Welcome to the smut. The official smut, as if this entire story hasn't been filled with non-penetrative sex all the fuckin' time. Enjoy. ; ]
Sherlock had been working on his list for days. Even when he was doing other things, he would suddenly remember a person who was not in attendance to the ball and would stop in the middle of whatever else he was doing and run to put the name on his list. He hadn't left his room now since the day before yesterday, and hadn't even bothered to dress in anything but a tunic and leggings, like what John always wore. It was kind of nice to see him in less layers than usual, but otherwise, the whole process was grueling and dull.
John, occasionally, could help as well (almost).
"That one guy from the post office, he wasn't there. What's his name?"
"Yes, I put him down," said Sherlock impatiently.
"Oh, and your parents."
"I'm also aware of that."
"I just wasn't sure whether you'd put them on the list."
"Them being my parents doesn't put them past my suspicion. All people must be accounted for."
And once, John even actually helped.
"What about the Earl of Ten? He left early."
Sherlock looked over to him. "Did he really?"
"Yes, I'm positive of it."
"Oh. Thank you, John."
John had felt rather more proud of himself than probably he ought to, for such a small discovery. Maybe if it ended up actually being the Earl from Ten, then John could actually give himself a pat on the back.
But Sherlock had told John that, so far, he saw no more suspicion in one person on the list than another. Who in this world didn't thirst for power? Who, depending on the circumstances, would take drastic measures to get it? And how many people here barely had morals in the first place? Most of them. Sure, there was a code of honour, and a sense of self-preservation that would make them want to stay out of trouble, but otherwise it wasn't very surprising that someone would do something like this. It surprised John that there wasn't more crime, seeing as almost everyone was a great big bag of dicks. Then again, they didn't consider most of the crimes that took place as "crimes" at all, just as destruction of private property, which was just a right. So maybe vampires and demons and things just got most of their aggression out on humans, and thus didn't need to kill each other, usually.
John was pacing around, bored as hell. He'd gone and seen his sister today, and he'd already eaten. There was nothing to do but watch Sherlock scribble names on his list.
"John, you're making me anxious," said Sherlock, not looking up from his parchment. "Can't you sit down?"
"I'm so tired of sitting I can't even tell you," said John. "I could pace somewhere else," he suggested.
"I'd still hear you. I'm too attuned to your actions."
"Then why don't you take a break? We can go into the Kitsune sector and see a play or something. I heard someone at the ball talk about how they're performing Gant and Moriana for the next two weeks."
"That's a romance," Sherlock complained.
John stopped walking, looking over to Sherlock with an amused look on his face.
"What?" Sherlock asked, obviously irritated that he even had to ask. John stepped toward Sherlock until he was right in front of his chair, and then wedged his legs between Sherlock's and leaned over until his lips were nearly touching Sherlock's.
"Do you have something against romance?" he breathed.
The only change in expression in Sherlock was a quick quirk up of one of his eyebrows, just the shadow of a mischievous smile in his eyes, and his lips just barely parting to exhale quietly.
"Watching it, yes. Being a part of it… is growing on me a little."
"Only a little?" John asked, getting closer again so he could just barely feel the skin of his lower lip on Sherlock's upper when he spoke.
Sherlock only lasted another moment before he struck.
Well, 'struck' sounds so violent, so maybe it isn't the right word…
But no. 'Struck' is the right word.
Quick as the lunge of a snake before the bite, one moment John was leaning over a sitting Sherlock, and next second John's back was against a wall and Sherlock was pressed against him, his hot mouth insistent on John's. One of his hands was securing both of John's wrists above his head, and the other was gripping hard at John's hip. John wasn't sure when his shackles had been taken off, but they were now gone, probably abandoned to the floor.
It was all already hot enough, but then somehow the speed of it, the absolute strength, made it all the sexier. John was struggling against Sherlock's gtip instinctually, and he was surprised that the complete inability to escape made his body burn hotter, made him grow harder against Sherlock's thigh.
Sherlock backed away for a moment, looking John in the eyes, and chills went up and down John's spine at the look that was clearly there in his expression.
Hunger.
Sherlock felt the reaction, because then he smiled, the most sinful, the sexiest smile John had ever seen.
In another movement too quick for John to process, John's back was against the mattress instead of the wall, with Sherlock between John's legs, and Sherlock's tongue was invading John's mouth once more. John's hands were free this time, so he pressed against Sherlock's back, his arse, just to get him closer.
In another blink, Sherlock had removed both of their tunics.
John had always known Sherlock could move so fast that it seemed like he was doing several things at once, but had never thought of it in this context. How Sherlock could remove John's clothes without there even seeming to be a break in the kissing. But still it didn't feel rushed. John could feel every touch, and it seemed to reverberate through his whole body, to set fire to his skin and set pure invigoration through his veins. John couldn't breathe, and he had never felt so good in his life.
And Sherlock wasn't even doing anything yet.
At least, not right then. Because barely a few moments later, that wasn't true at all.
Sherlock had their trousers off, and then they both were just skin and skin against each other. Sherlock was smooth and hot with his arousal, and John could clearly feel his prick against his own, the friction of even the slightest movement making him shiver.
John could hardly keep track of his movements at that point. Sherlock reached over in a timespan faster than a blink and grabbed something. Next moment, Sherlock's fingers had gone inside John, covered in some slippery substance. Lube in the Dark Dimension? John vaguely wondered what they used, but couldn't really think at all anyway.
Sherlock's fingers worked in there, and it felt strange at first, but then he got used to the sensation and found himself mewling uncontrollably.
A moment where everything froze. Sherlock looking down at John.
"Are you ready?" he asked. John didn't expect any warning, but was glad for it. He nodded, unable to speak.
Something larger replaced the fingers, and John let out a yell. Sherlock's own groan made John feel only hotter. Sherlock's pace was slow for a short time, to get John used to the sensation, but then he sped up.
And sped up more.
And sped up past what a human would probably be capable of.
And Sherlock lunged forward and buried his face in John's neck, and the tell-tale sting of pain was followed by John's pleasure being doubled as Sherlock sucked at his vein.
Sherlock's hand then found John's prick and started slipping his hand up and down it. John felt like he should have come already, because the sensations were so strong, but it almost seemed Sherlock was stopping him with sheer force of will.
Then came the moment John wasn't sure would come at all. He hadn't felt the pause in Sherlock's sucking, but still he suddenly thrust his arm over his head so his wrist was in John's face. Dripping blood from a bite that Sherlock must've made so quickly John didn't even notice the pause. Sherlock was somehow able to thrust into John, pump his cock with his hand, offer John his own blood with the other, and suck as John's vein all at the same time. Multitasking a human could never manage.
John didn't hesitate to put his mouth to the wound.
The affect was instantaneous. It was like the whole world had stopped. Nothing else existed, other than pleasure that burned white hot and sent lighting through every molecule in John's body. All the pleasures blended into each other until John could not tell them apart anymore, and it was all just sensation, the most astounding sensation John had ever known. John forgot how to think and how to breathe and didn't know where he was or how loud he was being or anything at all other than that Sherlock was right there. Sherlock was everything.
And then he was thrust suddenly into a memory, like he vaguely remembered happened during blood-sharing. He found himself in the mind of Sherlock Holmes.
"I've found it!" I cried, "I've found it!" I ran for the first person in the room, which happened to be old Stamford with some friend that was obviously just back from the Afghan war with some sort of injury. He was young, likely my own age. I stowed the thought away momentarily in order to declare my discovery. "I have found a re-agent which is precipitated by haemoglobin, and by nothing else!"
Stamford ignored it. "Dr Watson, Mr Sherlock Holmes," he said.
"How are you?" I asked him, shaking his hand enthusiastically with the excitement from my discovery coursing through my veins so that I wouldn't have to send cocaine in instead, just to cure the boredom, for several days. "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."
The young man, with a bushy mustache and tired eyes, asked, "How on earth did you know that?"
"Never mind," I chuckled. "The question now is about haemoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?"
After a conversation on the practicality of my discovery in the field of criminology, Stamford had a word to say again.
"We came here on business. My friend here wants to take diggings; as you were complaining that you could get no one to go halves with you, I thought that I had better bring you together."
I was delighted. I had thought it might be utterly impossible to find someone to share with. "I have my eye on a suite in Baker Street," said I, "which would suit us down to the ground. You don't mind the smell of strong tobacco, I hope?"
"I always smoke 'ship's' myself," answered he.
"That's good enough. I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?"
"By no means."
We discussed such things for a brief time, as I thought it just as well for two fellows to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together. I was the slightest bit concerned at the fact that he mentioned with a laugh that he had shaken nerves from his time in Afghanistan, and thus objected to loudness or too much excitement.
It turned out, however, he did not object to such things quite as much as he thought he did. When our first case, A Study in Scarlett, came round, he was all too happy to join in on the hunt for whomever might have killed Enoch Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio.
And the two of us got on, more swimmingly than ever I could have expected.
Watson was first a partner, then a friend, then a brother—more family to me than any of my real family could ever be.
True, at some moments it was a relationship that stroked my own ego, because Watson found me most extraordinary. He said about my deductions once that had I lived a few centuries earlier, I would have been burnt at the stake for witchcraft. And when I told him that the answer to a baffling question was "elementary" or that "it is simplicity itself", I only was trying to impress him. But still, I grew to care for him, really care.
He was there through everything. Even through the mysterious letters from Moriarty, a villain I never saw, but always searched for, and secretly felt both fear and admiration towards. Me, afraid! And Watson, the brave soul, stayed by me through it!
Even after my transformation, he did not shrink away from me.
It was not until the day my brother decided—nay, dared—to take me away to another world.
And I would never see Watson again.
And then came John.
I had gotten colder from my time in the City. From my separation from Watson, who was for a time my only humanity.
But I could see my old companion Watson in his eyes, and then I could see something more. That John was everything I ever wanted. That in a universe of life and death and love and hate and so many things that didn't matter, because all that I needed was the work, was the thrill of the chase… John Watson was the only thing that could make me slow down. Time froze still, and all I could see was him. All that mattered was him.
It was nothing like my relationship with Watson. It was so much more than that. They are both John Watson, and they are both important to me, and will be for the rest of my days. They both taught me more about life than all others in the world combined could wish to show a mind like mine. But where Watson showed me how to care, John showed me how to love.
And I vowed to myself the moment I met him one single thing. That I would never let him get away from me, not like Watson did.
I would make him mine, and he would be mine forever.
It all oozed into John—maybe taking a second or maybe an hour, he couldn't tell—while still he could feel Sherlock, and only Sherlock. Sherlock was seeing something of him too, but John wasn't sure what it was. He was too overwhelmed with everything he was feeling. John's carnal pleasure was still there, but it was bleeding into his feeling of closeness with Sherlock, so heady and wonderful it nearly brought tears of joy to his eyes.
But that again was pushed aside inch by inch to be consumed once more by the sensuous ecstasy of Sherlock in him, on him, around him, everywhere.
He hardly even knew how loud he was groaning, or that Sherlock was too, because there were too many things to feel for his body to feel much need to hear or smell or see.
"Oh, god, Sherlock," John grunted against the open wound on Sherlock's wrist. White hot pleasure was gathering in his abdomen as Sherlock's cock pounded into him at the same rate that his hand pumped his own erection. It was only another moment before he released, an explosion of sensation that made him feel like every one of his senses was on complete overload. He was vaguely aware of the mess he'd just made all over himself, all over Sherlock, but couldn't care one bit even if he tried. He was also only slightly aware of the fact that Sherlock had finished too, his jaw clamping down with only a slight, fuzzy amount of pain in John's neck. Then Sherlock detached his mouth from John's neck, took his wrist from John's lips. It was dripping down Sherlock's chin as he looked down at John with his eyes on fire, with his chest heaving.
And there was a smile there on his face. This time, not a malevolent one that guaranteed trouble. It was genuinely happy.
Sherlock took John's face in his hands and kissed him for a long moment, not caring about the blood that was on both their faces.
"I love you," said John when Sherlock backed away, sure he had never known something with so much confidence in his life.
"I love you too," he replied, no hesitation, no anxiety in his voice.
And John knew that as long as that was true, nothing else mattered.
They cleaned up quickly and they lay next to each other, John curled into Sherlock's side. John's eyes were shut in utter relaxation. He felt nothing had ever worried him before. He'd never been tired or angry or sad or anything but so in love with Sherlock.
"What memory did you see?" he asked Sherlock quietly.
"I saw how your perception of me changed over time," said Sherlock. "I got to watch how another mind functions. It was quite fascinating."
"Yours was too," John said.
"What did you see?"
"How you met Watson, and how I was both the same and different from him. I could see the resemblance," John added, "but no, I'm not him."
"You never were," Sherlock agreed. "I still don't think it's a coincidence, and I am painfully curious about how you and he are connected, but you aren't him."
John looked up to Sherlock, and Sherlock looked down at the same time, catching John's lips in a sweet kiss.
"I think I've distracted you from your list," said John quietly.
"What list?" asked Sherlock with a smile, planting another kiss.