SHERLOCK HOLMES

See end of chapter for content warning.

John made the mistake of thinking that passing on 221B meant he'd seen the last of Sherlock Holmes. Someone that posh hadn't any business in the places John frequented. He hadn't any business trawling shady pubs for partners or calling services like John's in search of someone, anyone to give him just the right shag. John was jaded, not blind. He was suspicious as soon as he saw the man through his peephole.

Sgt. Donovan did say he was a questionable type, he thought somewhat warily. After taking a moment to retrieve his old gun, John limped to the door and let the dashing gentleman from Baker Street into his dinky excuse for a flat. It wasn't much, but it was better than he'd had at the bedsit.

"Sherlock." He corrected himself, "Mr. Holmes, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I've already asked you to call me Sherlock. I've not rescinded the offer simply because you declined to share a roof with me." He had gone loose-limbed against John's doorframe, and remained so, eyeing John as cannily as any predator.

John became very aware of leaning on his cane just now. "That's very kind of you. Is there something you needed?"

"I..." Sherlock seemed to hesitate, peering about the entryway to John's flat as though the answer lurked anywhere nearby. Or danger.

John stepped closer to the younger man. He peered up into Sherlock's wide eyes and couldn't help noting just how depthless they were, how they swallowed up any and all light till it was there captured, and reflected right back at him. His pupils were veritable craters on his moon of a face. John might have thought he was aroused if he didn't deal with kids exactly like this on a daily basis.

"You aren't even touching the ground right now, are you?"

Sherlock furrowed his brow, but John didn't think it had anything to do with him. Even the sharpest mind will dull after a hit or two of coke.

"You are so high London's just a pipedream, isn't she?" John left off Sherlock in search of his medical kit. More than anything, John wanted to send the consulting detective packing with his strung-out curiosity and his unavoidable risk. He had people lined up for tonight, people that were not Sherlock Holmes and he did not need them thinking Sherlock was here to learn or tell tales. Unfortunately for John, though, he was a doctor and he couldn't see sending Sherlock to get himself home this bad off.

'Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other'? Forgot to mention something, you filthy bugger. An addict was the last thing John needed to be saddled with. Harry was burden enough without them living together.

"You just going to stand there or are you coming in for a cuppa?"

He heard Sherlock lurch after him with all the grace of an empty angora jumper. John mentally planned to tidy the knick knacks Sherlock knocked askew after he'd seen the man off this evening. Christ, I'm rearranging my life around him already. This was exactly why John had decided to forgo becoming his assistant and flatmate. There wasn't room in his life for that much devotion.

"John Watson."

"Yes?"

"I don't know why I came here tonight." His crisp baritone was dulled to broth.

"Search me. I don't even know how you got my address. I didn't give it to you."

"I have my methods."

"You have Irregulars. One told another who told another. That's how it works. The city's not as big as she looks."

Sherlock's narrowed eyes fairly bulged in his agitation. His flailing created a disturbance that blew over John's unchecked post.

"But how do you know that? You're over a decade out of town, you're just short of technologically illiterate, but you know London's deep corners, her back pockets like I do." He stumbled over his own flat feet though he kept to them. "Where have you been since you came home," he slurred, circling John in his cramped den like he was performing the Paso Doble all by himself. He weaved, erratic and odd, tailored angles jutting out from every side.

John watched him dance.

"You make Lestrade nervous. He couldn't stop looking at you."

"From my perspective, it was you he couldn't keep his eyes off."

"He doesn't trust me not to pilfer evidence."

The more he saw of Sherlock, the more he agreed that constant supervision was of topmost importance. Look what happens when he's got nobody watching after him. "Smart man."

Sherlock ticked his head a degree. "Not quite as thick as the rest, I'll grant." He shimmered off, a toppling dervish in navy tweed, pillaging John's meagre stockpile o' tchotchkes for meaning he was unlikely to find. "Mycroft, Lestrade, even Donovan, they're all aware of you in ways that defy explanation." He bent sidewise to glimpse at a photo of John and Harry when they were small and attached at the hip. "Explain."

John eased off his walking stick, shifting unconsciously off the balls of his feet. "Mmm, no, I don't think I will."

Sherlock wound back round to John, his eyes scraping and scrapping every passing surface on their arc to John's face. "Why?"

"Oh, I've got loads of reasons. Because I don't want to. Because I don't have to. Because I don't answer to you. Because they don't answer to you. Take your pick, mix and match, have fun with it. One is as good as the next." Sherlock fixed his gaze on John's lips, seeming intent on saying the words in synchrony. Am I that predictable? Sucking back a fortifying breath, John used the rubber tip of his cane to flip down a corner of the rug Sherlock's gormless plodding had rucked up.

"You've got a mouth on you." Sherlock closed his hands like paper fans and away they went into his valley-deep coat pockets. He made for the tiny kitchenette, the keenest sort of high. John cut him off at the knees, smacking his stick along the tops of the wispy bastard's shins. Sherlock pouted, true as god, he did.

"I could say the same for you, actually, but it's the rest of you I'm more worried about, if you want to know the truth."

"Not interested and don't be thick, you're not, that isn't what I meant. A soldier, yes; a yes-man, no." His peculiar face slipped into a thwarted sort of grimace. "You're not thick, not the same sort of it anyway. A soldier with his intuition, a doctor with his experience, but you're more than that. The question is 'how much more?'"

"I couldn't help you with that."

"You could, but you won't."

"I don't even know you."

"You'd like to."

"Have you ever met a liberty you wouldn't take without asking?"

"No."

Can't even fake it, can he?

"I'll bear that in mind." John sighed. "How much are you on right now?"

"No idea what you mean."

"My time is good for everything but wasting. Don't."

"This and that. It's all fine."

"It isn't nearly."

Sherlock's RP drawl, even slurred, ran roughshod over John's attempts to hush him.

"Seriously, Sherlock. What is it?"

"Not my solution. Non-toxic, I think." That he was bothered by the uncertainty was written on his face. John was bothered by all of it. A man like Sherlock, he would know what he took. This isn't coke. He didn't do this.

"Who brought you here?"

"I brought me." He sounded proud of himself.

"You walked."

Sherlock over-emphasized his nod, pleased he'd managed what should have been a simple task. "I walked."

John touched Sherlock's face. Clammy, cold sweat. Some degree of disorientation. Pupils wide. Coordination affected.

"Tell me again how you got here."

Sherlock pouted at being doubted, and sniffed. "Cabbie, walked, walked."

"How was the weather?"

"Awful."

"How do you feel?"

"Euphoric."

"Do you wanna sit for a minute and feel euphoric on the sofa?"

"Please." Sherlock peered up at John when he remained standing and Sherlock lay sprawled across John's corduroy and paisley cushions. "Sit."

"No, I don't think so." John needed his kit and a penlight. He'd left his in his coat.

Sherlock pulled inasmuch as it could be called that. "Sit."

John's tired leg gave out and he sat. He squirmed to disentangle himself from Sherlock's damn near prehensile feet. The sod's got limbs like an octopus in the deep. Once John had given up resisting, Sherlock retracted his bespoke-clad legs to press closer into John's space. His breath smelt of ketones and something else. Stomach acid. Bile. Sherlock didn't eat enough.

John pressed twin fingers to one of Sherlock's bony wrists. They might have been delicate were the man a stone heavier instead of starving and stark-raving mad on his sofa. Tachycardic. His heart's in over drive.

"When's the last time you ate?"

"Irrelevant."

"Not to me. Answer the question." John felt Sherlock's neck. Lymph nodes normal. "When did you last eat? Do you have any pre-existing conditions?"

Sherlock hummed in the negative, not that John was predisposed to trust it given the sluggish speed of his pupillary response when John uncovered and re-covered each eye.

"Are you in any pain?"

"No. My senses are pleasantly murky."

"That's not a good thing."

"Seems fine on my end."

"You would think that."

Sherlock tipped himself at any angle to squint in John's face. "Who are you?"

"You know me. We met yesterday. You recited my life story in thirty seconds flat."

The taller man blinked as though that failed to distinguish John in any way. It might not have done. Sherlock seemed to do a lot of deducing.

"You refused my brother."

Brother? Brother. Of course, the eyes. John rolled his own for not picking up on the spare resemblance. Not in the face, but that mind of his couldn't have been incidental.

"I don't like bribes."

"You refused me."

"No, not you."

Sherlock pulled a face. "You don't make sense. Nothing makes sense." He scrubbed his face and yanked at his hair. Wincing on behalf of his embattled follicles, John unclenched his clawed fingers from his scalp before Sherlock could hurt himself.

"Your head's a mess. What'd you take?"

"I told you I don't know. I don't." Sherlock curled up into himself. "It's never felt like this." He fretted, "I didn't mean to take…didn't know where…who to call." He pulled at his shambles of hair again.

John disentangled his hands, taking the liberty of checking his long fingers for defensive wounds. He was bruised up, but no blood.

"So you came to me."

"The army doctor." Sherlock chuckled. John didn't quite get the joke.

"I've seen it all."

"You'll keep me right."

That was his job, wasn't it? His calling in life, his debt. So why did John feel like he was failing all the time? He thumbed Sherlock's pulse point at his wrist for his own peace of mind. Quick as a hummingbird's wing.

"I'll fix you up, promise. But first I've gotta figure out what's wrong with you." He tried to divest Sherlock of his coat, but the lanky bugger refused to part with it. "You're somewhere between an OD and ketoacidosis. What'd you take? What were you given? Can you describe it to me? Was it pills?"

John had heard tell of a right toxic brand of crystal and the like making its way 'round the streets. There was a new supplier in town, this one more ruthless than any yet, who engendered loyalty through brass fists as easily as good deeds. He couldn't count how many of his lot had slept it off on his sofa, drooling and rank; lost, at least. Try though he might not to show it, he was worried. The calls for help he was getting were less coherent all the time. Somebody's got to put a stop to this. That the smartest man he'd met in a week of prodigies had fallen victim put his back up. He's no easy mark.

"Sherlock, what did they give you?"

The tall man rolled his head on his marble neck, back from the daze that had him all caught.

"I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about you."

Sherlock wound his arms around John's waist sensuously. He really was all limbs. He began to nibble on John's ear like it was a biscuit. John really was all out of patience.

"Stop."

To John's complete lack of shock, Sherlock disobeyed, squirming deeper into the sphere of John's personal space to breathe weak tea and ketone breath onto his ear. Had John not been so set upon decking the man, he might have been turned on. John's preferences hadn't ever been vanilla, but this might have been too rocky a road, even for him.

"John Watson."

The man so named sighed. "That's my name."

Sherlock butted his forehead to John's temple with enough force to make them both flinch. Holding his no doubt swimming head and scowling, the overgrown child grimaced, "I don't understand you at all."

"Sherlock, the things you don't understand about the human race could cover continents." He broke away from his drunken limpet to fetch them both a glass of water—and to stow his gun.

"But I understand everyone. People are predictable. Dull. Boring. All the same, all motivated by their tedious wants and revolting physical desires."

John returned from his depressive kitchenette to find Sherlock still swaying in place. Eyes momentarily screwed in some kind of formless prayer, he budged the younger man onto the sofa and sat down beside him, pushing a glass of water into his hand. "Don't talk, drink."

He may as well have said nothing at all. Sherlock's exiling of the glass to the coffee table was the work of a moment.

"But you're a queer one," he continued, sounding as if he'd never stopped despite John's stepping out of the room.

John's eyebrow spoke for itself. Did you just carry on talking while I was away?

"You're accustomed to being desired. You're comfortable in your deplorable wardrobe, knowing that you'll be pursued in spite of it."

John ground a palm into his eye. What did I do to deserve this?

"You don't deny it, then. People want you despite everything about you. Odd." Sherlock began another of his scalding visual assessments. "Average appearance, below average living standard, above average education. Short." John bristled instinctively; Sherlock tutted in dismissal. "You are, no need to take it personally. I'm merely stating a fact. You aren't much to look at on first glance, but you're thought of as kind. You have a tendency to fade from notice, which makes you dangerous and likely more knowledgeable than I've given you credit for up to now. You have a way of making visual contact..." Sherlock paused here, his gaze faltering, and then turning lethal as to shear flesh from bone. "It's tangible with you. I don't understand why." He seemed to take personal offense at John's charisma, if it could be called that. Quite good for being coked to his eyelids.

"I'm a people person, Sherlock, whatever that means to you."

Sherlock's moue of distaste might have been endearing were it not so emblematic of everything socially off about the man. Handsome, can shout for England, and hopeless with other people. Exactly what I need.

"You're awfully chatty for being this fucked-up. I'd say I was impressed if I hadn't seen better." Wells had been better a number of times. If there was anything John hated more than seeing his kids turning tricks, it was the treats they brought home with them, after. He wasn't their happy uncle or dear old da, he was in no position to be passing judgment; so, he held them while they shook when the sweets ran dry. Addicts were fast becoming his specialty.

"You disapprove."

John disapproved of dealers. Users just made him sad.

"You're an adult, Mr. Holmes, what you do with your body is of little concern to me."

"Is that so?" John nearly licked his lips in response to the triumphant, predatory gleam that came to Sherlock's eyes. John knew that look, had worn it with enough frequency for his muscles to mimic it of their own volition. The consulting detective was on the prowl.

Like a striking cobra, Sherlock spilled over and kissed John. For all that it was clumsy, his hands ice for poor circulation, what it lacked in finesse he more than compensated for with intoxicating submission and a whisper of dominance. Sherlock purred at John's fingers in his hair, parted his lips at the insistence of John's tongue, got a leg over John at his very first opportunity. He was hardening in his trousers.

"Show me," the detective demanded in the space of two kisses. "Show me what they see that I don't."

John let himself be straddled and jailed, pinned by Sherlock's lush mouth and relentless hands. John might have been a pro, but he wasn't dead. A pretty face still had the power to stun him stupid.

The kiss seemed to go on for ages, Sherlock suckling John's lips and tongue until his mouth was a throbbing ache that extended all the way down to his cock. The detective chuckled, grinding down on John's incipient erection with his own. John reached inside the folds of the man's coat to grab his arse in both hands and groaned at what he found. Of course, he's got a fantastic arse. Why, oh why, did you have to be high tonight?

John loved his job, John loved sex, but what he loved most was a good, solid shag he wasn't being paid for. Sherlock Holmes could have been that shag. But it wasn't to be, obviously, and he'd known it right off. John made for the back of Sherlock's sinewy neck, grasping it solidly till he could cradle that gorgeous skull in his palm.

"Lay down, Sherlock," he nibbled the other man's ripe bottom lip and guided him onto his back. "You're about to get very tired."

Sherlock grabbed for him again, lips seeking more, but his fingers failed to hold the clench. He frowned, starting to shake his head, only to drop into a drowsy sprawl, dazed and molasses-limbed, slipping steadily into sleep. John checked his pulse and found it slowing but regular. Reflecting again on the oddity that his life had become, he went to rinse off the fast-acting sleeping powder smeared on his lips. It wouldn't do for them both to be out cold when his ten o'clock showed up. I've got an unconscious consulting detecting on my sofa—that'll be good for business, he bristled, pointlessly bothered. Maybe I can convince Big Brother to take him home for the good of the Commonwealth? He seems like the type.

But somehow John doubted it. This was what his night was about now, work and Sherlock Holmes. He'd be lying if he said he minded. There was nothing boring about Sherlock Holmes, nothing boring about work. It was just the combination that made him second guess, not that there was much to be done about it now.

The very soul of British decorum, John sighed and then did what they do best: he got on with it.

Sherlock, for his part, merely slept.

Trigger warning: drugged shenanigans. Just a bit of snogging, not full on dub-con but somebody certainly makes an effort. Questionable medical choices, too, if you squint.