The night I intended to ask permission for a vacation day, I spent extra time in the mirror covering my half-healed scars. I knew that Miss Ginny wasn't going to make it easy for me to take a day off, and I didn't need him complicating things even further by noticing that I'd been banged up by the same men he'd hired to make neat work of John.
I hated makeup, but thankfully it was simple enough to learn how to use. Face makeup, in any case. I can't imagine willfully putting a pointy black chemically-composed thing within millimeters of my eye. I'd seen a few of my coworkers doing it, and a few times, in the beginning when they didn't know me, they even tried to get me to join the bandwagon.
When I looked fully presentable, I entered his office without knocking and stood before his desk, hands clasped respectfully behind my back. He closed the door when he didn't want to be bothered, but at this point that wouldn't have daunted me anyway. I came and went as I pleased knowing that he wouldn't do anything about it, save complain, which was usually amusing.
"Need something?" he asked, imparting a single half-second glance upward to see who I was.
"I'd like to use one of my vacation days. Sunday, September 29th. I'd leave Sunday morning and be back here on Monday in time for the evening rush."
That had his attention perked, only because the unique situation with John had him on alert. He looked up at me and droned, "What for?"
"I have no obligation to tell you."
"I'm just curious."
"Your curiosity will have to restrain itself. According to my contract I am entitled the same rights as any other employee."
He shot me a meaningful look, the corners of his lips just hinting at a smirk. "According to the law, I'm not allowed to get people killed for convenience."
I kept my outward composure despite the fact that I wanted to take the pen on his desk and jab it directly into his jugular just for mentioning that. John's life was not a joke. John's health was not a joke. I had made the mistake of not acknowledging that before, and it wasn't going to happen again, so I assessed the situation carefully. If I refused to tell Miss Ginny my plans, he would simply not allow me to take the day. If I made an issue of it, he would call his sadistic friends to enact a premature revenge.
"I'll be visiting my parents," I said, and all at once I had his full attention.
He leaned back in his chair, eyebrows raised, and by the time he opened his mouth I already knew what he was going to say. "That's surprising. I remember like yesterday the first time I met you; all the moving stories you had to tell. How eager you were to accept my offer for the very purpose of getting away from them."
I said nothing.
"Don't think that you can keep escaping to others to solve your problems, Sherlock."
"I'm not trying to escape anything. I'm having the bollocks to face the original problem so that it can be resolved properly, like I should have in the first place."
"Let me rephrase, then," he jeered. "I'm proud of you for growing up enough to realize that you screwed yourself over. But don't think that the same escape route that worked to get away from them will work on me."
He was suggesting that I might look to my parents for recourse. I masked my face with plain disgust. "Oh, God. I said I wanted to resolve the problem, not become friends with them. I think you misunderstood my request."
As his shoulders relaxed against his chair and his head fell into its detestable casual tilt, I recognized that he was reassured. He didn't like the idea, but he was confident enough of my intentions to allow it. "Alright. I'll have Dominic come in on Sunday in your place. Enjoy yourself."
"There will hardly be any enjoyment involved. Only relief," I said, then I turned on my heels and left before I had to hear a single further thing out of his mouth.
I hated buses. Always had. Perhaps it was the subconscious connotation of isolation and ridicule that my elementary school classmates had attributed to them. In this sea of people with their grim expressions and luggage and intangible spheres of personal space that invoked glares and curt remarks if infringed upon, I felt that familiar aching pang of discomfort that had become so familiar all those years ago. Even now, as adults that had much better things to focus on, whose eyes remained on their phone screens or off on a place distant from reality, the feeling was there, leftover.
But it was necessary. This bus traveled straight past my parents' house and then onward to the outskirts of Wales. This route was my best chance of executing my plan inconspicuously.
The ride, including the final taxi commute, took five hours total. John had suggested that we travel together, which would have made it a hundred times more bearable for both of us, but for obvious reasons I refused. We planned to meet in Gwynedd and stay the night at a bed and breakfast on the isle of Llanddwyn. I had never been to Wales. All I had were obscure names and the promise of pastoral beauty as seen in photographs online.
I had the cab drop me off on a rural road leading up toward Penrhyn Castle, where the entrance booth was located. I paid the fee and went on my way. The view was cold and green and empty for miles around, but when the castle came into view, the afternoon sun set it alight. Leaves dressed the sides like continents, emerald textures fading softly into the fires of autumn, a painting on a canvas of stone.
There were other tourists walking around. Not many, but enough to spoil my moment of enthrallment within seconds of its beginning. I traveled off the path and followed the perimeter of the castle until I was alone in its shadow. Then John called.
"Hello?"
"Hello."
"Are you here yet?"
"Yes, I'm standing on the east side of Penryhn."
"There's no path in that direction."
"Forget the path. It's prettier over here."
"Ah- Well, alright. I'll come find you."
When I saw him round the corner I hung up the phone. Neither of us smiled or gave greeting. For a moment I thought that something was wrong, that he expected the same Dimitri he'd met at the club and was disappointed when he noticed that my behavior had taken on a different tone. I stared up at the canvas of stone to avoid his eyes.
But the first thing he said, staring solemnly up at the same canvas, was, "Before we do anything, you should know that I don't want you putting up any sort of act today. I want to get to know the real..." And I realized that he hadn't even noticed the change in me, because he'd been too busy worrying. So I turned my head, slid my fingers along his cheek, and leaned over to kiss him, and that shut him up nicely.
"That came from me," I said as I pulled away. "The real me."
He smiled as a charming reassurance flickered in his eyes. "So the real you is forward as well?"
"Only for things that he wants. Which aren't many."
"Are you saying that you're humble and appreciative?"
"Not even close." I felt myself smirk as I grabbed his hand and headed toward the castle. "I'm saying that there aren't many things good enough to be desirable to me."
There was a single door on that side of the fort, hiding between two protruding towers and partially shrouded in vines. The rusty hinges creaked open and we stepped forth straight into a storybook. A medieval playground free for us to explore, as long as we remained respectful toward the remnants of history.
"Where are we going?" he asked, bewildered, as I moved forward and took the spiral staircase two steps at a time, still pulling him along with me.
"Don't sound so perturbed. This place was your idea." The hallway on the second floor contained two tourists looking over the railing with cameras in hand, whom I brushed past without a second thought on to the next stairway. I felt his fingers loosen their grip on mine for a second, a subconscious movement, an indication of public insecurity.
"Yes, but you're hardly allowing any chance for sightseeing."
"Old dusty rooms are boring. Wouldn't you rather stand where a Welsh soldier once stood, gun in hand, protecting his enclave?"
"The battlements? You think we'll be able to get up there?"
"Of course we'll be able to," I said, stepping over a red boundary cord to reach the third staircase in the lobby beyond. It was one of those fancy cords hung loose between two golden posts, stating the clear message, 'I can't personally stop you from breaking the rules, but my superiors sure can sue you for it.' The area must have been closed off for specifically-appointed tours.
"Dimitri, what I meant was-" he started, and I felt a momentary resistance in his arm before he followed me over, eyes searching the ceilings for cameras. "I don't think this is a good idea."
The final stairway led straight up into a tower, where the breeze rinsed us of the aromas of antiquity and welcomed us along the rampart. I let go of John's hand, and he stopped as soon as he turned his head toward the land below us.
The valley appeared endless. We were on a ship amid a sea of green, with farm fields boxed in by hedgerows and specks of cottages scattered about the waves. I suppose that was the moment he forget about our impropriety, or decided that it was worth it. He opened his mouth as if to say something but simply gazed in silent awe.
"A bit better than an old dusty room?" I asked.
He conceded. "The pictures don't do it justice."
As he was gazing out I ran my fingers along the merlons, some of which were overgrown with moss. Scenery had never deeply affected me like it did other people. It was a convenience, a pleasant background for the things that were worth paying attention to.
"You always do that," he said, and I saw that he had torn his eyes away from the view to watch me.
"What?"
"Look at ordinary things as if there's something remarkable about them."
"It's not the thing itself that's remarkable. It's the marks that have been left on it."
"What do you mean?"
I looked at him, and then pointed at the various nicks on the top of the parapet. "These marks are from swords. Over there, the stone is smoother, and there's an indent on the tower where the spearheads rested. Guards put their weapons there when they stopped to rest."
He stared at the alcove between wall and tower that I had indicated, noticing the impressions himself. "But that doesn't tell us much, does it? Only that this castle was at some point involved in war."
"Except that this castle never had a military purpose. Judging by its good condition it's probably a mock castle, modeled after a much older one that fell into ruins. The aristocratic family that commissioned it centuries ago had children who would play with swords up here. The indents angle upward because they were hit from a low height. They're also concave, not sharp cuts. The blades were blunted."
He examined the marks again, almost as if I had lied to him. "I don't believe you," he said, though the approbation was clear on his face.
"I know I'm right, so I don't care if you believe me," I replied. He looked up at me with his lips slightly parted, indignant. I restrained a smile. "Still want to get to know the real me, or do you prefer the escort?"
"There are parts I miss about him," he said simply, which surprised me.
"Which parts?"
"His willingness to make me feel special rather than a stone wall."
I stared at him, cocked my head playfully, and turned away from him to continue walking. "Stone wall's more interesting."
"I know you don't mean that." His footsteps followed mine.
"Of course I don't."
"You don't," he asserted, and I felt a tug at my sleeve. "Because stone walls can't do this." He wheeled me around against him and grabbed onto my hair as he pressed his lips against mine. Perhaps it was an illusion, but I felt the entire fort capsize beneath my feet, and I was sinking into the emerald waves without anything left to protect me except the embrace. I could breathe as long as he kept his lips against mine, inexplicably supplying oxygen, and for the first time I was entirely dependent upon someone else and I was terrified.
Afterward, my breath deserted me, and he grinned as though he'd caused it with sheer delight. He didn't see the terror in my eyes, and I was terrified to let him see it. I pulled him close and rested my cheek against his head, where he couldn't see me gasping for a substance that wasn't there. Suddenly the world was intimidating like it never had been before, and desolate anywhere John wasn't, and I felt lost. Not lost at that moment. Lost if I ever had to be without him.
"Better than a stone wall, hm?" he said, and I heard the pride in his voice.
After a long while I pulled away, and I studied his face before letting go of him completely. That momentary glance before I moved past him and proceeded along the walkway, silently, feeling lost; that was when I knew.
In the evening, when we arrived at The Oaks, we received a warm welcome from the owners. The other guests were already in their bedrooms, and it was unspoken between John and me that we would have rather forgone the introductions for the morning and gone straight to bed.
As I closed the door behind us he stepped into the center of the room, turning his back to me. "Nice place," he said, for the sake of small talk. "Bathroom, alarm clock, big window, king bed..."
I came up behind him and trailed my fingers from shoulders to lower back, tenderly, ending at the front of his trousers.
"Plenty of water bottles. And pillows. Why do they think we need so many pillows?" he continued, as if he were unfazed.
"More to grab onto," I muttered against his neck, working a palm against his groin. "More cushioning so you can pound me into the bed as hard as you wish."
His breath hitched in his throat. "In becoming the real you, you certainly haven't lost your expertise."
"No," I said, lowering my voice. "That's something I'll always have, John." I pinched the skin of his neck between my teeth and that was when he lost it, his hand gripping my pants at the thigh for support. "Why don't we lay down?"
"Yes," was all he could get out without moaning in anticipation, and by the time we hit the bed our tongues were tied. Through all my experiences, all the beds I'd ever shared, I had never felt anything like it before. Clothes came off piece by cherished piece. I was hard against his thigh and he could feel it, but neither of us were rushing, because this would be the first night we spent together by pure unadulterated choice, and tomorrow would be the first morning he'd wake up with me still beside him.
I gripped his upper arms and shifted our bodies around atop the sheets, since he'd seemed content to keep himself beneath me thus far. His lips met my neck and as the warmth of his tongue trailed down my chest I wondered why it was such a foreign sensation. Then I realized that the barrier was gone, that all the deferential self-control he'd previously exhibited had turned to pure physical adulation, since I was, without question, here by choice; here for him, and only him.
"Dimitri-"
"Sherlock," I half-gasped, trying with everything I had to maintain my own self-control, but it was leaving me so fast I couldn't keep track of it let alone correct it. The strange part was that I didn't care anymore. I wanted him to see every part of me and know every part of me and touch every part of me; and god, if he didn't touch every part of me I didn't think I would ever recover from it. "My real name. It's Sherlock Holmes."
For a moment he stared at me in puzzlement, and I tried to understand what was happening between my failure to act myself and the fear that he wouldn't take it well and the infuriating tingles his lips had left behind on my skin. Then he smiled and repeated, "Sherlock," like it was something of invaluable worth.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"It's unusual. So it fits you."
"Bad unusual?"
"No. Uncommonly brilliant and lucky and unappreciated and completely amazing unusual." His face was buried in my neck again, his fingers tangled in my hair, his teeth grazing the shell of my ear. My heart pounding.
"I'm not lucky," I protested. I didn't believe in luck, but it took too many syllables to say that for the amount of breath I had.
"I meant you're lucky in that you're the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me."
I turned my head to meet his lips, all the while thinking that if luck did in fact exist, it had boasted the absolute extent of its influence when a straight man accidently walked into a gay strip club just in time to be barely convinced to stay awhile by an escort who at that time, didn't have a heart.
"I want to know what it's like."
"What what's like?"
"How it feels for you whenever we do this. Being bottom," he said, shooting me a look that evinced his determination on the manner. It was something he'd been thinking about for a while now; during the last couple visits I'd noticed his increased interest in the procedures, his offhand questions, his subtle observations.
It didn't take me so much as two seconds to flip him beneath me again and reach for my discarded pants hanging off the edge of bed, where I'd stored a condom and a portable lubricant. "Brave of you," I remarked as I coated several fingers with the substance, and he recognized it as a sarcastic comment.
"Thus far I've enjoyed screwing you, Sherlock, but it's unfair."
We shared a smile that was appreciative of both his humor, and, not the actual use of my real name, but the intangible privilege, and the bond that had inadvertently formed when I relinquished it to him. A bond that had already existed in the seemingly paradoxical congruity of our characters, the accidental inseparability, and had only just come to light. It had snuck up on me without me realizing it, and grown, and become stronger and more dangerous with every passing day, and I felt so stupid for not noticing it until it had revealed itself along with the unconstrained utterance of Sherlock Holmes, but now that it had, it made every bit of sense.
Earlier, I'd known I was in love, and I was terrified of it. Now I understood what it meant, what it was, and I was still terrified, but not quite as much. I knew the way past the roadblock. The answer to feeling secure again was a promise of forever with John. Whatever the nature of that forever might be, I would find it and ensure it.
"Relax," I said, forefinger gently probing the surface of a virgin entrance, and as I kissed him I felt the tension ease just enough to comfortably push the digit inside. He took it well, his arms around my neck, fully focused on the kiss, until I dared a second and he bit my lip.
"Fuck, I'm sor-"
"Don't," I interrupted, kissing him again before he could redirect his focus, all the while sliding my fingers back and forth to get him used to the motion. I incorporated the third without difficulty, but parted from his lips just beforehand so his yelp of surprise was lost to the heated air between us.
"Not- Not so bad," he said, his breathing considerably quickened. I trailed my kisses to his neck, continuing the motion a dozen more times. Then I removed all three fingers and pulled a section of sheets toward his mouth.
"Bite," I instructed him. "We should try not to disturb the other guests." He complied, and the moment he did I put myself in position and made the movement all at once. His groan of pain came out muffled behind the fabric, and instead of grabbing onto me he dug his nails into the sheets at his sides, refusing any betrayal of his willingness. I immediately set my hips moving at the same pace as before.
"Shit," he muttered sharply upon unclenching his jaw from the sheets, and to balance out his discomfort I brought a hand to his cock and began to stroke. Gradually I picked up the pace on both fronts, letting myself sink deeper and deeper into unbridled ecstasy, drinking in his quiet cries as they evolved into brief moans. There was a point where I pushed harder and his chest jumped and his eyelids fluttered closed in a delight that he, perhaps, didn't understand himself, and from that point on I was pushing hard every time until his back was arched off the bed and his lips begging 'Sherlock' despite all their dignity and his hands desperately searching my back for adhesion that wasn't there.
We made a mess of the sheets, and as usual I simply threw the worst ones aside for later attention. Then I lay beside him and watched the rise and fall of his chest, the proof that here lived a man who I thought would not, could not, exist.
He didn't speak until the lights were off and both of us fully relaxed, my arm draped over his abdomen and afraid to let go. It was the best he could think of as a topic of conversation, and nothing else, because he didn't want his first night with the real me to end just yet. "I had no idea that was what you went through every time."
"It's not. You get used to it."
"Then is it all the pleasure without the pain?"
"Not quite."
"I love you."
For a moment I forgot to breathe. I forgot everything. Just as I had got my mind working again and decided that there was no harm in saying it back because it was the truth, he spoke again, without disappointment or even discouragement, not ever having expected a response at all. He was too good for that.
"I'm going to med school. I'm going to make a living and then I'm going to get you out of that dump." He paused. "You don't belong there. You never did."
Then I remembered everything. Miss Ginny. The thugs. The threats. The restrictions.
He turned his head toward me and asked, "If I do that, will you come with me?"
"I-" Nothing came. I searched and thought and planned, and nothing came. I couldn't lie to him anymore. But more than that, for his own safety, for god's sake, I couldn't tell him the truth. "John, I..."
He shifted onto his side and wrapped his arms around me, asking nothing further. "It's alright. We'll talk about that when we get to it." He pressed his lips against my forehead, a goodnight kiss. "Just...know that I'm here for you, and whether I'm to be a part of it or not, someday you're going to get the best life I can possibly give you."
It amazed me how determined he was, without knowing all the variables, without even knowing if I loved him or not. He had decided upon a conclusion before an experiment.
It was my job to conduct the experiment. I knew the variables. I knew that I loved him. At the very least, I owed him a correct hypothesis, and to achieve that the experiment had to be just right.
One incorrect step could result in death.