Sherlock's eyes were closed. Didn't matter.
Sherlock felt his body change. Which was ridiculous because Sherlock's body was still six foot and one half inch tall. His hands were still so large that sometimes John gets a little bit turned on watching his husband pat his own chest after a good burp. Sherlock was still curly-headed, cat-eyed, a plump-arsed beauty yes, but that's not what Sherlock felt like.
Stretched out there underneath a suddenly-giggling god, eyes closed, teeth driving into his bottom lip, Sherlock felt his chest broaden, his legs shorten, he felt a small, delicious plumpness at his waist and giggling too, Sherlock blinked his eyes open, looked at his now-short-fingered hands. He wiggled them and touched them and held his own hand and it was…what was it?
It was John-not-John, it was a glamour of skin-and-bone overlaying his skin-and-bone, it was the fine-sweet trickery of a laughing god.
To this man of science and fact, it was magic.
Sherlock looked at his hands both, front, back, veins and wrists, nails and pale blond hair. He laughed and laughing still kissed each finger and fingertip, then with John's-not-John's steady, sturdy, perfect fingers he touched Loki's mouth soft, saying something the god did not expect.
"Oh Loki, they tell such tales of you."
The god stopped laughing, grunted in surprise. Sherlock did too, for his voice, his accent, his cadence was now in John's higher tenor. Reflexively Sherlock hummed and laughed and then whispered in a voice more familiar to him than his own, "You're the second strongest man I've ever known."
Loki didn't need to ask who was the first.
"You have beauty, power, position, longevity, and yet you shout and rage that it's not enough. You scream it from rooftops, howl it through the nine realms. You bitch and complain and beg and take…and you give and give and give."
Loki's eyes went wide. Sherlock knew the look, he recognises when a man is desperately pleased to be praised.
And so Sherlock Holmes, wearing the body of John Watson, did what John Watson would do.
Sherlock stretched underneath the god, arched and grinned and then took hold of the god's face with two unshakeable hands. "That's the part they never see, the blind they, the judgmental they, the boring they. They love too much the melodramatic god so they fail to see from where his drama comes. Instead they spin stories of the naughtiness but don't see beneath it the need." Sherlock took hold of Loki's chin, brought the god's mouth to his own, kissed him soft. "What a fine man you'll be when you grow up."
It doesn't take much for things to change. Perhaps humans and gods both have a vested interest in believing in the catalyst of wars or rooftop declarations. Because those things are rare for most and without them it's easy to excuse yourself from change.
Yet change does not take much, it really doesn't. Simple words at a calm moment. A touch and a gaze and a "tell me," when somehow you are for the first time ready to tell.
Lives change when they will, if we let them and bombs need not apply—except for the small ones made of words.
So it was that Loki Laufeyson's life changed right then, ju—
"Jesus Christ you remembered his surname."
Mouth half open on a word, Sherlock blinked at John.
"It took you nearly two years to get Mr. Chatterjee's Christian name right and you're the one who wrote him the cheque for all that lettuce we ruined."
Sherlock closed his mouth. John breathed wheezily through his.
"Right. Sorry. Go on."
—st the smallest bit, just a little. Right there, stretched out over Sherlock Holmes, this god burdened with glorious purpose took a vital first step toward that purpose.
He moved one inch to the spiritual left, away from the endless mire of breast-beating melodrama and one tiny inch toward the good and necessary thing he would be: The legendary God of Mischief.
As represented by one Asgardian fond of green leather and really big horns, that tiny inch toward the future was here-and-now represented by joy. Joy in the giving, in the watching, in seeing the wonder in the eyes of a man magicked.
Loki lifted his hand and suddenly Sherlock stood alone, stood straight-backed and still before the broad and tall expanse of night-black glass. It was as good as a mirror that glass, and later Sherlock would think that was a god's doing, how well he could see everything on John's body-not-body. Yet it wasn't.
It's just that Sherlock knows John's skin, every inch.
And so standing there and looking at the dark reflection Sherlock's mind inside the god-created glamour of John, well Sherlock looked at his short, sandy-haired reflection and wondered why he'd never thought of this, why some part of his obsessive subconscious hadn't ever entertained itself with thoughts of what it would be like to be John.
Well it was now.
Sherlock looked long into the darkness—both of deep blue eyes and deep blue sky. And suddenly he wanted to be down there in the darkness of the city, seeing it with John's eyes.
He wanted to roam London on John's legs, understanding how this new gravity changed everything. He wanted to run, touch, smell. And maybe Loki would even allow that, softened as he was with sex, indulgent with the pleasure of—
—they were in a shadowy mews in Soho, the papered over windows of a shut-tight club in front of him, and Loki so close he covered Sherlock with his shadow.
"The dirty little heart of London, with its drunken passions and its lurid come-ons," murmured the god. "Yet I do rather like it here."
Sherlock's gaze slid slow over Loki, dressed again in all his pretty costuming. Of course a man who favoured gilded green leather and gauntlets, one who wore horns the size of a man's arm, well of course such a creature would like spangle-bright Soho.
I bet no one looks twice here, thought Sherlock, and when Loki shook his head Sherlock rolled his eyes at his own idiocy. No, they look, of course they do. He ran one of Loki's long locks through glamour-short fingers. Who wouldn't look at you, pretty prince? And who wouldn't want what they saw?
"Looking like a movie star in your pretty battle gear, maybe they think you're cosplaying a superhero…"
Sherlock glanced at John to see if John would say something about Sherlock knowing the word cosplay.
John was busy changing out his nostril tissues and, at the pause, looked up and shrugged. "As far as this dream is concerned I think I'm officially done being surprised. If that's all right."
Sherlock shrugged and handed John more tissues he didn't need. It was fine by him.
He continued.
Tugging Loki close by his chin, Sherlock breathed into his mouth. "Or, better yet, maybe they think you're a stripper in one of the clubs."
Loki grinned gleeful, flooded Sherlock's mind with images of his lithe body straddling a stripper pole. Because of course Loki's done that. Bared his body and moved sinuous for a crowd. He's let them look close, so close, then let them touch a little, a bit more, then a lot. He has took and been taken under flood lights, sweat dripping into his eyes, body shaking. Oh he's done everything has Loki. Every. Little. Thing.
"I love you Sherlock Holmes," he breathed back. "I didn't know how restful it could be, being known." Loki leaned down and the hocus pocus of the glamour meant Sherlock was looking, up, up, up, as the god kissed him.
Sherlock's not possessive (particularly). He's not jealous (usually). So when Loki kissed John-not-John's mouth…
…Sherlock let him.
It felt different, though the second most observant man in the world couldn't have told you how. Maybe it had to do with being bigger and smaller both. Loki was tall, but so slim compared to Sherlock's sturdy, glamoured body. Hands sliding gentle along the god's back, he felt protective and protected both and wasn't that just John H. Watson all over?
So captivating was the contrast Sherlock might be there still, standing on tip-toe and attempting to comprehend kisses, except close by a glass bottle smashed and every muscle in Sherlock's John-not-John body went tense, alert, shot through with delicious adrenaline.
Because apparently even a glamour of John turns toward danger and no sooner had Sherlock done so than he stopped with a grunt.
Oh…oh…oh. Moving. It felt so gloriously strange.
Sherlock took another stilted step.
John's body is dense. Easy living has seen to some softening, but beneath that is the heaviness of muscle and so John weighs more than a man his size usually does. Now, moving inside that gravity, Sherlock was enchanted. The earth felt present beneath him, in a way it never does when he's him.
When Sherlock walks he does so quickly, tread light by long habit. When John walks he tramps, taking up more room than a five foot six and three quarter inch man can.
Sherlock shrugged shoulders across which a loose shirt draped, tensed jeans-clad legs, bounced on booted toes.
He laughed, delighted.
Then Sherlock ran.
Off like a shot and past pubs, theatres, takeaways and cafes. He ran through puddles black with Soho soot, dashed around crowd-stalled cabs, squeezed through pavement-milling throngs. He pumped his arms just because, took deep, chest-broadening breathes, laughed again, hearing John's laugh and the sound of it was ballast and buoyancy both.
He jumped up kerbs and kept running, jumped down them and nearly tripped and that, oh that was brilliant, amazing, fantastic (he was even thinking like John), because instead of falling Sherlock pin-wheeled his arms and unlike when he's him, all long limbs whose very flailing length just about assures the rest of the tumble, no no, instead of that his short body, solid and small and closer, yes, closer to the ground, well it didn't trip.
So Sherlock ran some more.
Through splashes of neon light—it felt different, did it feel different, did even light fall on this skin more sweetly?— around the crowds that are never not everywhere in titillating Soho, and then there were too many bodies, bodies everywhere and he had to press through them and that too was wonderful, the back of someone's hand rubbing against his knuckles, the toss of a woman's head sweeping long hair across his neck, and before he knew it Sherlock was inching along in his John-Not-John body, seeking the crowds, bumping his hip against her, brushing a hand against him, and by the time Sherlock realised this delicious little invasion was all a bit not good his senses were sizzling, hyper-alert and it was then he noticed that lilting hum, that breathless little sound that was everywhere…it was him.
Sherlock stopped. He breathed deep and wasn't it amazing how that, just that settled him? Was that intrinsic to John? Was John's very biology the miracle that made him capable of being at the centre of a maelstrom yet remain its almost-peaceful heart? Sherlock fisted his fierce, gentle, perfect, little hands against his own chest, took another deep breath, ready to run, only this time he glanced over his shoulder and there, right behind him, the gold-horned god in his armour, looking not like a dream or superhero or stripper, but like a fragile, bright-eyed creature giddy with delight at this joyful mischief he'd made.
Sherlock grinned back, sharp-tugged again at a lock of Loki's long hair, and then he ran and ran again, over through under between, his short legs taking him from road to kerb to pavement to park to one turn and then another and into the dark of another mews and it was there Loki caught him.
Because there's something to be said for long spider-fingers and lengthy-limbs, and Loki maybe cheated a little, using these and his godly grace to wrap himself around Sherlock's John-Not-John body even as they tripped on one another's feet. Their fall felt like flying for an interminable time and then they oofed with quick-expelled breathes onto the rooftop of 221B, rolling across the grey roof slate, laughing until both were breathless.
Outside the dream maybe, just maybe, John Watson shifted away from Sherlock or the pipes rapped as Dr. Harris down in 221C got up for her early shift, for quick as a blink Loki's laughing was silenced, Sherlock's went soft, edges blurred.
And even in the dream Sherlock knew the dream was suddenly falling apart.
"Oh fuck."
At this point Sherlock would be disappointed if his feverish little love didn't keep interrupting. Because Sherlock understands really over-committing to a thing and John was dramatically overcommitted. It was a comfort, not being the only drama queen in 221B.
"I'm sorry Sherlock, but fuck."
Sherlock's tiny queen tugged a tissue from his nostril and threw it to the floor dramatically. "I know you can't do anything about your subconscious or when this ends and I'm sorry if you feel pressured but—" John swiped messily at a fresh flow of mucus, then nodded his head, as if he'd just made a long and technical point.
With his silence Sherlock made his own point and that point was this: There was more.
John gurgled moistly, accepted a fistful of tissues from Sherlock, and said, "There's more."
"Yes. I…you…we…we're going to come."
Feverish and beatific John mashed a tissue up his nose and snugged in closer.
Outside the dream maybe, just maybe, John had gone and snugged closer or Dr. Harris started humming one of those lullabies she's always learning for her pediatric patients, and so Sherlock fell once again into peaceful REM dreaming.
Edges went sharp, the air hummed, and quicker than blinks Loki flipped Sherlock onto his back on strangely-comfortable rooftop slate, crawled on top of him, a sinuous cage of long, blue limbs. He kissed neck and mouth and eyes and whispered, "Look at you beautiful one, your big, lavish body tucked in small. But your love's just a different sort of lavish isn't he, your sweet doctor, fitting so much into so brief a space?"
Loki's red eyes went heavy-lidded, he shifted, and that's when Sherlock noticed the god was again in his thin, body-skimming tunic, slim curves warm under Sherlock's hands. Sherlock's John-Not-John body was bare.
"Beautiful," Loki sighed, the back of his hand running along John's jaw, eyes gone soft with wanting. Because no man is more wanted than one wanted by another. Of course Loki wanted John because Sherlock did.
Loki would not have him.
The greedy god knew this and it had nothing to do with reading thoughts or a consulting beauty's scowl.
Already that tiny bit better than he was before, Loki knew here on this familiar roof, in this defined but infinite space tenanted by the love of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, he had no rights. Of course he could wheedle and trick, he is a man mischievous after all, but taking from someone who trusts you not to take? Well, Loki was losing his taste for that.
So all the pretty god did was kiss a stubbled cheek, look into eyes so blue-dark he could not find their depth, and he put his mouth right to Sherlock's ear and whispered, "Love him. Your prince. Love."
Then Loki went away.
Well, not quite.
He simply stopped what he'd been doing for all the long length of this long and lusty dream: Covering Sherlock in needing shadow; chattering this, that, and the other thing; he stopped touching and begging and instead Loki of Asgard, a prince who would one day be a king, he settled himself away.
Yet not too far away.
While down below cars shooshed through the night and occasionally honked their displeasure, while people on the pavement talked and moved and lived, well up above all that, on the rooftop of 221B Baker Street, where John and Sherlock have spent heavy summer nights sweat-giggle-complaining on a half-deflated lilo, where they've cuddled close after close calls on the old wood benches long since turned almost soft with weather and time, yes up there where their history is sweetly steeped, well there Loki settled, far enough away and yet close enough to hear.
Love him.
Sherlock sighed in John-Not-John's body. Stretching out on slate that was not-so-very-hard he closed his eyes to the stars above the better to see the things he felt.
What were those things?
The answer was interesting.
What Sherlock felt was the feel of Sherlock's hands, but not the hands themselves. Which is to say he was, for all intents and purposes, John Watson, so he felt what John would feel, which was the slide of gentle fingers over flesh. But Sherlock, who was at the heart of the glamour, inside it if you will, his fingertips didn't register the touch because he wasn't Sherlock, not while he touched John. He was John. And so he felt what John would feel.
And that was this: A palm now resting on his belly and shaking with a tremour of nerves and desire, then the smoothing slick of sweat as that big hand traveled from belly to chest to a lazy circling around and then on to a nipple.
Moans in bed those first days they were together had told Sherlock John's nipples were sweetly sensitive but it was a different thing for him to feel how. Where for Sherlock a touch to tender buds zinged adrenaline right to his cock, for John the touch was a tightness across his chest, like a breathlessness that needed sating with a deep breath.
Which is the lyrical way of saying a touch to one of John's nipples made the muscles behind them tense and that created the sensuous sensation of weight and oh! Suddenly it was no wonder John loved when Sherlock rested the dense solidity of his body on top of him.
There was much more for a curious man to know, so Sherlock moved on from nipples to neck and here again the sensations were different. Sherlock's response has as much to do with who's doing him—John, always John—as what's being done, for before the good doctor Sherlock was not a fan of the vast expanse that is his neck because there was too damn much of it.
Sherlock's been so much everywhere too much, body and mind, for so long that he'd long ago piecemealed himself, deciding which bits he liked (his mind) and which he didn't (everything else). So Sherlock learned to look upon everything else with not just indifference but actual distaste.
And then there was John. John who didn't piecemeal, except to say "This, and this, and this part of you? All parts, every one, beautiful, sweet as honey, yours and mine and ours and perfect." Then he proved it by loving every part.
Which is the long way of saying that when John touches Sherlock's nipple, neck, chest, anywhere, Sherlock's response is emotional and physical. Yes, sure, it's that way for John too, but with each touch Sherlock's learning that for John the physical is…well it's gratifying simply of itself.
So Sherlock went ahead and gratified.
He heard himself hum in John's tenor when he tickled John-Not-John's throat. He ran the trembling tips of his finger over the top of John's ear and felt John's skin hive with gooseflesh and that felt so good that by instinct he did something he'd never done before. He stroked round the tender-curving shell, following the warm whorl until one long finger slipped into John's ear.
"Hnnng!"
Sherlock yanked his finger out, skin prickling with a flush of blood, cock making itself known with a dramatic bit of leakage, then he did it again. Touch. Whorl. Insert.
"Hnnng!"
Oh my.
Now the thing is, Sherlock freaks his shit right on out when John puts a finger in his ear. The three, four, five times John's done it, Sherlock's levitated off the floor, then hit the ground running.
So it had never occurred to Sherlock to put a finger in John's ear.
Well, that was going to change.
After.
Right now Sherlock gently patted John-Not-John's ear, then stroked down John's stubbled jaw, to his shoulder, to—
Wait.
Sherlock's fingers danced back up, to John's bullet scar. This was not an especially fascinating part of John's body to Sherlock, for he knew personally the numbness of wounded flesh, the tingle at its healed edges. What he didn't know until he touched John's wound both front and back was…that's exactly how it felt for John.
By now and for both of them the old injury was just that. Old. Forgotten mostly, noticed rarely, a small part of a much grander whole.
Sherlock moved on.
He ran his palm down along his hip and then grinned himself straight back up to John's nubby belly button. For Sherlock this little knot of protruding flesh is ridiculously fascinating, sensitive and secret both, he loves to smell it suck it nibble it and, like now, slick a spit-wet finger over it until John laughs.
Sherlock laughed, and the sound was John's giggle, high and somehow deep and that right there was the sexiest thing so far so of course Sherlock took hold of John-Not-John's leaking cock and stroked and stroked and Christ it felt so good he kind of banged his head against the slate and lifted his legs until he was flat-footed on the tile, slicking his cock with his own slick.
Without even thinking about it he brought his wet hand to his face pressed against nose and open mouth and that! That! That!
Anyone who's seen Sherlock at a crime scene'll tell you he's got a great sniffer, shoving his snoot into creases and cracks, snuffling corpses and clues and proclaiming, "L'Homme," or "Drum Gold rolling tobacco," or once, " Oct-1-en-3-one!" ("He means it smells like blood," John told Lestrade.)
Sherlock's just learned he's got nothing on John when John scents something. Well one thing. A specific thing. A Sherlock thing.
Mouth open cat-like, his own scent taken in through John-Not-John's nose, the salts the sugars the enzymes of his own musk a perfect chemistry arching his back off body-warmed tile, making him moan and drop his legs open in invitation.
John is left-hand dominant, John wanks with his right. Sherlock grunted and spit in his right, then again pressed the scent-heady left over his face, breathed deep, deeper, and he stroked himself the scent glorious and everywhere around him. It was his own but it was John nosing the air and it was John's skin flushing skittering, breath gathering, tension between legs, it felt different not different better the same it was John's senses his mind, or was it John's mind didn't matter didn't after all matter because it was good and that was all that mattered and…
…the dream went soft round the edges…
…the edges sharpened…
…became dozy morning reality and…
…and what had been John's hand became Sherlock's hand became John's hand on Sherlock and together in their rumpled morning bed they touched Sherlock and touched him, and touched him, with fever-warm hands and lips and then a hot mouth and there in that bed in a warm room inside 221B Sherlock Holmes arched his neck, his back, his entire body and he groaned.
Oh that orgasm was big. Starbursts behind tightly-squinched eyes big. Woozy from blood loss to the brain big. Heart in the throat, goosebumps everywhere, fuck me twice and call the paramedics little death big.
The orgasm was better than good it was back-bowing brilliant. Sherlock's heart stilled, his blood raced, and his bones melted. He stopped breathing for as long as the orgasm went on and while it was only ten, twelve, fourteen seconds at the outside it was lavishly lengthy and so grand that by the time his breath returned he was sweating and possibly half unconscious.
And…
…time passed. A timeless time.
Eventually Sherlock yawned. Opened bright eyes. He turned his head, looked at John.
John spit out Sherlock's thumb, said softly, "Back now?"
Sherlock thought about that. He took a deep, soul-soothing sigh, checked all systems, nodded.
John sighed back. "That was perfect. All of it. Everything."
Sherlock hmmmm contentedly.
After another little while John said, "There's more you know. Movies. Loki movies."
Sherlock had not known that. It was a good thing to know. He now knew it. Something might be done about the knowing. In the future.
Meantime more timeless time catfooted by. While it did, John got all thinky in his thinking place. Fiddling with Sherlock's fingers absent-mindedly he said at last, "There's one bit of the dream I don't get."
Sherlock telegraphed his surprise with a series of blinks. Frankly there were at least eight bits Sherlock didn't get, from the stuff with the pomegranates and the thing with the ashes to the bit about the Shard. Maybe he'd have to ask John about some of those things later, but right now Sherlock rolled to his side, faced his one true love, and waited.
"I don't understand you." To make his point John gently pulled then tugged then yanked the tissue box out of Sherlock's other hand—how was he still holding it?—and mimed with it a grumpy dish-clattering. "After all the dream kisses and cuddles and three actual real orgasms, I mean, Sherlock, why on earth did you wake up so cranky?"
Of course John would be okay with giggling gods, existential philosophy, and extended and repeated pornographic goings on, but require explanation for rude behaviour.
"John. When I woke from this dream one hundred years ago, I still had some, what's that pithy term Americans love? Ah yes—baggage. I still had a significant amount of 'baggage' about the rightness of…"
Sherlock casually tried reclaiming the tissue box without realising he was doing so.
"…my own desires."
John instinctively gripped the tissue box tighter. Quickly realising what he was doing, he let go. "And now?"
Sherlock hugged the box with one hand, wiggled the fingers of the other until John began playing with them again.
"Now I think I could happily bugger you in a Fortnum & Mason display window for all the world to see."
Wait.
"No, what I mean is, I could, I could…"
John blinked tender, rheumy eyes at Sherlock, pressed their foreheads together. Sherlock sighed in relief and waited for John's wise-cranky-protective words. He knew John knew how to say what he wanted to say, so Sherlock waited.
And waited.
And—
John sneezed himself awake, already talking. "—we're us Sherlock. We're we. Nothing else matters, just you and me and what we think is right for you and me. I don't actually know if the Fortnum & Mason people would let you bugger me in a Christmas display window, but if they did and it made you happy it'd make me happy and you know what? Fuck anyone else who says different. Just fuck 'em."
Sherlock grinned beatific and hummed in agreement. He pushed against John's forehead with his own, trying to press words into John, press laughter and thanks and love. Most of all that. Most of all Sherlock wanted to tell John he loved him, with all the heart that was in him.
To help him do that, Sherlock carefully pushed the tissue box toward John. Accepting the benediction, John took it.
They serenely breathed on one another awhile.
Then Sherlock sneezed. Once. Twice.
John handed him a tissue.
Sherlock took it and blew.
A few long moments later Sherlock carefully reached out—John thought it was for another tissue—and put his finger in John's ear.
"Hnnng."
A half hour later dozens of damp wads of tissue were scattered over the night tables, the floor, the bed.
They'd even used some to blow their noses.
Afterward John Watson and Sherlock Holmes slept the rest of the day away. The empty tissue box between them.
—
I thought this was done but there's a small closing chapter. It is next and probably not what you'd expect...