someone contracted him for the evening? - but Sherlock just waggled his fingers and glared and John realized even if this wasn't strictly allowed, there really wasn't much he could do about it. John slipped the chain over his head and dropped the dog tags into Sherlock's palm. He felt truly naked for the first time since before Afghanistan.
"O-negative. Frequent blood donor, then, you seem the type. Eight-digit service number - an officer. Captain?"
John nodded silently.
"Ah." Sherlock's gaze flicked from the dog tags to the ugly mess of scar tissue scrawled across John's left pectoral, then his expression cleared. "Doctor! I should have seen it sooner."
"Sorry, how did you-"
"It's obvious, clearly!" Sherlock spoke rapidly, his eyes bright. "Your service number puts you squarely within the numerical range for army officers. Your wound is rough, though - not treated properly at the time. Why? Because you were caught away from base, probably ambushed. On a specific mission, then. Most likely scenario is that you were with a medical evac team, attempting to extract someone else's unit. The angle of the scarring indicates you tended to the wound yourself, in substandard conditions, and weren't able to completely avoid infection. Doctor, then, not nurse - there was no one more capable of treating it for you, even though you had to do it with your non-dominant hand. Fascinating - that's excellent for my purposes tonight. Here."
John stared blankly at the pair of trousers Sherlock was holding out. Part of him - a very large part - was tempted to land a nice left hook on the man's jaw and then storm out of the flat in a huff, clothes or no. Having his entire service record dissected like that was . . . mortifying. And absolutely aggravating. None of his damn business what I did in Afghanistan. At least Sherlock hadn't started in on the men John hadn't been able to save - his legs might not have been able to hold him-
"I'm sorry."
The words snapped him back to the present. "Pardon?"
"I'm sorry," Sherlock said with apparent sincerity. "I've been told it's rude of me to do that and that I ought to apologize when it happens. I wasn't mocking you or your military service. The dog tags are perfect for tonight, though, and I do hope you'll permit me to use them."
Use them. John's stomach gave a lurch at that. "They're not a sex toy."
"Of course not," Sherlock snapped. "They're a tangible marker of your worth to your country. You never take them off - haven't since you first got them, I can tell by the wear on the chain - and you resent me for appropriating them without asking. That fact marks you as an honorable person - they mean something to you. And that dedication often means something to other people. Allowing me to usurp their original significance would be a tremendous benefit for our deception tonight." He tossed the trousers loosely on the bed and picked up something off the dresser with his free hand. "Here."
It was a collar. Probably the gaudiest one John had ever seen. Black leather, like most, but with incredibly detailed gold and silver filigree interwoven into a scrawled SHERLOCK HOLMES encircling three-quarters of the circumference.
"You want me to wear this?"
Sherlock's eyes darkened. "You like it?"
Christ, there's a trick question. The idea of being collared, of belonging to someone with that type of public commitment - that appealed to John on some deep level he didn't really want to think about. That much was probably obvious from the way his cock instinctively twitched the moment he realized what the object was. The idea of that specific collar, though -
"God-awful tacky design, isn't it?" Sherlock grinned, a touch of the manic in his smile. "Lord, my brother will hate it. Worth every penny."
John couldn't tear his eyes from the thing. "You want me to - to collar me?"
"Just for tonight." Sherlock reached for John's hand, turned it palm-up, and pressed the collar into it. The leather was cool and impossibly smooth. He did the same with John's other hand and repeated the gesture with the dog tags. "Think of it, John - your dog tags on my collar. Symbolic. Proclaiming to everyone we see tonight that you're an honorable man, a person of worth, and I'm too vain and self-absorbed to appreciate what I have. The perfect set-up."
"Why would you want that?" John squeezed the tags tighter in his grip. "And why would I?"
Sherlock lowered himself onto the footboard of the bed - not sitting, exactly, just perched. "Ah. You're concerned."
"Should I be?"
"I'm a detective, John." The man flashed a small, proud smile. "The only consulting detective in the world. I'm trying to prevent an assassination at my brother's soiree tonight, but I have yet to uncover the identity of the assassin. Or the intended target. Observing is easier when people underestimate me." He cocked his head, oddly birdlike, and studied John a long moment. "As for you . . . it could be dangerous."
"You say it like that's an incentive."
"You get off on it."
John wasn't entirely sure his denial would sound plausible even to his own ears, much less to his hyper-observant client's, so he kept his mouth shut.
"Exactly." Sherlock pushed off the bed again, pulled out a jacket and socks and shoes to match the trousers already sitting on the duvet. "Twenty minutes left to get ready, now - we need to hurry."
John eyed the small pile of clothes. "You forgot the shirt."
And Sherlock's wicked grin nearly dropped him to his knees again. "No . . . I didn't."