Chapter 21: Affirmation
***Author's Note: I'm so sorry this took so long! Thanksgiving week turned out to be terribly chaotic, and I'm still trying to recover.
***Since it's been so long, you may want to start by reading Chapter 20 again, since this chapter is a direct result of that build-up. That's how I would do it, anyway!
***Thank you, MildredAndBobbin, for reading over this when it had gone entirely stale and meaningless, and letting me know that it still had some sizzle. Go read her lovely new work How I Impregnated Your Mother.
John relaxes under his ministrations, perched precariously on the cushioned back of Sherlock's chair. His skin is slightly cool, exposed as it is to the air of the flat; warmer where Sherlock's hands rest. He should feel strange sitting there in nothing but his pants, but he can't find it in himself to be self-conscious now, thrumming as he is with sodium thiopental.
After many long minutes of silent grooming, John's so relaxed he begins to make small humming noises. Sherlock's touches gradually evolve from pragmatic and soothing to provocative and covetous. John melts further. Now Sherlock presses harder, digs deeper, moves closer, so that John can feel breath hot against his skin; and John shivers and moans. Sherlock leans down to kiss the back of his arched neck, drags his lips up against his hairline, around to his ear.
"I was... somewhat distressed to find the blood in the office. I'm very relieved it wasn't yours." Sherlock knows this is an understatement but is unwilling to commit to more emotional language. John's breath gusts out in a silent laugh (the understatement is flagrantly manifest), but he remains malleable under questing hands. Sherlock continues, "They shocked you? With the defibrillator?" John nods. "Is that how they got your wings?" He nods again. Sherlock runs his chin along John's jawline, returns, and licks inside the curve of John's ear. John makes a small noise and jumps slightly. "Will your heart be ok?" John gives a nod and a tiny shrug. "I want to kill her," Sherlock grates. "Both of them." He traces the black marker lines around each of his wings, and then a gentle finger feathers over the shallow scalpel incision on his ribs. John pushes his head back against Sherlock's solid shoulder.
"Was she going to try a transplant?"
"I don't think it was a serious threat," John whispers. "Not right away, anyway. Just wanted to scare me."
Sherlock is coldly furious as his hands skim down Johns wings, lifting them until the tips of the feathers leave the floor. "They will not survive in jail," he promises in a dark, clipped voice.
John flutters, and papers float off the desk. Sherlock catches under each wing and pulls, stretching the wings back. It is a luxurious and sensual movement, and John arches back against him with a groan. Sherlock shifts his grip to John's shoulders and does the same thing, fingers flexing deep in the deltoid muscles. "Sherlock," John says, asking for... something. He doesn't know. His voice is wispy and wanton. Sherlock moves around to the front of the chair and leans on a knee placed between John's feet.
"John," he answers, deep and steady and assured.
John thinks, This is what I need. The only person I thought of when death seemed imminent. When the world flashed white, and my heart actually stopped beating, this is the man I wanted to say goodbye to. When that insane bitch began drawing lines on my skin with a scalpel instead of the marker, I was only glad it wasn't Sherlock under their hands. And I knew. Knew. that he would come for me. I simply had to hold on...
Sherlock's palms drift up John's legs, from the tops of his feet and curving to hard quadriceps, long hands spanning an impossible amount of their girth. "You're thinking, John." He sounds disapproving. He pushes lightly inside his knees and inserts himself in between them, kneeling on the chair, now hip to ribs with John. He looks down at deep blue eyes and a flushed face.
"I resented you," John spills suddenly, damning the serum for his loose lips. "I didn't want to find you so fascinating and compelling. I didn't want to think you were brilliant and beautiful and... and wild. I don't know. Unbridled. I didn't want to hope that I could be the one. The one who succeeded. And caught you. I didn't want to look at... at... a man... and tingle to my fingertips with the desire to touch him. You. To... to learn your body..." John's eyes are huge and black now, and febrile patches flame on his cheeks. His hands tangle with Sherlock's, pressed together on his thighs. "To learn the sounds you make. And the way you taste."
His face is tilted up, speaking only centimeters from lushly chiseled lips, deeply shadowed philtrum. "I didn't want to be connected to you, follow you. I didn't want to be a pet or some stupid, brainless chick."
"But you are mine," Sherlock rebuts. "Not my pet, that's absurd." He drops the little bit more and rests his lips on John's, briefly static before moving. The pace is slow but growing, hands sweeping around from thighs to buttocks, pulling closer. John whimpers, and Sherlock insinuates his tongue, confident and demanding.
John yields, sucking on it lightly as Sherlock learns his teeth, his hard palate, the insides of his lips. Swelling cocks brush against each other as blood moves them, and then hips take over, pressing and sliding, chasing sensation.
"You do know my taste." Sherlock hooks his tongue behind John's front teeth as if to haul him closer. "You know my smell." He tugs John's head to one side and mouths down his neck, teeth scraping shivering trails inside the damp heat. "That we are connected is indisputable." He begins to work on John's ear, supporting him more and more as he goes pliant and fervid, making soft sounds of acquiescence and need. "I will have to design experiments to test that." Even in the middle of a sexual rush Sherlock cannot help but be Sherlock.
He points his tongue, seals his mouth against John's ear, and begins to tongue-fuck his ear canal. John gives a strangled shout and jerks violently in Sherlock's hands, grabbing at him desperately. Electricity sparks under his skin like a cloak of spiderweb, spreading in knotted polygons over his body from his ear to his straining cock. Droplets pulse from the slit there, echoing the hot tongue thrusting in his ear.
"Sherlock. Ahhh. Christ on a. Sherlock!" There is an endless writhing moment, John's head held tightly, hard fingers wrapped around his jaw and nape. He is a raw, thrumming nerve.
"You are... my partner," Sherlock murmurs, gravelly and breathless, when he draws back for air. "I need you with me."
"Yes," says John. And he's agreeing to many things, most unspoken. He rouses enough unbutton Sherlock's shirt, opening it to reveal a gleaming chest, sparse crisp hairs. He leans in to taste, sucks on the collarbone, presses his lips against a sparingly-mounded pectoral, drags thumbs across round pink nipples. They tighten and Sherlock's breath hisses out, his hips thrust forward.
Before John can challenge Sherlock's control by teasing the peaked, rosy nubs, Sherlock moves. He drops down John's body, kissing carelessly along his torso as his hands work the band of John's pants over the head of his cock. Hot breath rushes around it and John groans; his fingers spasm in their hold of Sherlock's upper arms. Sherlock looks up, wicked eyes bright green and knowing, tilted and alien and hot and breathes again. John bucks forward. "Sherlock!"
And so he lowers his head and licks. Swirls his tongue like an exploring finger, around the glans, the foreskin, the lubricated eye, the scant few centimeters he's exposed. John leans back more, and beats his wings for balance. Several small items crash to the floor, but are ignored. Sherlock hooks his thumbs under the band again, scraping against the small of John's back, and tugs down right to where his rear meets the cushion. His fingers tease there, back and forth, up and down along the meridian of John's arse, rough callouses catching on the smooth skin, and John's cock jumps forward as he shudders. "Mine," Sherlock says again. And then, "Lift."
John does, and Sherlock pulls back and stares. Then he blinks slow, licking his lips. "Very nice," he growls. He sweeps the pants over John's knees and then off, tossed to the floor.
"Sherlock. Oh, god-" Sherlock slithers down until his knees are on the floor. He is now arranged at the perfect height. He adjusts John's thighs, angling them wider. John grips the back of the chair, supporting his weight at his shoulders, and watches Sherlock with luminous, entranced eyes.
Sherlock pauses to engage in an old-fashioned eye-fuck, amping up the heat and intensity of their locked gaze while his thumbs graze the seam of John's groin. John licks his lips and presses them tightly together. His fingers whiten in their grip of the chair, his breathing becomes ragged, and sweat glazes his chest. Sherlock meanders closer: now thumbs are parting sandy-colored pubic hair, and John's cock jumps again. This time, when his tongue moistens his lips, they remain parted. It is invitingly dark, warm and wet behind them.
Sherlock's long, cool fingers drift closer, tantalizing, until they circle the base. John starts: he hadn't seen the sudden grasp coming because Sherlock has him skewered in the cone of his vision.
Floundering through layer after molten layer of verdant blue, cerulean gray, mercuric green, John gasps when Sherlock reaches the tip of his cock, thumbing the spit-damp, sensitive skin of its head. "Sh- Sherlock," John breathes. He starts to drop his eyes, he wants to see those spidering fingers in action, but Sherlock shakes his head minutely.
"No. John. Watch me."
Perforce, John does, sparking from the unearthly paleness, the unbearable heat of cat-shaped eyes. Sherlock keeps his head still, but cages John's cock and tilts it out, until the head, emerged from its collar of fragile skin, deep red and shiny with fluid, rests against carved pink lips. John's breathing nearly stops for the second time that night. Jesus he's never seen anything this beautiful, this erotic in all his life. Sherlock stills, as if to let him look his fill. He blinks. The lips part. Hot, humid air swirls around John's cock and then...
Sherlock's mouth is on him.
Fully. Deeply. Sherlock swallows him clear to the root, and the heat of his mouth burns as intensely as the heat in his eyes, and John is lost. Lost. Sherlock watches him. Observes, as he slides slowly back, tongue vibrating and cheeks shadowed and concave.
John devolves. Sherlock holds him sharply at his hips so that he cannot thrust. He controls the pace, the sizzling wet slide, and foremost, dominates John's focus with vibrant, fathomless eyes. Words have become alien and John communicates through groaning encouragement, gasping surprise, suppressed thrusting, stuttering breaths through opened mouth.
And Sherlock never breaks their gaze. Licking, sucking, the occasional drag of guarded teeth. Waves of flexion through his hands massaging John's hips even as they bind them.
Words return, if not coherence.
"Sherlock. Jesus. Fuck. Sherlock. Oh, god. Yes. Don't . More. Fuck. I'm going to. I'm going-"
And as John crescendos, Sherlock pulls away. So cruel. And John is crazily frustrated. "No. No. What?" He releases the chair back to touch himself: to finish, relieve the pulsing ache Sherlock left behind. But Sherlock surges to his feet, snatches both John's wrists, and pulls him off the chair.
"Bedroom," he commands, pulling John forward. John is hot, fractured, dizzy, and none of that even encompasses the remaining drugs in his system. He allows Sherlock to tug him back to his bedroom, as he undoes his own trousers one-handed on the way.
He pushes John back to the bed and lets his trousers drop to the floor. John lands on his back, winces as a wing is caught under him. Suddenly, there are no wings, and John looks like a normal man. Of course, he and Sherlock both know he's anything but. Sherlock mourns the wings, but doesn't argue. He has plans and extra appendages might interfere. He steps out of his pants, catching socks on the way, and there is Sherlock: long and pale and nude and beautiful, standing tall between John's knees.
"Oh, god," John breathes. "Look at you. You're too beautiful to be real." His cock is leaking, a strand of sticky fluid stretching from its tip to the muscles of his abdomen. "I want you. You're a man. And I hardly know you. And I want you so bad. Damn. Bollocks. It's the sodium thiopental. I'm sorry, I can't control my mouth."
"It's fine, John." Sherlock affects a crooked, flashing grin.
"No. Wait. I know, I should put something in it. That'll shut me up." John sits up, holds Sherlock's narrow hips tightly between his hands, tugs them towards him. "I'll start with this. I've never done it before, so you'll have to let me know if I do it wrong," he looks worriedly up at Sherlock. "But I really, really want your cock in my mouth. I don't know..."
Sherlock snickers. "Shut up, John," he says. His long fingers lightly squeeze aiming himself in John's direction, and John greedily leans forward. It is clumsy, and arrhythmic, and there is some gagging and slobbering, but Sherlock is totally high, connected to earth only by John's hot mouth and bruising fingertips. He throws back his head and holds onto John's, begins to guide him, give him rhythm, feel the hollowing of his cheeks beneath the palms of his hands. "Yes. Like that." He holds John still, and slowly thrusts in and out, hedonistically enjoying the wet drag of each pull, the pocket heat in each push, the tongue, desperate to find a proper chore. He keeps one hand wrapped around the base, to keep from choking John any more than he already is. He remembers only an hour earlier, the abusive misuse of gauze packing that cavity full. Pink deepens to red across high cheekbones, and Sherlock's lips open in gasps. Color sifts down his throat to his chest.
John watches as he is able, slips his hands around to flexing buttocks, digging in and savoring the hard handfuls, so different from a woman's softness. He tries to breathe through his nose, wiggles his tongue around. It's trapped on the bottom of Sherlock's shaft, there will be no teasing circling now, Sherlock is too buried, thrusting deeply and steadily.
"John. John. You feel so good. You have no idea. Ah. Christ, yes!" Sherlock mutters, sounding vaguely demented.
Then, Sherlock halts with a deep groan; pulls out with a pop, eyes lambent. "Too much," he mutters. "Lie back, John. Budge up." He pushes at him impatiently and imperiously. John complies, scrambling up on the bed and then lying back on a pillow. Sherlock swarms up his body, crawling over him, until their faces are level. "John." He grabs John's hands, pulls them until they're just over his head, and then leans his full weight down on his wrists. "This."
Sherlock goes straight for his ear, nudging his face to the side with his own. He attacks it, biting and pulling and blowing on wet, sensitized whorls. John whimpers and bucks, and now Sherlock's body is pressed heavy against his, giving him friction. He is hot, skin-splitting heated, tension vitalizing his nerves until he's a writhing wreck. He tugs against the hands that hold him down, but they clamp down strongly, do not yield.
Sherlock leans up again, propped crushingly on John's wrists, pushing them deep into the pillow; his hips are rolling against John, cocks stuttering against one another in erotic and marginally painful tugs of dry skin.
"Sherlock. Sherlock..." John's eyes are rolling shut, and Sherlock gives his wrists a bounce. "Eyes open, John," he rasps. "Eyes on me."
John struggles to keep his eyes open, enmired in feline burning jade. Sherlock shifts his weight to one side, fumbles in the nightstand drawer and pulls out a bottle of lube. He pumps a squirt, one-handed, into his unbandaged palm. John keeps his hands held over his head, watching the smoothly sliding muscles of Sherlock's back and side as he twists and levers. There's a constellation of small moles over his ribs, and John wants to lick them. The plaster on his side peels up at one corner, and John smooths it back down before returning his hand to where Sherlock had held it.
Sherlock sits back over John's thighs and looks over his body, predatory and possessive. He reaches for John's erection, slowly lubes it up, ruts his hips against John's thighs until their cocks are level, and Sherlock is holding them both now; slick and warm, they slide together. John watches, fascinated, the bobbing heads aligned, popping in and out of Sherlock's fist like a pornographic game of Whac-A-Mole. "Ahhh," he moans, hips pushing up gluttonously.
Sherlock comes back down, weight off-center, grabs John's wrists again with his free hand, bearing down almost cruelly. John arches towards him, head and shoulders off the bed, arms pulled taut behind him. Sherlock kisses him hard, and John is frantic, too. Tongues clash in time to the pounding of cocks in Sherlock's fist. The rutting grows more intense, John is sucking as hard as he can, and Sherlock teases, tongue in, then pulling back out. John's body is a bow, straining, reaching,
and Sherlock pushes against him; their rhythm disintegrates. Sherlock is gasping, sweat sliding down his temples, holding John's gaze like a physical thing, and Mine, Mine Mine streams from his mouth like butter: heavy, velvet, rich. John arcs back , slitted eyes still staring, and pulses, shakes, comes in Sherlock's calloused fingers, and the feeling is not dissimilar to the defibrillating paddles of earlier, but so SO good, and he says Sherlock, Fuck, God, Sherlock!
And as he reaches his own peak, Sherlock freezes, strung taut and trembling, features incandescent, mouth red and open, painted with arousal; and John feels searing spurts of come joining his own across his chest. They hold that pose for several dazzled seconds. The moment is crystalline.
Then, slowly, with tiny twists of hips, gentle come-down rolls, they weave through tremoring aftershocks until they relax and begin to soften. John twitches his bruised wrists in Sherlock's hand, and he loosens his fingers, soothes over the red marks before propping himself on his elbow. Slow, sipping kisses. Quiet murmurs. Come cooling between their bodies. Sherlock withdraws his sticky hand, fumbles again with the bedside drawer and pulls forth a handful of tissues. Perfunctorily, he swipes at them both, and tosses the tissues onto the floor. He topples to the pillow next to John. "Good," he says. "That was good. Perfect."
"God, yes," John agrees, still catching his breath. He tenses and ripples with a last shudder, reliving the orgasm. "But I thought we were going to have sex."
Sherlock snorts with genuine laughter, and rolls to face John. "Bloody hell, John! What kind of standards have you got? What do you think we just did? Is this the sodium thiopental again?" His eyes are crinkled with mirth, lines radiating away into his temples and across his cheeks, and John can't help but laugh back.
"Well. Yes. God, when is it going to wear off? You'd think this amount of physical activity would wring it out of my system. But... I thought. You know." He flutters his hand abstractly over his belly. "Penetration. I mean. We're men. Somebody has to poke something somewhere, right?"
Sherlock runs his hand down John's side, grips his hip and rolls him over so that they're face to face, bodies scarcely touching. "This is new for you John. Even given your past life," he coughs a little when he says that, given that it's rather absurd and sounds very sketchy and New Age. "You're not ready for that. We did have sex. That was sex, believe me. There are many different ways to do it." He noses down John's cheek, nips his ear, drops a kiss on his sex-softened mouth. "We've got time. We can explore. See what we like."
He falls to his back and tilts John forward until he's nestled on his chest, just as they have been sleeping every night since John hatched out of his impossible egg. John throws his arm across Sherlock's slight belly, snuggles closer. Sherlock smells of come. Of sweat, and morgue and crisp cotton, and John couldn't be happier with his new life.
***I'd like your opinion on this chapter, Dear Reader, if you don't mind contributing. Does the story feel complete? Or do you need another chapter to tie up some loose ends? I can't make up my mind. I feel that this is a good place to write "The End". However, some things (like the arrest of the killers) is more implied than specified. What do you think?
I DO have an Epilogue in the works, but that will take place a year or so down the road and doesn't involve the current mystery.