Oh, baby you're so vicious
Hey, why don't you swallow razor blades
Chapter Twenty-One:
When Sherlock got to his first class of the day, he had at least five missed calls from Mycroft. It felt like it hadn't stopped vibrating since he had left home class.
Finally he turned it off and shoved it into the bottom of his schoolbag, irritated that his brother had now succeeded in cutting off the only communication source he had to John. He had nothing to say to his brother and he couldn't imagine what Mycroft could have to say to him. An apology was unthinkable. Perhaps he had squealed to his parents about what he had done. But that was unlikely. His parents had not contacted him and seemed to have, as usual, forgotten he existed.
He took his usual seat in the front row of the maths classroom. Given the other boys' preference to sit as far from Mr. Harris's tendency to spray all within two feet in front of him with projectile spittle, it was always completely empty.
Mathematics C was one of the few classes he took where he was in a class of people almost of an intellectual level he could respect. It was a brief respite away from the football team, none of whom were in Mathematics C. Naturally.
Mr. Harris's large stomached form waddled in through the doors, holding his usual paper bag of boiled sweets in one fat fist and a stack of wrinkled paper in the other. He sat down in his chair with a groan, almost in perfect unison with that of the chair, weary from years of supporting Harris's ample weight.
"Good morning, boys," he said, staring around them in his heavy-lidded manner. "We'll just wait a few moments longer. I've heard we have a new student joining us." He looked around them quickly again, clearly making sure that the new boy hadn't slipped in with the other faces that were already only vaguely recognisable to him.
There were soft murmurs from being Sherlock at the mention of who they all knew could only be Jim Moriarty. Sherlock didn't know what he thought about the new arrival yet. Small and pale, he wasn't the sort of boy usually coveted by the football team, and yet he was already getting chummy with Marty Hester. There was something discomfiting about that.
Barely a minute later, he walked in. The chatter abruptly died and Sherlock almost felt the eyes swivelling in the direction of the door. The Maths C textbook was tucked under his arm. He seemed completely unaware of the stir he had caused.
"Ah!" Harris said, nodding pompously to him. "Jim, is it?"
"It is," Jim replied, without looking at him. Instead he combed the room briefly. His eyes settled on Sherlock for one lingering moment and then snapped almost abruptly onto Harris. "Should I sit down?"
"Yes, yes," Harris said in a blustery way. "We're glad to have a new addition to the team, aren't we, boys?"
There were dubious mumbles of agreement.
Sherlock knew even before Jim moved where he was going to sit. He kept his eyes forward, determined not to acknowledge him as he slid along his row. Jim's sleeve brushed against his as he lowered himself into the seat directly to his right.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock saw him extract a black pen from the depths of his school bag. He couldn't help looking at it a bit closer when he noticed that it was covered with hundreds of teeth marks.
"Dogs," Moriarty said suddenly, catching him staring.
Sherlock glanced at him in what he hoped was a disinterested, aloof manner. The top of the pen had been chewed horribly out of shape.
"They'll rip anything to shreds," Jim said cheerfully, sticking the pen in the corner of his mouth and giving him a broad, tight-lipped smile.
"Well, as we have a new student with us," Harris said, his swollen pink eyes fixed on Jim. "We might as well do a quick test to see where everyone is after the holidays."
There were groans from the back row. Harris's tests were notoriously difficult, seemingly designed specifically to weed out any imposters who might have wandered onto the hallowed ground of Mr. Harris's Mathematics C class.
They were all handed a slip of blank paper for their 'work' and another with the questions printed on it. Harris seemed to have an inexhaustible store of test papers in his desk. Sherlock glanced down the page. There was nothing there that would cause him much difficulty.
Sherlock dropped the paper and sat back in his chair. He disliked maths. He found it dull and pointless. He didn't understand why anyone chose to force such stupid, inane facts into their heads when the world was full of accountants and mathematicians who assumedly enjoyed thankless drudgery and would take care of any numerical demands for a fee.
"Fixed point iteration," Jim said from beside him, breaking violently into his thoughts. "How quaint. Do we get to do fractions too?"
"You have twenty minutes," Harris said, staring down at his wristwatch. "Begin!"
Sherlock could feel Moriarty's arm pressed against his on the desk. He moved it as subtly as he could a few inches closer to his side, keeping his eyes down. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jim's pen moving over the page at a lightning pace. He hunched further over his desk so he couldn't see him.
For ten minutes there was nothing but the sound of pencils scratching and the occasional outbreak of furious erasing and then at a quarter past nine, Moriarty laid down his pen.
Sherlock almost stopped in the midst of his own test. He jerked his head in Jim's direction.
"Holmes! Eyes forward!" Harris barked.
Sherlock looked quickly down at his own test, feeling certain that Jim was watching him. He couldn't work properly now. There was something about Jim's arrogant disregard that made him determined not to make a mistake under his scrutiny. The harder he tried to bully his brain into a straighter and straighter line, the more it seemed to rebel against him.
Ten minutes later, there was Harris's call of "Pencils down!"
Sherlock looked up at him, almost panting. "Pass your papers to the end of the row," Harris said, struggling out from behind his desk.
Sherlock looked at his test and then slid it behind the confused mass of numerals and scribbles now peppered across the working out paper. He knew it was childish but he didn't want Jim to see his answers.
He watched Harris mark their tests. For twenty minutes he was silent while he steadily worked his way through the pile with his favoured red biro. He looked over one of the tests at least five or six times, his brow seeming to furrow deeper every time he did. Sherlock knew it was Moriarty's.
Five minutes to the end of the lesson Harris finally looked up from his desk. "Alright, boys! Quieten down."
Sherlock laid down his pen. He hadn't even finished half of the day's exercises. He'd been too distracted watching Harris.
"Need a calculator?"
Sherlock jerked and stared at Jim. Jim looked back at him with a bland expression.
"I would just like to say, Mr. Moriarty," Harris said warmly, handing the first paper to him. Sherlock glanced at it; there wasn't a single red mark on it. "The results of this test are very impressive!"
Jim took it back with the same bland expression, though Sherlock could still see the smirk flickering in the corners of his mouth. "Thank you, sir."
Harris gave another pompous nod and walked past him to the next row. As soon as he was gone, Jim made a loud sound like a snore and crushed the test paper between his fingers. He tossed it at the waste paper basket beside Harris's desk where it landed with a soft patter.
Sherlock's paper was the last to be returned to him. There was a collage of red scribbles over it, a veritable blueprint of arrows and circles and question marks.
"Keep your working out neat, Holmes," Harris said sternly.
"But the answers were right," Sherlock said through gritted teeth.
"It's no good if you know the answer and can't show me how you got it," Harris replied sagely. "You might as well be a calculator."
Sherlock felt his cheeks flare as he stared down at the paper. "Useless rubbish," he snarled, tearing it in two.
The bell went and there was a chorus of chairs scraping on the floorboards.
"Better luck next time, Sherlock," Jim chirped, as he stood up, shoving the destroyed pen back into his bag.
"How the hell do you know my-" Sherlock began furiously, but Jim was already walking towards the door. Whistling.
Sherlock stared after him, feeling frozen in his seat. He looked back down at his ruined test, his heart pounding.
...
At lunch John found an unexpected addition to their lunch table. Jim Moriarty had an untouched ham sandwich in front of him and was rapidly texting on his phone. He didn't look up as John sat down opposite him. Ben sent him a dark look from across the table. John glanced at him and then back at Jim.
"Hi," he said, when nobody spoke.
"Hey," Billy and Ben mumbled in unison.
Jim didn't reply. He didn't even look up. John frowned. Ben was looking at him again, clearly trying to catch his eye.
Jim was texting at an alarming speed, his neat and well-filed nail darting across the numbers was almost blurred. He had an expensive looking silver watch on one wrist and was wearing the school's blazer. Something very few boys did unless they had an insatiable desire to get beaten up.
"Why the hell are you sitting with us?" Billy said in a surly tone, finally verbalizing what everyone had been thinking for the last minute.
Jim took a long time to look up. He held up a hand and pressed the 'send' button with a resolute prod. He slid it into the pocket of his blazer with a smile that revealed two very pointed canine teeth. "Marty extended his hand in friendship," he said, the smile not shifting. His eyes were intent on Billy. He seemed to have a tendency to bore into the person he was looking at. He could have drilled holes in their skulls with the way his eyes never left theirs, until something else attracted his attention and it shifted ever so rapidly to the next object.
John hadn't yet been looked at once and he didn't know whether he was sorry to fly under the radar of the boy's hard, dark eyes. They almost reminded him of Sherlock, but- No, they didn't. There was something about them that was definitely nothing like Sherlock's.
Billy finally seemed to falter under Jim's eyes and flinched away, fumbling with his sandwich. Ben was still staring at Jim with a hard expression but there was something about the way his eyes kept flickering away to the doors of the cafeteria that suggested he was wary of those eyes snapping away from Billy and onto him.
Behind Jim's head, John saw Marty enter. He stopped short on seeing them. Or maybe on seeing Jim sitting with them. Even from the distance he was at, John knew his eyes were fixed on Jim.
He seemed to notice John staring over his shoulder, because he turned in his chair. He gave Marty a little salute, his eyebrows raised. Marty stared at him motionlessly for a moment and then walked across to grab a tray.
Jim turned back to face them, looking amused. John glanced at Ben again. He didn't understand how Marty, enemy of anyone without a suntan, could know, let alone be on friendly terms with someone like Jim Moriarty with his Rolex watch and his blazer and sharp eyes.
"So... where-"
He had spoken before he had completely realised what he was doing. Jim looked at him, raising his eyebrows as though he had just noticed him at the table. He looked him up at down with one brief sweep of his eyes and John felt the dismissal like a smart. "Where did you meet Marty?" he said clumsily, fighting the urge to look away as Jim's eyes began their process of drilling into the depths of his brain.
"Where did I meet him?" Jim said, turning around to look at Marty again as he came towards them with a tray filled with sandwiches, pasta and biscuits. "Or how?"
John didn't reply. He knew what Jim meant. Jim knew what they were thinking. They were wondering just how Jim had gotten close enough to Marty to win his confidence without getting his face kicked in.
Marty sat slowly down next to him, pushing the tray in front of him. "Hey," he said, not looking at any of them.
John's mind felt like it was about to overload on the strangeness of what was happening. Marty was not Marty. There was something clipped and tense about him. His usual leering, profanity peppered chatter was noticeably absent. He stuck a fork into his pasta, still not looking up.
"Hi, Marty!" Jim said in a fluty voice, his sharp smile returning. "I was just introducing myself to your friends."
Marty seemed to have a hard time forcing himself to look at him. "Yeah they're good mates," he said.
John stared at them both, transfixed. There was something about the way Marty said it that seemed almost pointed, as though he was letting them into some strange sort of confidence between him and Moriarty.
Jim glanced at them. "Really. I am... truly, very glad to hear that, Marty. Because I would be... you know, kind of put out if you were to provide me with people I can't work with."
"Work with?" John said, bewildered.
Jim stood, adjusting his tie with a small cough. "I'll let you talk it over, shall I?"
He slipped his hands into his pocket and strolled away to the counter, humming. Ben, Billy and John turned and stared at Marty.
"What the fuck is wrong with that fucker?" Billy spat.
Marty gritted his teeth. "He's not a fucker. He's got more brain power in one cell than you have in your whole body, shit for brains."
"I ain't having that wanker eat lunch with us every day!" Billy said, his eyes narrowed into slits. "He dresses like a pouf."
Marty slammed his fist down into the table so suddenly that they all jumped. "Shut up! Either he stays or you get the fuck out. You got it, fatarse?"
Billy glared at him but said nothing.
John cleared his throat uncomfortably, hoping to defuse some of the tension. "What did he mean by 'work with', Marty?"
Marty looked at him, his cheeks still burning. "Look. I'll tell you later," he said agitatedly. "He's got... He's just got an idea for some changes for the school, alright?"
"Changes for the school?" Ben said blankly. "Have you lost your fucking mind, Hester? Did you fall on your head or something over Christmas?"
Marty glowered at him and stuck a piece of pasta in his mouth, chewing it in a defiant manner. They stared over his shoulder to where Jim was on his phone again, one hand still buried in his pocket. John glanced sideways at Ben, who gave him his I-am-offended-by-this-amount-of-faggotry look.
When he rejoined them five minutes later, nobody had spoken. They all seemed stunned into silence. Stunned that such a change had taken place in Marty that he was inviting the very people he disdained into their circle.
"Did we all have a nice little chit-chat?" Jim said, pushing his uneaten lunch to one side.
Marty was still watching Billy with narrowed eyes and didn't reply. John watched him. There was definitely something wrong here.
"Whatever," Billy tossed his half-eaten sandwich onto his plate and screeched his chair back from the table. "This is bullshit."
He got up and walked away. The rest of lunch passed in uncomfortable silence. John barely tasted whatever he was sticking in his mouth and Marty didn't seem to be eating at all. Jim on the other hand seemed completely at ease. He had cut the remainder of his sandwich into squares and placed each one carefully into his mouth. At his elbow, Marty was staring down at his food, twisting the pasta around and around his fork without ever bringing it to his mouth.
"We better get to biology," Ben said at length, sending John a meaningful look. "Come on, John."
Jim looked between them but didn't speak. Marty just nodded.
"Come on," Ben said in a low voice, his fingers pinching the shoulder of John's school jumper.
John stumbled upright, feeling himself almost yanked completely out of his chair. "Bye then," he managed to say before he was dragged away by Ben's grip on his shirt.
"What the hell is wrong with him?" Ben hissed furiously, as soon as they were out of ear shot.
"Which one of them?" John muttered.
Ben shook his head. "Marty's acting really weird, you know? There's something really fucked up about him."
"I dunno," John said. "Maybe he's just pissed about having to come back to school."
Ben dropped his shirt and turned to look at him with a dubious expression. "When Marty's pissed he swears, he punches walls, he abuses people. This isn't pissed, this is... this is just fucked up. And that Jim fag is behind it."
"He's fine," John said quickly. "You barely know him."
"You can't tell me you weren't getting a really weird vibe from that guy," Ben said stubbornly.
"Vibe?" John said, rolling his eyes and walking on. They were beginning to block up the corridor. "He seemed fine. Just... different."
"He wears a blazer," Ben said flatly.
"Rookie mistake," John replied with a dismissive shrug.
They turned the corner into the science block. John felt like the breath had been kicked out of him when he found himself walking towards Sherlock. He was behind a group of chattering year tens, his hands in his pockets and his eyes irritably fixed on the heads of the stragglers impeding his usual pace.
He didn't seem to notice John until he was almost level with him. He looked at him but no change came across his blank features. John knew he had gone extremely red, he could feel the blood rushing into his face. His body was pricking with heat. He seemed to have forgotten how to act naturally around him without going to pieces.
Mercilessly Ben was too preoccupied with Marty and Jim to notice anyone around him and they passed Sherlock without comment. John looked over his shoulder but Sherlock didn't look back.
John turned away, trying to ignore the pang in his chest. They were supposed to be ignoring each other. That was the point. Sherlock was just a lot better at it than he was.
But somehow it still stung John. After weeks of being the centre of Sherlock Holmes's world, it hurt to have to share him with a whole collection of people who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as him.
"Well, there's no fucking way that creep is getting on the football team," Ben said, folding his arms sullenly as they reached the door of biology classroom 201a.
"Does he really look like he's football material?" John said.
"They let you in, didn't they, stumpy?" Ben grinned.
"Fuck off." John elbowed him in the ribs.
John dropped his bag onto the rack, his heart sinking. Football. Well, it was bound to come up sooner or later. His friends' conversational skills were limited at the best of times. If Jim hadn't thrown a spanner in the works, lunch probably would have been one long dissection of football and the many possible outcomes of the season.
John knew that the loss was still burnt into the minds of his friends- and Principal Harvey. They hadn't spoken about it, but it would be there, niggling at the back of their minds. To John the humiliation of being bested was like a barely healed scar. The knowledge that he had been at the head of a losing team was more painful than he had imagined, the responsibility fell squarely on his shoulders.
"I dunno," he muttered, breaking the uneasy silence. "Maybe he's a better striker than he looks."
"If that nutter can kick a ball without breaking a nail or killing himself, I will give you my house," Ben mumbled, rubbing his forehead tiredly.
...
Sherlock turned his phone back on at five. For two minutes it was like his hand had gone into a series of violent spasms as his phone vibrated in an almost continuous buzz. He gritted his teeth, glaring down at the screen.
"Eighty-five missed calls," he snarled, slamming it down onto his desk with too much force. "Fucking Mycroft."
He loosened his school tie and tore his jumper over his head, depositing both over his desk chair and plunging into the dishevelled sheets on his bed. He had really wanted to relax without Mycroft's being a shithead, but no such luck. The day had been long and occasional glimpses of John seemed only to make it worse. He couldn't touch him, he couldn't talk to him and whenever he saw him John went a violent shade of magenta that made him want to push him against the nearest wall it was so reminiscent of John's post-coital flush.
He gave a vague shiver and lent a hand gently over his crotch. He stroked himself a little, knowing it was likely to worsen his arousal than ease it but he was too comfortable on the bed with his hand gently palming the faint ache between his thighs to stop.
Even as he lay there, the image of Jim Moriarty came into his mind. He lifted his hand off his crotch, scowling at the ceiling. Every time he thought he had banished the episode in maths from his mind, it crept up on him again. He shouldn't have given a fuck, but he did. Moriarty was clever. But it wasn't just that. He was cleverer than him. That was the painful part.
He threw his legs over the side of the bed with an agitated growl. He didn't need his privacy invaded by the likes of Jim Moriarty. His only moments away from his classmates were precious and he didn't want to spend them agonizing over his possible inferiority to someone he didn't even know, who seemed to have formed an early taste for victimizing him in his quiet, self-satisfied way.
There was a quiet knock at his dorm door and he almost jumped out of his skin. "What?" he snapped.
There was silence and then another quiet, brief knock. Sherlock stood with a sigh and stalked across to open it. To his surprise he found himself face to face (well face to hair) with John. He stood back and John hastily slipped inside with a nervous glance over his shoulder.
"Hi," he said, resting against the door with a wry smile.
Sherlock watched him, trying to quell the desire to begin undressing him when his uniform was rumpled like it was from being worn all day. "Good first day back?"
John shrugged, pushing himself upright and wandering across to Sherlock's unmade bed. "Fine." He hesitated, glancing back at him. "Well... Fine."
"Well?" Sherlock said, raising his eyebrows. "Well, what?"
His mind immediately went to Marty Hester. He seemed to have been in a particularly foul mood that day. He'd seen him shove a kid extremely hard into a wall for not getting out of his way sufficiently fast enough in the hallway, something he usually reserved for the football field.
"You wouldn't care," John said, falling onto the bed and leaning against the wall. "It's stupid. It's just football rubbish."
"Try me," Sherlock said drily, sitting at his desk. He glanced darkly at his mobile. It hadn't gone off again since he'd turned it back on but he knew Mycroft wasn't the sort to give up.
"Well..." John started tentatively. "There's this new guy."
"Jim Moriarty," Sherlock said coolly, his fingers tightening around the edge of the desk.
"Yeah," John said, looking sharply at him. "He's fine. I mean... There's nothing... overtly wrong with him. I just... He's-"
"Odd," Sherlock supplied.
"Yeah," John said in a deflated tone. "He's really good friends with Marty all of a sudden and when he came to sit with us at lunch he said some really weird stuff. I just don't... don't really get what's going on with them. And why is he coming here so late in the year? Where did he meet Marty?"
Sherlock twisted around to face him. "I wish I knew," he said.
They stared at each other in silence. John shrugged and slumped down onto his back.
"Maybe I'm reading too much into it," he said at length.
Sherlock stood and went over to the bed, staring down at John on his back. He propped one knee up onto the bed. "Look, maybe you shouldn't get too tangled up with Jim Moriarty," he said.
John strained to lift his head. "What?" He frowned.
Sherlock sat down next to him, battling with the overwhelming temptation to touch John's hair while he was watching him with such a serious expression. "Just be careful," Sherlock said cautiously.
John smiled, lifting up a hand and touching his mouth. "I'll be careful. Don't worry. I can take Jim Moriarty."
Sherlock caught his hand in his and pressed his lips to it, staring intently at John's face. "I missed you," he said quietly.
John tugged back his hand, sitting upright so their faces were inches apart. "We've only been apart one day," he said with a bashful grin.
Sherlock could feel his heart beginning to pump harder and harder in his chest. He leant forward and closed the space between them. He felt John's lips part in surprise against his.
"Sherlock..." John breathed, wrapping his arms around Sherlock's shoulders.
Sherlock pushed him gently down into the mattress, moving carefully on top of him and sliding a knee between John's thighs. John's body was warm and his uniform formed a soft layer of rough acrylic between them.
John broke away, gasping and blinking up at him. Sherlock threaded his fingers through John's hair. "See? I told you we'd get through it," he said softly.
John nodded, lowering his eyelids partly. "One measly day."
"It'll get easier," Sherlock said. He pressed another kiss to John's lips and then moved lower down John's jaw to the curve of his throat.
"I don't want being away from you to get easier," John mumbled, closing his eyes with a shiver as Sherlock's mouth tightened on his neck.
John's hands were still wrapped around his shoulders and John's neck was damp and hot from his kiss. John's grip on his back tightened with a breathless: "Sherlock..."
Sherlock lifted his head and pressed his lips firmly against John's, sliding a hand under him to grip his waist and pull him tighter against him. John spread his legs wider and Sherlock had to bite back a moan as his crotch was pinned unexpectedly against his. There was already a telling bump between John's legs. He slid a hand down and pressed his palm against it. John rolled against him with a strained groan, rubbing himself forcefully against Sherlock's palm.
From outside the room they heard a sudden explosion of heavy footsteps as a mob of students thundered past the door. They hesitated in the middle of their ministrations.
"Is the...?" John began.
"Yes, it's locked," Sherlock said, staring at John's flushed face with satisfaction.
"Not so daring when it's broad daylight, are you?" John teased, raising an eyebrow at him.
Sherlock silenced him with his mouth and returned to fondling John with purpose through the thin material of his school trousers. He moved his hands under John's jumper and rolled it up his torso. John raised his arms, though he sent him a dubious look as Sherlock peeled it off of him.
"You're not honestly suggesting we fuck at this time of the day, are you?" he hissed, biting his lip when Sherlock ran his hands under his untucked school shirt.
"Night will be too risky," Sherlock replied with a grunt. "It'll be too quiet. Someone will hear us."
Sherlock began to undo the buttons on John's trousers, knowing he was grazing his erection with every movement. John threw his head back. There were red welts where Sherlock's mouth had been on his throat. Something he thought best not to mention to John.
"Now?" John almost squeaked. "Oh, God. Sherlock, are you insane?"
Sherlock gave a resolute tug at John's trousers. "Ok. I'll sweeten the deal. How about you take me this time?"
John stared at him and looked, if possible, even more horrified. "W-what- I-"
Sherlock cocked his head to the side, sitting back on his heels on the bed. "Don't tell me you don't want to?"
John blushed, backing up on the bed a few inches and clamping his hands around his trousers, as though he didn't trust that Sherlock wouldn't attempt to ravish him. "I'm not... ready."
Sherlock stared at him. "You're not ready?"
"I'm not ready!" John snapped, stumbling off the bed and clumsily buttoning his trousers.
Sherlock watched him, exhaling exasperatedly. "You're happy to be sodomized-"
"It is not sodomy," John snapped, turning irritably to him. "We make love."
"I make love to you," Sherlock corrected him. "Don't you want to make love to me?"
He saw John's features visibly twitch. He raised his eyes to the ceiling with a huff. "Of course I want to. But why do you always have to demand more and more and more? I want to go slowly."
"Slowly is dull," Sherlock groaned, resting his head against the wall. "Slowly is for people with no imagination."
He glanced at John and found him watching him with a very narrow expression. "I have no imagination?" he said flatly.
"You have some when you really put your mind to it," Sherlock said, enjoying teasing John when it made him go increasingly splotchy all over his face. "You know you want to fuck me. You've been fantasizing about it for weeks. Touching yourself, putting your hand tight over your cock, imagining what it'd be like to feel me around you, feel me orgasm when you're inside of me-"
"Shut up!" John burst out, throwing his hands into his hair and agitatedly turning away. He was furiously red.
Sherlock smirked. "Or am I mistaken?"
John sent him a dirty look and stomped away to the window with his arms sullenly folded. "You get off on mind games."
"You know I'm right," Sherlock said impatiently, staring down at the erection still straining against his trousers.
"Can't you just be satisfied with the arrangement we have now?" John said, in an almost whining tone. He turned to him with his arms still folded. "At least for a while?"
He walked back across and knelt in front of Sherlock on the bed. He licked his lips to dampen them, sending almost overwhelming amounts of heat to Sherlock's crotch as he watched him. John leant forward heavily on his palms so his mouth was a bare inch from Sherlock's.
"Of course we could always wait until I'm ready," John said in a low voice. "But you know... that could take weeks, even months-"
Sherlock made a frustrated sound and dragged John forcefully onto his hips. John let out a helpless gasp as Sherlock's hands moved over his clothes, tugging impatiently at his shirt buttons. Their mouths moved so fiercely over each other that it was almost like they hadn't kissed for weeks. John's hands were tangled deeply in his hair and his thighs were tight around his.
"You're nothing but a tease," he panted between mashing his mouth ferociously against John.
John gave him a flushed, bleary grin. Sherlock tugged his shirt off; hardly conscious of what he was doing with his hands when his face was so close to John's.
He could hear everything from outside. The students in the hallway, the sound of the people in the next room, the distant sound of the TV in the common room, voices and footsteps and noise everywhere. No one in the entire school knew that he and John Watson were about to fuck, right under the very noses of the people who strove to keep them apart. It gave him a delicious and almost dizzying high to know that he was defying every single one of them on their own wretched turf.
In a flurry of blind, fevered movement he somehow managed to get John out of his trousers- or at least get them down to his knees and found himself face to face with the grey briefs he couldn't quite seem to escape. He grinned, reaching a hand down and hooking a finger inside the band. John's hazy eyes fluttered.
"My old friend," Sherlock said, eyes glinting.
John went even more furiously red and gave him a gentle shove. "Shut up and fuck me."
"My pleasure," Sherlock said, suppressing a violent shudder. John straightened up and tugged his underwear down his thighs.
Sherlock sucked in his breath at the sight of John's cock straining away from his body, the tip red and already seeping pre-cum. He slipped a hand around it, caressing it hard against his palm.
John gripped his shoulders with a taut moan. "Oh, God... Sherlock..." he said breathlessly.
Sherlock struggled off the bed, hardly able to walk with the pressure between his legs and the pins and needles from having his legs curled up on the bed. He hobbled over to the dresser and tugged the top drawer open. He'd stuffed the condoms and lube in there until he found a better hiding place. Condoms in a sock drawer screamed 'amateur' in Sherlock's opinion.
Pressing the condom into his mouth, he undressed himself as well as he could one-handed on his way back to the bed. John was still on his knees, the grey briefs wrapped around his thighs and his school shirt unbuttoned down to his navel.
Sherlock put the condom on while he watched, careful to do it as slowly as he could so John could enjoy the sight like he always did. He loved the expression on John's face while he rolled it onto himself, the barely contained expression of desperation and arousal as he took in Sherlock's length and Sherlock's fingers so close to touching himself.
He was panting and glistening all over with perspiration. His nipples were very dark and very hard. The hairs on his arms were standing on end, it was almost like every inch of him was straining for Sherlock, every inch of him was hopelessly aroused.
Sherlock rested one knee on the bed, tilting the lube bottle upside down and letting some of the gel ooze onto his fingers. John watched with widened eyes as he rubbed the gel between his fingers.
"Spread for me," he said softly.
John lay on his back and slowly parted his legs. Sherlock touched the inside of his thigh and then gently touched John's pink, puckered entrance. John shivered and gripped the covers tightly but didn't complain. Sherlock gently pressed his finger inside. John gave a sharp writhe on the bed.
"Are you alright?" Sherlock said, pushing in a second finger.
John nodded, between choked breaths. "F-fine. I'm fine," he panted.
Sherlock smiled to himself. He extracted his fingers and pulled John upright. John blinked at him dazedly, his hair was sticking up and he looked delectable. Sherlock dampened his lips and slid his hands around John's partly-clothed waist. He pulled him onto his lap. Their cocks touched and they moaned in unison. John clutched Sherlock's waist, his palms were damp and warm against Sherlock's skin.
He lowered himself slowly onto Sherlock's sex. Sherlock resisted the urge to force himself harder and rougher into him and let John go at his own pace. When he was deep inside of him, Sherlock buried his face into John's hair.
"Uh... Oh, God," John groaned into his shoulder, his breath hot against him. "F-fuck me, Sherlock. Harder."
Sherlock did as he was told. John moved rougher and harder against him with every thrust. His fingers curled into his skin, it would have hurt if Sherlock hadn't been blinded by the utter pleasure. John's limbs were wrapped around him like vines and he was moving at an almost reckless pace.
"John... Oh God, John..." Sherlock threw his head back with a moan as a surge of pressure jolted from what felt like his nipples to the aching tip of his cock.
John whimpered, his hands slipping on Sherlock's damp skin as he rocked feverishly against Sherlock's lap. They had never fucked so roughly. Sherlock felt engulfed in damp, hot friction and Sherlock's cock was throbbing with an almost painful level of arousal.
The sounds from the surrounding rooms and the corridor had become little more than white noise in the background. Sherlock knew there was little chance of their being overheard amongst the cacophony outside but he was conscious of every moan or cry that left his mouth.
"Sherlock..." John gasped. "I'm... I'm going to..."
His breathing was almost frantic. Sherlock forced him back a few inches so he could see his face.
"Come... come for me," he breathed, desperately trying to focus on John's face.
John moaned and bit his lip. He closed his eyes with an expression that almost sent Sherlock completely over the edge. It was an expression of nothing short of complete anguish. If Sherlock had seen it on the face of any other person at that moment he would have assumed it was the look of someone in extreme pain.
John cried out so loudly that a flicker of alarm went through Sherlock's lust drunken mind, but it was quickly extinguished the next moment when he felt John give a violent spasm against him as he came. John spent himself all over Sherlock's school shirt.
With a much more contained growl than John, Sherlock soon followed and thrust his hips as he orgasmed inside of him. He rode his orgasm out, feeling his seed dribble down between John's thighs.
Neither of them moved. Sherlock felt like he had been fused to John by a sticky mixture of sweat and semen. John was breathing haggardly into his shoulder, his hair gloriously dishevelled.
They could hear someone hitting a tennis ball against the wall outside of the door. It was unearthly and almost unbelievable to Sherlock that people could be so close to them and yet so oblivious to what they had just done. He almost pitied them for not having what he had.
By and by, they peeled themselves apart. Sherlock gently pulled out of John and went across to the waste paper basket to dispose of the used condom. John laid flat on his back on the covers, still only dressed in his school shirt, with his underwear around his knees.
Sherlock glanced down at his ruined shirt. "Look at the mess you've made all over my uniform."
John tilted his head towards him, his eyes still hazy. "Principal Harvey would be very unimpressed," he said hoarsely.
Sherlock fished out a clean shirt from his drawer. "Do you realise we're probably the first two boys ever to fuck in Redverse?" he said, buttoning it and snatching his underwear off the floor.
"I dunno," John said, staring at the ceiling. "There were probably some repressed Victorians doing it in this room in the 1890s. They probably haven't bought new bed stands since then."
Sherlock dug his trousers and underwear out from the confused tangle of blankets and John's body on the bed. "Don't compare us to repressed Victorians, it's depressing."
"You know we're lucky we're not one of those technologically advanced schools that have CCTV everywhere," John said drowsily. "Or we'd be in serious shit."
Sherlock knelt over him with a smirk. "But I'd say from the way you screamed like a girl it was worth it?"
John irritably opened one eye at him. "Your humility and tact astounds as always."
Sherlock's smirk widened. He lay down beside him on the bed. John was sticky and damp, but he didn't mind. "I live to give, John."
...
When John got to the common room (after taking a shower and changing his clothes) he seemed to enter into a war zone. On one side Marty, being barely held back by three or four other boys was viciously trying to throw himself at Billy, who's far more liberal form was being dragged backwards by what looked like a small mob of bodies.
There was so much noise that John could hardly hear his own voice over the screaming of about fifty others. "Hey!" he bawled. "Hey! What the fucking hell is going on!"
He stared around the onlookers and spotted Jim Moriarty leaning against the nearest wall with his arms folded, looking perfectly unmoved by the mayhem. John stared at him and then looked back at the two struggling boys. Marty was sporting a cut over his eyebrow.
"John," said a hoarse voice in his ear. A hand gripped his elbow.
"Ben," he said, looking at him in alarm. "What the hell is going on?"
He shook his head. "They went insane. I've never seen Billy so pissed off. I thought he was going to kill Marty." He gave an uncertain laugh.
John shook his head and took a step towards them. "Guys!" he shouted. "Guys, stop it!"
He stood in front of Marty, trying fruitlessly to get his attention away from Billy. Marty was struggling violently against the hands on his arms and shoulders. "You cunt!" he was screaming at Billy. "I'll fucking kill you! You hear me!"
John sighed, massaging his temple with a hand. "Marty, can you calm the fuck down for two seconds? What happened?"
He looked at the boys holding onto him. They shook their heads, still looking vaguely shell-shocked.
Marty stopped struggling so abruptly that they almost lost their balance. His eyes were little more than slits fixed on Billy, there were red welts on his arms from where hands had been gripping him.
"That fucker attacked me," he spat.
"Why?" John said.
"Because he's a filthy cocksucker!" Marty hollered at him.
John rolled his eyes and looked at Ben. Ben shrugged at him. He went back over to him. "What happened?"
Ben looked sheepish. "Well... Jim... Marty..." He looked quickly over his shoulder to where Jim was standing, still calmly watching on. "Apparently Jim's been put in Marty's room."
"But you're in Marty's room," John said blankly.
"Yeah, so I'll have to move," Ben said in a taut voice.
A cold wave went through John. "Move where?" he said numbly.
Ben looked at him. "Guess."
John ran a hand through his hair, staring at Marty in disbelief. "Sherlock's."
Ben looked quickly at him. "We're on first name terms now with the freak?"
John didn't bother correcting himself. "Why can't you just have your own room?"
"You think Harvey would go for that?" Ben said dubiously. "Marty was the one who suggested it in the first place."
John stared at him in disbelief, almost feeling ready to run at Marty himself. "Why would he do that?"
Ben shrugged and glanced over his shoulder again to where Jim was. "Who knows?"
Two minutes later Mr. Blake arrived and broke up the mob. "Hester! Pip! What is going on here? Let go of him!" he snapped, shoving his way through the crowd around Marty. "What is the meaning of this!"
John shook his head, as the crowd dispersed around Blake. He could see Billy fighting his way through the mass of people to get to Marty, cutting a swath through the sea of bodies. "Why is Billy trying to kill him?" he asked Ben, as they retreated out to the corridor.
Ben shrugged. "He's sick of Marty acting like a fucking douchebag."
They watched as the crowd of onlookers began to rush through the doors and flood the corridor. Billy came out a few minutes later, shoving people out of the way and looking like he was ready to kill someone.
Jim was unlucky enough to be in his path on his way out and was given an unceremonious thrust into the wall. One of Billy's wide hands pinned him where he was. Jim didn't struggle. He watched him without a flicker of indignation or fear.
"You better watch your back, you little fucker," he growled, his hand twisting around the material of Jim's blazer.
"Hey! Billy!" Ben shouted, trying to yank him off. "Give it a rest, will you?"
John knew better than trying to physically move Billy. He tugged Ben back by his shirt. "Just leave it, Billy. What's done is done. Ben doesn't mind. Do you, Ben?" He looked meaningfully at Ben. He knew he minded very much so, but he was hoping that he could put his hatred of Sherlock aside for at least a minute.
Ben rolled his eyes at him behind Billy's head but didn't contradict him. "Yeah. It's fine. He's not that... bad..." It seemed to take every ounce of willpower to get those words out, and even then it was said with the same expression he'd have if he had just eaten soap.
"As much as I am enjoying this little... insight into the minds of England's next welfare cheats, I wouldn't mind having my blazer back now if you don't mind," Jim said in a bored voice. "It's new."
Billy gave a low growl and seemed ready to strangle him. To John's surprise he let go of him and turned away. "Whatever."
He stomped away down the corridor, leaving Ben and John to stare at Jim in silence. Jim smoothed down his blazer, ironing out the kinks Billy's fist had left in it. He was still watching Billy as he retreated.
"He's not usually that... ah..." Ben struggled for a word.
"You just caught him on a bad day," John said lamely.
Jim looked at them with a blank expression, as though he had just noticed their presence. "I'm sure he'll warm to me," he said, with a smile that made John a little uneasy.
He straightened up from the wall. "So, ah... Sherlock Holmes."
John jerked before he could stop himself. Jim's eyes settled sharply on him. John felt his cheeks flush. The way Jim looked at him; it was like he knew what John had just been doing. Like he could see some incriminating evidence on John's clothes that he'd overlooked.
"You know him?" Jim said, raising a thin eyebrow.
"Everyone knows him," Ben said, folding his arms. "He's... famous." He gave a snort.
Jim raised a second eyebrow, still looking at John uncomfortably closely. John fidgeted, feeling heat beginning to creep up his neck. "Famous?" He seemed to be asking John the question.
John shrugged, his eyes flickering away from his. "I'm surprised Harvey didn't stick you in with him," Ben said, sounding slightly resentful of the fact.
"It is surprising, isn't it?" Jim said, straightening his tie. "Well, I'd best go and make up with Billy. Can't have any little cracks in the team, can we?"
Ben and John watched him stroll away down the corridor. "He's so weird," Ben said. "He might actually be weirder than Holmes."
John got the feeling he was only saying that to comfort himself over the fact that soon his every move would be under the scrutiny of Sherlock's grey eyes. John's heart sunk. He had forgotten about that little detail.
"Yeah," he said absently, staring after him. "I guess."
When he got back to his room, Billy was nowhere to be found but his bed was neatly made, which was strangely out of character for him. Well, as neatly made as Billy's bed was ever likely to be. There were still clothes strewn across it and a sticky, empty bottle of ginger beer lying idly next to one of the pillows.
John sat for a while in silence. He felt strange. An hour ago he and Sherlock had been having sex and now he was alone and they probably wouldn't be able to touch each other for another whole day. His stomach seemed to give a protesting ache at the thought.
He walked across to his desk and opened the top drawer. A corner of the medical school application form was sticking out from under his school books. He closed it again and turned away. He had managed to banish it from his mind for almost the entire day. Now, as soon as he was alone, it started niggling at him again. Sherlock had been conspicuously quiet on the issue of medical school when they'd been together. He didn't want to force the issue. He didn't want to frighten him off. John knew what he was doing, but he appreciated it. On one hand, it would be easier to reject the idea of medical school if he could blame it on Sherlock nagging him but on the other hand he didn't need the extra stress on top of everything else.
A voice in the back of his mind, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Sherlock's, kept asserting that he wanted it and he knew he wanted it. He was just too frightened that he'd fail in the pursuit of it.
He sunk down in his desk chair and buried his head in his hands. The worst thing about it was that the voice was right. Sherlock knew him better than he knew himself. He always did.
...
Scowling, Sherlock went through his phone inbox. Mycroft had flooded it. He had at least fifty "Call me, you idiot"s and at least twenty "Would you please answer my calls and stop being so immature?"s. Sherlock took pleasure in deleting each and every one.
The venom he felt towards his brother for what he had done was marred ever so slightly by a niggling curiosity. He couldn't imagine what his brother could have to say that was so important, so necessary that he would risk Sherlock thinking he was trying to apologise.
He dropped his phone onto the covers, rubbing a hand through his hair. He didn't know how long his brother would keep harassing him; he didn't know how long he could ignore it. Sinking into the covers, he stroked his hand down the place John had been laying just hours beforehand.
He'd heard the chaos outside but hadn't ventured out to investigate. He knew in his heart that it had had something to do with Jim Moriarty. He didn't know how but there was something about the newcomer that made him deeply uneasy. He knew that if he said this to anyone, John included, they'd just accuse him of being jealous because Jim was the first person who had ever come close to rivalling him intellectually. Maybe he was jealous. But that didn't change the feeling in his gut.
The only thing he could thank Jim for was distracting John sufficiently from the play. He hadn't mentioned it and seemed to have forgotten about it, which gave Sherlock at least until English class that day to think of an excuse for why he had kept it from him all Christmas.
He flopped down onto his back with a sigh. Everything in the dorms was very quiet. John hadn't texted him all night. Sherlock had considered texting him but he didn't want him to think he couldn't go one night without him. Also, they had to be careful. They couldn't just text each other whenever they wanted now. If they were in the wrong place at the wrong time it could mean the end of everything.
Outside there was a loud slam. It sounded like one of the doors further down the corridor had been thrown open against the wall. Sherlock sat upright. One slam was followed by a second slam, until it sounded like there was a chorus of doors being thrown open. It was soon joined by a rising crescendo of voices and footsteps.
Sherlock stared at the door. He tossed up whether to go or stay. One of the boys had probably just thrown up in his bed or something.
It wasn't until he heard Blake's whistle blasting up the hallway that he threw his legs over the side of the bed and went for the door. Outside there were at least fifty boys out of their rooms, talking excitedly amongst themselves and straining to get a better look at where the madness was concentrated. Sherlock stared down to where the seeming eye of the storm was. He could see Blake's balding crown about twenty feet away, still blowing the whistle at the top of his lungs and bawling: "Get out of the way! Stand back! Get back to your rooms this instance!"
The thickest throng of people were ringed around the room three or four doors down from his. Sherlock realised with a cold jolt that it was John's room. Hardly conscious of what he was doing, he shoved the boys nearest to him out of his way. He elbowed his way up to the crowd around number 18. The door was thrown open.
As he got nearer he could hear a terrible sound. The sound of someone screaming in what sounded like agony. His heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest. He struggled through the thickest part of the crowd.
"Oh God, John," he heard himself breathe without meaning to. Everyone was too distracted to notice him anyway.
He flung himself towards the door and felt almost weak with relief when he found John flattened against the doorframe, his face incredibly pale and damp. Sherlock came so close to touching him, he had to curl his fists to keep from acting on the temptation. John stared at him with wide eyes, hardly seeming to register who he was.
Sherlock looked past him to the bedroom. Blake was knelt down by the writhing and moaning form of Billy Pip. Sherlock's breath seemed to leave his body. Blake was on his phone.
"I need an ambulance," he was saying in a clipped voice. "A boy's been hurt. Redverse School on Thomas Street."
Sherlock stared at Billy's bed. The covers were in an untidy pile at the bottom of the bed. The mattress was positively crawling with ants. Large ants with reddish looking heads. They looked poisonous.
Billy was covered in angry looking welts; on his face, on his arms, on his legs. Sherlock could hardly look away. The sight had paralysed him.
"Someone get Principal Harvey!" Blake barked, twisting around to look at them and shoving the phone back in his shirt pocket. "You! Holmes! Go now."
Sherlock nodded and turned on his heel. He passed John and felt his arm graze against his. He would have done anything to be able to do something more but he didn't dare. He just hoped John had felt it and knew what it meant.
He forced his way back through the crowd. There seemed to be more boys than when he had first come down. But as he walked further down the corridor the mob thinned. He was near the stairs when he spotted a lone figure well removed from the bulk of the excitement.
"What are you doing?" he said, stopping short at him.
Jim smiled at him. He was still dressed in his uniform. His hair was so pristine, it didn't look like he had lain down all night. Perhaps that was why he was so pale and had such dark circles under his eyes.
"Enjoying the show," he replied, his expression was difficult to see in the poor light. "Where are you scurrying off to?"
"I have to get the principal," Sherlock said curtly, turning away.
Jim scoffed. "That senile imbecile? What's he going to do? Help with the cover up?"
Sherlock stopped short on the stairs. "What do you mean cover up?"
"A nest of fire ants don't find their way into someone's bed by accident," Jim said. He straightened up from the wall, sliding his hands into his pockets.
Sherlock watched him, narrowing his eyes. "How do you know what happened?"
A smirk crept onto Jim's face, it seemed to begin at the corners of his mouth and then spread across his entire mouth. "Very clever, Sherlock. I was beginning to be worried that everything I'd heard about you was hype."
"Hype? What are you talking about?" Sherlock snapped.
Jim's smirk widened. Sherlock tried to suppress a shiver. Jim took a step towards him, the light fell over his face and Sherlock could see his eyes. "You better run along to Principal Harvey, Sherlock. We can talk in the morning."
Sherlock watched him in silence. Jim turned on his heel and walked away down the dimly lit corridor back towards the bulk of the crowd.
End of Chapter Twenty-One