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“First moon – was the hardest –” the young soldier bleeding beneath John Watson’s hands coughs out. His blood is bright with oxygen, misting from his lungs. It’s been an eternity of chest compression, but he can tell the young man doesn’t want to give up, wants to say, ‘please don’t let me go,’ but his mouth is stumbling, babbling on about moons and blood and –
Pock!
John knows what that sound means, a distant, dusty thunderclap, a bullet coughed up by a barrel, but he doesn’t understand why it seems so important, and he doesn’t understand why he’s collapsed against the blood drenched form beneath him.
So much happens so quickly – without his hands and weight holding in the soldier’s blood, pushing it through the chambers of a faltering heart, the man (boy) beneath him starts to thrash, fear cutting through the fugue of almost death.
John is gasping, and air seems to have stopped working, no longer sating his lungs.
“I – let me – I’m sorry –” The body beneath John writhes, skin suddenly patchy with fur, face suddenly sharp with teeth, and those teeth bury themselves in John’s left shoulder, where his body can’t seem to decide whether to feel mind-consuming pain or nothing at all.
It’s possible that John screams, that he tries to jerk away, but the edges of his vision creep blackly towards one another, and for a moment John could swear he can hear the soft sizzle of blood soaking into the ground beneath them, a ripe-copper-sweet sound which makes no sense –
The black edges of the world meet. John slips away behind them.
The kid makes it off the battlefield (kept alive by the pressure of John’s bleeding not-quite-corpse) but dies three weeks later when another stray bullet finds him.
John, in the middle of fighting the loup fever as his body rejects itself, doesn’t find out until later, but when he does, he wonders if he’ll be that lucky.
He isn’t.
John receives news of his discharge after his physiotherapy, which is fortunate, because endorphins take the edge off of the curdling despair that threatens to sour his blood and pull him apart cell by cell.
Non-receptive to stabilization, the official letter states. Unfit for service mentally and physically. That’ll be his transitional therapist’s doing, the ‘mental’ part, anyhow – but how could John have hoped for any better? Without the leveling effect of the artificial metabolic suppressors, how is he supposed to handle this sudden and drastic change in his life?
To be bitten so late in life, and then to survive the fever (“Only a 7% chance of that for men aged 20 – 28, and look at you!” his lead specialist had said, almost crowed, and John had felt sick, had thrown up until his body shook, and had felt the whole time as if he was simply adding chapters to some book his doctor was excitedly planning), and now to be discharged from the one thing that had been a constant in John’s life, the one place where people like this, like the soldier who’d bitten him, like John now, could find a way to fit in –
John doesn’t howl or rage, he doesn’t need to be sedated (or tranq’d), and they don’t have to put him in a calm box. He’d have welcomed any of those things, really, something mindless to lose himself in, something with stronger claws and sharper teeth to tear himself apart.
But no – it’s not that time of the month, and they have him on blockers while he heals, and John decides to lose himself in plans instead.
Step One: procure an unregistered firearm.
The first moon is the hardest – or so John hears.
He begs to differ, but that could be because he doesn’t remember his first time, half-dead and crazed with blood loss and pain. From what he hears it wasn’t even a full shift, just fur and fangs and swiping claws, and there’d been talk – worried talk, if accounting for the tone – about whether or not John could even make the switch back to human.
Please god, let me live, John had thought as he slipped away; meanwhile, his men had prayed for a swift death on his behalf. Anything better than to be rougarou – to be stuck between shapes forever.
But John doesn’t remember any of that. Instead, his first full shift happens after the fever breaks. They put him in a calm box, sedate him, and take away his IV full of blockers, and something like a tide turns inside him, erodes his old, familiar shape and carves it anew.
Drugged as he is, John can only lie on his side, panting shallow huffs against the soft foam floor, whining as he trips from dreams to waking to dreams, paws twitching as his brain tries to form new neural pathways with very little information to go on. (Later the doctors will say the limp is psychosomatic, but John will blame it on that doped shift, on not being able to move, feel his weight, feel himself – not that he’d wanted to experience this new turn in his life, but he could have done without the limp, thank you very much). The shift back happens while John sleeps, and then he’s naked and shivering and vomiting, the drug dosages (upped while he was in wolf form) now violently wrong for his body.
Congratulations, they say. A full shift – loup garou. As if it is something to be proud of.
We don’t call it that, he says. It’s ‘werewolf’ back home.
That implies that you are two things, his nurse tells him later – Simone, her words accented Parisienne, her smile caring, her hands professional. You are not. No one can be two things. You are different now, but you are still one thing.
John knows what ‘loup’ means, so he looks up ‘garou’ and discovers after some work that it can mean ‘irrational fear.’ He snorts when he finds the definition, wondering what could possibly be irrational about his fear, or anybody else’s for that matter, when confronted with what he now is.
London is new again to John’s nose – familiarity and nostalgia layered over with a fresh sharpness, grainy photos exposed under a magnifying glass. He hates how it rewrites his memories – warm bread, cheap beer, smeared lipstick – and replaces them with their chemical compounds, stark layers of information.
The first moon in a new place is always hardest – wondering how the wolf will read the lay of land and scent, if it will feel trapped or exposed. Eyeing London’s narrow streets and cloud-close sky, John can hazard a guess. The smell of the city is thick in the back of his throat, the rasp of pollution and people ever-present.
It’ll be days yet before his nose acclimatizes, settles down and stops bombarding John with new information, but at least his bedsit is small, which makes it ideal for re-marking; it takes barely half a day before John can no longer smell the previous occupant and their cat and the types of food they both ate and the type of litter the cat used and –
John keeps breathing, but it’s hard, because his bedsit is small, which makes it less ideal for feeling comfortable. His body wants wide spaces, his ears want wind-brushed quiet, his skin wants hard-packed earth and soft grass. The walls are close when John’s eyes are open and closer still when he tries to sleep, crowding in like a calm box, the sounds of all the other occupants pressing in, the city looming dense as an unwelcome forest in his mind’s eye.
John isn’t sleeping well. Isn’t adjusting at all.
He shakes awake from nightmares, the half-remembered feeling of teeth in his shoulder, tearing, ending. Early mornings are spent breathing – and on two memorable occasions, throwing up from stress – and waiting. For sleep, for daylight, for something.
John takes himself on walks – ‘walkies’ when he’s feeling bitter, when self-loathing coats the back of his throat in sour metallics.
He spends his days waiting for night, his nights waiting for the night, and when it comes, he rocks and moans and growls and howls and rips his place to shreds.
John wakes up shivering – with cold, with fatigue, with fear, because the blockers aren’t working right, aren’t making him docile, aren’t keeping him stable. This shouldn’t be happening. It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t.
John is 34, bitten, unemployable.
John is at a loss for what to do with himself.
John waits out his change under a black sky, stirs his limbs listlessly. Other werewolves at least have the familiar light of the moon for company as they find new ways through a world that doesn’t quite accommodate them, that dopes them down to make them fit.
John is 1.5 meters at the shoulder, dense with muscle and heavy bone. His coat is a thick tan with an ashen overcoat, a hardy armour. His fangs are sharp, his claws are long, his senses cuttingly quick.
The dark holds no fear for John, not in this body made to last, made to survive, but walking through the moonless world feels like walking through a nightmare. John knows this night will end – but he also knows it will be part of him for the rest of his life, and waking to that knowledge day after day is possibly the worst part of this ordeal.
That and the loneliness.
“You’ll let me see it, of course.”
It takes John no time at all to realize what is being asked, to stiffen with indignation, but he asks, “See what?” nonetheless.
The look those grey-green eyes level at him says please don’t actually be that stupid far more eloquently than should be possible. “You are loup garou, recently infected under traumatic circumstances and subsequently discharged from military service, most likely from a post in Afghanistan or Iraq. Your wounds would have healed with the passing of the initial fever, so whatever lingering effects you are suffering are likely psychosomatic – and severe enough to bar you from the one occupation where being a ruthless hunter is seen as a qualification rather than a detriment.” Those eyes flick back up from their cataloguing of John’s limbs and body to meet his eyes. “When I say you’ll let me see it, I am then, of course, referring to your wolf form.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Potential flatmates should know the worst about one another.”
John flexes his hand, checking the lay and feel of his fingers, their nails even and blunt. Thank god for blockers. He bites back a snort, swallows his first reply and says instead: “Well, it seems you already know – and just because you know doesn’t mean you get to see.”
Verdigris eyes are sharp on John’s – that gaze is at once hot and cold, like a laser, a cutting light. The man, pale and smelling of leather and wool and formaldehyde, uses those eyes to cut into John like scalpels, exposes his findings with words like vivisection pins. John stumbles through the rest of the exchange, feeling his hackles rise, but then, somehow, those unrelenting eyes soften, sparking with just a twitch of good humour as the man says, “The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B, Baker Street.”
He winks and is gone.
An honest-to-goddamn wink.
John is at a loss for words.
Simone never accounted for Sherlock Holmes, John decides after meeting the man who is at once both a brilliant, perceptive genius and a blind, ignorant prat.
Within short order of that meeting, John visits a crime scene, gets abducted, and texts a murderer. John runs through London, chasing after the flapping coattails of one consulting detective, feeling his blood thrum through his veins as his heart pounds and shakes with delight. He runs, leaves behind the cane and runs, leaves behind a cage and runs, leaves behind a shell. In the entryway of the(ir?) flat, they laugh, and it’s the first time John has laughed since the bite. The strangeness of it nearly sets him coughing, but it feels too good to stop.
John never planned to use the Browning to shoot a cabbie to save his mad flatmate, but there it is. And there it should end – and yet, even though Sherlock knows John’s bitten and unstable and a bloody murderer now as well, he doesn’t turn him in. Lestrade is standing right there, and it’s not like John wants to be put down, but he is guilty (unregistered Browning tucked in the back of his jeans, the constant back up plan) and Sherlock must see it on him like moonfur, and yet –
John takes Sherlock up on the offer of dinner, then follows him home.
Just like that, suddenly the spaces between moons are full again, like they haven’t been since Afghanistan. The days after that first night find a sort of careful rhythm. They’re both still feeling each other out, getting a sense of one another. John knows Sherlock has questions, but he doesn’t feel particularly inclined to offer answers. Not yet.
For his part, John finally feels like London makes sense again. Despite all the horrible scents in the city and all the horrible things in the flat’s kitchen, 221B feels – and smells – like home.
Which is strange, because until recently, John hadn’t been able to stand being in other people’s homes. Being surrounded by an endless stream of other people’s scent trails derailed his thoughts and swirled confusingly in his nose and lungs; their clearly claimed and lived-in territories left John feeling like an intruder: constantly on edge, without any real safe ground to retreat to.
Now, however, in this tip of a flat, John suddenly finds he does have a space to claim, and more importantly, a space he wants to claim. He can even sleep in his new room, the distant sounds of Sherlock never slowing down a strangely calming backdrop to his dozing and dreaming. Much to his surprise (and chagrin) he actually falls asleep in the chair that has somehow become his one afternoon, waking to the sensation of being watched, although when he opens his eyes, Sherlock is engrossed in something his microscope is showing him.
Which brings John to the subject he tries not to think about too much: Sherlock – or rather, Sherlock’s scent.
It should be intolerable. It isn’t.
Sherlock smells of the life he leads, like all people do (although his eau de formaldehyde et cadavers is not something most people share), but underneath the layers the Work presses into his skin, Sherlock smells…well – not offensive, but not forgettable. Prominent, yet not obtrusive. Just…Sherlock’s scent is noticeable, but for the first time a scent so insistent doesn’t bother John.
It still works its way into his nose, throat, lungs, blood it seems, pressing into and through his skin, a kind of invasive osmosis. But John doesn’t care, which is worrying. Or it would be, if it didn’t seem so completely normal, as if John had been waiting his whole life to breathe air saturated with Sherlock and his experiments.
In fact, John finds himself worrying that his scent will overwrite Sherlock’s in the flat, the wolf musk settling in and coating everything, the way it had to eradicate all other traces in his previous lodgings…but no, apparently not this time.
Even as his chair becomes his, as his bed becomes his own, the flat becomes theirs. Sherlock’s essence (chemicals and cleansers and a male, human musk uniquely his own) still hangs in the flat, in the same way that his coat hangs on the hook next to John’s. His scent lingers and layers and John doesn’t have to remind himself to breathe anymore.
Of course, there’s no way John can keep Sherlock from seeing evidence of his condition entirely. For one thing, not changing at least once a month can lead to cramping – although more is better; the muscles need to be stretched, kept limber, the glands need to shift and contract to keep functioning properly. John has seen the effects of change-avoidance, and they are not pleasant. Pain is the best case scenario, rougarou syndrome the worst.
Blockers help suppress the lesser urges to shift, but on days closer to his moon, John can feel his wolf self slink closer to the surface all the same, turning him snappish or lazy, agitated or lethargic.
There are days he might nap and wake to ripped sheets, or he might have to clip his nails twice in one day – and after he catches Sherlock pilfering those clippings from the waste basket, he takes to flushing them (after a breathtaking row with Sherlock about boundaries, samples, and the word ‘no’).
There are days when it’s all John can do not to curl up in his chair and give in to the shift urge, skin twitching with the want, the need to push out dense under coat and longer overcoat. His spine crawls with the urge to stretch into a tail.
The blockers are supposed to make it easier, and in part they do, because they prevent unnecessary changes – but they also make it that much harder to scratch that indefinable itch to be another shape.
Sometimes John catches himself hesitating to swallow the bitter tablets down.
The more John relaxes into his new life, the more aware he becomes of his condition, the wolf within him uncurling, sitting up, ears pricking forward, thinking mine, and John knows.
It’s time.
It’s about three weeks since John moved into 221b when he comes downstairs with his Browning in hand. Sherlock’s eyes tick over him and the gun in his hand.
“Not very useful as contingency plans go,” he drawls, but there’s interest in his eyes.
John shakes his head. Trust Sherlock to get it in one go.
“Why now?” Sherlock asks, looking the gun over when John deposits it in his hands. His careless handling speaks of familiarity – as well as brash idiocy. John wouldn’t trust him with it on a slow afternoon, but what he has in mind is quite different. “The full moon was almost two weeks ago.”
“True,” John says, with a huff, taking the gun back. “But the full moon only matters if you were bitten under it – and I wasn’t.” A sky awash in stars and only stars hangs behind John’s eyes as he says, “My moon is approaching, however, so I just wanted you to be prepared. If something goes wrong with my change – no, you can’t watch – or with my walk about – no, you can’t come – then you need to know where this is.
“First moons in new places can be…tricky,” John explains. “There could be complications – and no,” he adds as Sherlock’s eyes light up. He makes his voice as stern as possible: “No trying to take samples.”
John is accustomed to all sorts of living arrangements. He’s lived in close quarters with flatmates in Uni, even closer quarters with the men and women of his troop, and he’s even done a month in near solitary (his second shift in the clinic had not gone well).
Still, John feels nothing could have prepared him for the absolute clusterfuck of extremes that living with Sherlock Holmes exposes him to: some days John is almost unbearably crowded by Sherlock’s presence and demands and curiosity, other days he barely even sees the man, his fresh scent trails the only indicator that the man is still alive and about. The detective blows hot and cold, is at once both ridiculously easy to please and impossible to satisfy. His expectations are staggeringly high, but a simple compliment will catch him completely off guard, tinting his cheekbones with the faintest rose of pleasure.
Honestly, John doesn’t understand how and why he has not yet killed the man who seems to have made it his mission in life to push all of John’s buttons, flustering him with the laser focus of undivided attention one moment and then simply ignoring him the next, cutting deep and chill into John’s confused hurt.
And a confused hurt it is, not just because John doesn’t know where he stands with this man who will pester him ceaselessly for data about being loup garou and then act as if he couldn’t care less whether John is around or not, but because John doesn’t know why that hurts.
There’s nothing wrong with John’s eyes. Shapely calves, fitted skirts, kitten heels – all have the expected effect, a magnetizing sort of attraction. His ears, too, are perfectly capable of hearing the lilt and pitch of laughter, of coquettish teasing.
His nose, by all rights, should be won over by the soft floral perfume, the clean, healthy smell of skin, the youthful fertility on display in pheromones – but no. Something sits off kilter inside John, it seems, because there is absolutely no reason why he should feel so unaffected by the beautiful women around him.
John brings Lily home because they’d had two pleasant enough drinks-and-dinner dates, because she’s lovely and sweet, because she’s clever and funny. He then spends the next ninety minutes wondering how he can get rid of her without being an utter dick, because her smell sits so wrongly inside the flat, discordant to the extreme, enough to set John’s teeth and hackles and everything on edge.
Sherlock solves John’s problem by, of course, being an utter dick, and for once John actually wants to thank him for chasing off a date – although he does wish that Sherlock hadn’t felt the need to be so thorough in his verbal evisceration of the woman.
It takes a good twenty minutes for Lily’s scent to rinse from the air, and when it finally does, John feels a calmness slide into him, golden honey-like, as if the world shakes itself a bit and settles back into place.
John wakes to the world’s worst smell. The flat is coated in it – some sort of sharp, oily, wrong smell. Peppermint and cloves, he thinks, and then his nose and a substantial portion of his brain shut down in self-preservation –
He starts thinking clearly again once he’s outside, only realizing how little he’s wearing (pajamas, if that) once the smell clears from his nasal cavity. He takes deep gulps of air, pinches his nose closed, and goes back in, opens all the windows, gags, shouts at Sherlock a bit, and somehow doesn’t vomit, although it’s a close thing.
John doesn’t know what he’s being punished for by the universe, and Sherlock complains that these kinds of test would not be necessary if he had access to fresher material. John can taste bile as he roars, “No samples!” and stomps out, slightly more dressed and with a million better, less smelly places to be.
He comes home the next day, and the flat is freezing but aired out, and Sherlock is there, obviously uncomfortably cold, the experiment nowhere in sight (or smell).
John doesn’t say anything, but he puts the kettle on and closes all the windows. When the kettle clicks off and he opens the cupboard, he discovers a new packet of the biscuits he’s grown fond of tucked in beside their mugs.
Sherlock’s fingers wrap around the tea John hands him, and neither of them says anything, but John has some biscuits with his tea, and a fragile peace trickles into the room around them.
“The blockers stop you changing as frequently, correct?”
“Yes. Sort of. They make it more difficult, at any rate.”
“Why do that? Why limit your changing? You said before the more frequently you change, the easier it gets, the less it hurts.”
“Not everyone wants to come home to a monster, Sherlock.”
“Lucky for you then, that I am not ‘everyone.’ If you are abstaining from more frequent changes on my behalf, please don’t. Aside from finding the condition itself fascinating, I find the idea of your discomfort and self-censure unappealing. This is your home as much as it is mine, you should feel at ease here.”
“And if this happens to give you access to my other form, so much the better, right?” John asks, perhaps a bit more sharply than he’d meant to – but who can blame him for being defensive about this? Sherlock’s proven time and time again that he has a limited grasp of boundaries and no sense of self-preservation. There’s no telling the trouble he’d get himself into if John let the wolf out here at the flat – which is why John has made sure to spend the majority of each of his changes away from 221B, exploring the deeper darks of London’s back ways and forgotten shadows, only returning when he could feel the shape slipping from his hold, paws aching to unfold into fingers once more.
Sherlock glares at John. “I am more than willing to afford you a measure of privacy in this matter.”
John’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really?” Sherlock gives a nod, a determined set to his mouth. God help him, but John can almost believe it. He doesn’t quite understand why, though – or for that matter why Sherlock would make this offer, so different from his first demands concerning John’s wolf form. And yet…
John’s thoughts catch on the hesitation before he swallows the blockers, the creak of complaint when his skeleton makes its monthly alterations. After a moment, John looks away, confusion tightening his throat. “I – I’ll consider it.”
John goes off the blockers – just to try it.
Three days later he feels the beginning of a shift present itself as he cooks breakfast. He rushes to his room, shakes as the hair on his forearms lengthens, as the nails of his fingers thicken, darken, sharpen. His insides begin to rearrange themselves.
He doesn’t get much further than that, stuck in a mostly human shell while something vicious rattles inside him, desperate to be free. He takes a deep breath, intending to push through the last traces of the blockers in his system, to force the change all the way –
Downstairs, he hears Sherlock come home from the morgue. Even at this distance, he can hear the man’s breathing, his heart rate a rhythmic murmur. The whole flat smells of him, of them, and it’s a bit much as John hangs precariously between shapes, scared to let go and fall away from himself.
What if he hurts someone? What if he hurts Sherlock?
What if Sherlock sees him as he is, wild, grotesque, beastly, and only ever sees that when he looks at John thereafter? It wouldn’t be the first time his wolf form changed someone’s opinion of John, as if seeing it somehow cemented some monstrous impression of him in their minds.
What if that happens with Sherlock?
John shakes through a silent storm of panic and pain, his body tangled between two physiologies. He finally manages to focus his attention outside his body, listening to Sherlock mutter and move through the kitchen, the distant tinkle of glassware as he sets an experiment in motion, the rustle of cloth as he changes, the soft sound of the couch cushions receiving the man’s weight.
After a minute, John’s ears can pick out the even deep breaths of rest – could be sleep, could be that Sherlock is in his Mind Palace.
His breathing slows to match, and John can feel himself unwind, spool back into human form, and it feels like waking from a nightmare. He lies there, the occasional tremor wracking his frame, and waits for the last of the urge to pass.
John goes back on the blockers that night.
It’s a good thing John’s back on the blockers when Jaryn Wittaker lunges at Sherlock during an interrogation one week later, because for a moment John sees red, smells red, would very much like to taste red. As it is, his arms are slightly hairier and his nails thicker and darker when he grabs the man and heaves him away from Sherlock. John’s voice is a hair away from a snarl as he subdues Wittaker.
Later Lestrade asks why the suspect is so quiet and pale, and Sherlock’s smirk is the only answer the DI gets.
What they have is comfortable.
It’s close, but there are moments of space, enough that neither seems to smother the other (over much, anyway). It’s easy, too, something John hadn’t expected, and when he finally noticed, he spent a lot of time feeling uneasy about how easy it was to live with Sherlock.
They bicker at least once a day, but it is, by now, a sort of playful thing, like a bit of friendly sparring between two soldiers. John nags at Sherlock to eat or sleep or stop making a racket, complains about the more gruesome experiments. Sherlock runs his mouth and teases John about his blog and is incessantly curious about morbid, horrible things, only one of which is John’s condition.
For his part, Sherlock seems to have forgiven John for never speaking about it, for hiding all traces as thoroughly as he can – and John finds he’s better able to tolerate the moments when it seems Sherlock can’t stop himself from staring, trying to figure John and his alternate form out.
And if this easiness between them feels somehow unfinished, or like holding a deep breath far too long, well, John is resigned to it. He likes Sherlock, likes living with him, occasionally helping him with the Work, just being around him, but John also knows he can’t expect to feel whole like he did before the bite. It’s just something he’s going to have to accept.
“Cause of death, John?” Sherlock quirks his eyebrow up at John from where he’s crouched by the body – what remains of it at least.
John drops to a crouch beside the detective, close enough to murmur, “Poison,” confirming Sherlock’s claims. “Smells metallic,” he adds, feeling a wash of warmth at being useful, for once. “Mercury possibly? And then mangled to make it look like an animal attack.”
Sherlock’s smile lands on John like moonshine – or in his case, starshine – and he has no more choice in how his breath falters than he does in how his lips shift into a mirroring smile. He feels bashful and boastful, silly and brilliant, and –
Sherlock is gone in the next moment – to berate Anderson or inform Lestrade – and John can breathe again, can wipe the stupid grin from his face. He must not get all of it, though, because a little remnant crops up from time to time throughout the day.
It is, of course, a case that leads events to a head – events being the threatening messages to stay away from an organ trafficking ring’s affairs as well as John’s reticence regarding his condition.
They’re walking home from yet another related crime scene, John just slightly behind Sherlock in the alley, when it happens:
A lead pipe smashes against John’s skull before bouncing off, ringing with the impact –
John hits the ground with a grunt. Hears Sherlock’s hitch of breath, wants to say ‘Run, you git!’ but those steps grow louder instead, coming back for him. If his tail were out, it would wag even as he growled in frustration at his sudden blindness. The blow landed on his occipital region – hence no vision, hence the red glow of pain.
Fractured skull. Ugh, messy business.
Should be fatal – would be – but ah... Perks. Already the healing feels like a pleasant sort of squirming, warm pins-and-needles in his neck and nape and skull.
‘Run!’ John wants to say, and familiar, gloved hands have barely a moment to brush his scalp, softly, searchingly, before that touch is snatched away.
John struggles to remain present, only distantly aware of voices, tense, upset. Of course the loudest, most antagonizing of the lot is Sherlock’s. John is equal parts fond and exasperated at that – they’ve talked about proper manners where armed thugs are concerned, and well – old dogs, new tricks, John supposes. He feels like laughing at that, but can’t at the moment, which is a very odd feeling indeed.
John is aware he should be more scared – he can feel he’s lost a lot of blood, can feel his pulse flutter high and fast. But instead of fear, a sort of calm determination creeps over John, a heady, cool fury. The sounds of a struggle feed the inferno just catching hold inside him.
Something is holding him back, holding that blaze in check, but he hears a certain baritone voice gasp, and it sounds wrong, and whatever was restraining him is no longer important, no longer relevant.
A full body flush sets John’s nerve-endings aglow, heat washing through him in sizzling waves. The metabolic rate of a body in shift is always off the charts, but this feels apocalyptic in scale. It could be the anger, it could be the injury, it could be the chemical interference, but none of that matters as much as achieving the end result:
He feels his skull fuse back into place even as his spine lengthens, his organs squirming into a new arrangement, his tendons stretching. Bones compress, joints creak, and his hands grow far more dangerous, his mouth that much more deadly. His breath comes in soft pants, his heartbeat stutters and then settles into its new cadence, and his hackles lift. John rises to his feet, crouched low in the shadows, slinking back and around even before his eyesight comes on line again, using his nose to paint the world in vivid detail –
And then he can see again, and as always, it’s a bit strange. Eyesight is…difficult to explain. It’s not that John cannot perceive colour in wolf form – it’s just that colour isn’t important. Everything that isn’t blood feels grey, regardless of hue. Everything that isn’t prey is bland. Everything that isn’t the man currently attacking his Sherlock is discarded.
His Sherlock – the thought would have caused him pause had he been on two feet, but currently that idea sits neatly, rightly, inside of him. What is wrong right now is the interloper with his grasping hands around Sherlock’s neck.
The rumble in John’s chest becomes the growl in his throat, a slow, vicious staccato malice voiced as he stalks forward, stiff-legged with fury.
Both men freeze mid-struggle – Sherlock is pinned to the wall, throat clasped in the thug’s massive hands, his efforts at freeing himself slowly weakening. The thug turns slowly to peer into the darkness.
“Who’s there?” he whispers, hoarse. For all his muscle mass and height, fear slides off him like sheets of ice, a sharp, tingling smell. John wants to swallow great lungfuls of that smell, wash it down with the rust of the thug’s blood. He wants those quiet, tight breaths shattered with screams and howls.
He wants those hands off Sherlock.
Sherlock gasps and wheezes as John rips the thug away. It’s dark – most eyes would have trouble seeing where John thrashes the thug side to side with powerful swipes of his neck. He’s careful not to bite, not to break the skin with his teeth, gripping the man by his foul-smelling leather jacket instead. He lets go and the thug hits the alley wall furthest from Sherlock with the wet crunch of a harsh impact.
John can smell the death the moment it happens, and for a moment it is a fresh, pungent, sweet bruise upon the tender night air. He did that, made that, and it smells right. He has made this corner of the universe better. John pulls it into his lungs with great, swirling gusts of city air.
Sherlock’s smell, so close and laced with stress and adrenaline, hits John hard, a flood of sensation that starts as smell and becomes taste, ends up feeling like a caress. Most notable in its absence is fear – there’s nothing coming from Sherlock to resonate with the lingering traces of their attacker’s terror.
John walks over, cautious, his limbs stiff with adrenaline and residual anger. Right now everything is crystal clear and John feels in control, no longer in the grip of a thrashing anger, and he doesn’t want to alarm Sherlock, but he also can’t back away, not when Sherlock’s breathing sounds so pained and raw.
Sherlock sits against the wall, where he collapsed during John’s attack. He breathes and breathes and breathes and doesn’t take his eyes off John, not even when his sour wolf breath washes over his face, not even when John gives in and noses into Sherlock’s neck and hair, smelling for any hint of copper tang.
No blood.
John huffs out a sigh-bark. Good.
“John?”
John trails his nose through Sherlock’s curls. They are not far from the flat, which is good, because all John can think about is getting home, getting Sherlock home, getting him safe, and the smell of their attacker, their attacker’s blood, in this dismal alleyway drenched in fear is not helping.
John huffs a few breaths at Sherlock, trying to get the man up, trying to get him to move, but Sherlock just watches him and does not move. John rolls his eyes, which seems to surprise Sherlock – and why not? massive wolves don’t exactly bring to mind exasperated flatmate behavior – and shoves his head, snout first, under Sherlock’s left arm and noses up and up, hoisting Sherlock partly to standing.
“Alright, alright –” Sherlock mutters, and it sounds a bit breathless, tight. Injured? John takes another deep breath but Sherlock doesn’t smell like broken people do – no, he smells – John tilts his head – relieved? John’s never smelt relief on anyone before – but then again, people aren’t usually relieved to see him. He shakes his head, sneezes to clear his nose, and uses his eyes to check Sherlock out, since his nose is currently a source of confusion.
It takes some straining, but a visual check reveals Sherlock looks tired, not injured, his whole body shouting signs of fatigue – but then nearly being throttled to death can have that effect on a person. John goes back to pushing and nudging until Sherlock is standing, propped up by the wall and John’s flank.
Sherlock’s hands hover above John’s furred shoulder, not touching, and that won’t do – no way they’ll get home with Sherlock’s legs as weak as they are.
He takes a deliberate step sideways, and Sherlock slumps forward a bit, hands clutching reflexively into John’s topcoat, and the lanky detective seems to jerk with surprise. John has to keep from growling at the sudden sharp pain of having his fur tugged, but then those long fingers soften their grip without relinquishing, and John wags his tail once to show approval.
“John?” Sherlock asks, and John whuffs softly, trying for the least threatening bark he can manage. Sherlock takes a deep breath, and if John didn’t have his wolf ears he wouldn’t have heard the tremble in the exhalation that follows.
John angles his head back, rolling an eye to take in Sherlock, who looks pale and close to collapse. Time to go.
He takes a step forward, feeling Sherlock lean heavily into his side, but the man’s feet skitter along beside John’s large paws, and the alley fades behind them.
Stairs, it turns out, are a challenge. At least by the time they make it back to 221b – entering through Mrs. Hudson’s back kitchen door, having avoided the main streets as much as possible – Sherlock has mostly recovered, his shakes subsiding and his breathing less taxed. Still, John shepherds Sherlock up the stairs ahead of him, head-butting him and pushing him up even as his paws clatter and slip on the shoe-polished wood.
A particularly loud slip-scrabble-almost fall has John shaking his head at the noise and the claw marks on the stairs and thanking Mrs. Hudson’s sister for inviting her out for the weekend – although what she’ll say when she comes home and sees the state of her landing and stairs he has no idea – and no real desire to discover.
At last they make it inside their flat, Sherlock with a stumble, and John with a clatter-scrape-thump as his paws desert him. John decides to accept defeat with what little dignity he has left and just flops down, breathing heavily.
He’s exhausted, but recent events are still ringing in his mind, anger and fear and a snarling hate for the men who attacked them and tried to kill Sherlock singing through his blood.
He finds himself rising once more, pushing forward to where Sherlock has collapsed and nosing into his face and hair, huffing and snuffling, then peeling away to check the entry way, then coming back, because he can feel Sherlock’s distress, still, like a stinging cloud, nettling him, prickling into his skin, and it’s not good, not good, not –
“John –” Sherlock protests a wet nose in his face, but John can’t quite control where it goes, what’s happening now is up to the wolf of him, and Sherlock’s neck smells of threatening hands.
Sherlock freezes when John’s tongue lands the first time, hardly breathes as the second touch laps against his jugular. He seems to shudder tightly, as if trying to control his reaction, when John keeps licking his neck, trying to clean the smell away, eradicate all traces of that unwanted touch.
“John,” Sherlock says, and it comes out a bit breathy, which is good, because Sherlock’s breath smells of Sherlock, which is good, like the air around them is good – clean, smelling of home and not alleyway detritus and grime and frothing rage. “John, what are you –?”
John nuzzles forward, nosing into Sherlock’s armpits, bitter stress sweat sharp and unwanted, like biting into tinfoil or accidentally scraping the tines of a fork over teeth. The scent of their attacker is all over Sherlock’s clothes; he growls.
“Alright – John – I said alright.” Coat and jacket slip away. The shirt underneath is alright, and John sniffs against it, pushing his face along the front and sides again and again, and every time Sherlock smells a little better, as if some spice is heating, blooming to expand and fill the room.
Sherlock’s heart is beating fast, his movements a little stiff, and that won’t do at all, something is wrong, Sherlock is never this tense at home, there must be intruders, and John will find them –
“John, where are yo– come back!”
John is back in an instant. No, Sherlock is not being attacked.
“John, come here!”
Sherlock is being silly, not helping, and maybe if he can get rid of the other smells –
“Put the coat down,” Sherlock all but growls, and John looks up, mouth full of wool – Sherlock’s coat? – how did that happen? “Drop it,” Sherlock commands, and John sniffs, more himself now, and certainly not a dog. He takes the coat, jacket still bunched inside it, and goes to hang it on the peg by the door, away from Sherlock, the commingling of scents still making him uneasy.
Such a human task completed, John feels better for a moment, but then the racing of his thoughts and his heart continues unabated, and he wonders if it’s possible to have a heart attack while in wolf form. He wheezes, breathing getting away from him, finds he is suddenly sprawling in the middle of the clear space on the rug, and Sherlock is saying something over and over again –
“John.”
His name. It’s his name. He shuts his eyes tightly and tries to hold on. He is, quite suddenly, acutely aware that he is the wrong shape.
“John.” Sherlock’s hands are, somehow, in his ruff, carding through it, and John would call it a caress if that word didn’t send a shiver through him, rattling everything he thought he knew about himself just slightly out of alignment. He can’t seem to stop his body interpreting it that way, though, his muscles turning languid under that touch, his breath gusting out in a pleasurable sigh. He should be getting as far away from Sherlock as possible, putting a safe distance between the two of them, but this feels too good, pins him in place a kind of trance – and besides, the idea of Sherlock’s hands lifting away from him fills John with a kind of nervous tension that seeps away with each second that Sherlock does not draw away. The whole business leaves him feeling weak, almost drained from relief. He wonders if he smells of it, too, if he smells like Sherlock did in the alleyway.
“John,” Sherlock says, voice pitched low and soothing, but John is not a spooked animal in need of calming, he’s himself (albeit in an animal body), and that voice thrums through him like his own blood. “Why aren’t you changing back?” That question sends an altogether different sort of shiver through John, cold and queasy and slick. He whines, can’t help it, and turns to tuck his head closer to Sherlock’s comforting presence. He needs it now.
After a moment, Sherlock breathes out his realization, a soft, “Oh,” and then answers his own question: “The blockers work both ways.”
John whines again, a deeper edge to it this time: agreement, misery.
“But then how did you – oh – adrenaline?”
John thumps his tail once. That can mean ‘yes’ for now. Sherlock should be able to correctly interpret it, being a genius and all.
Sherlock seems to ponder this, lifting his hands away to steeple them in front of his face. The loss of that touch is like a buzz in John’s skin, an itch in his throat. He can only lie there, though, heart pounding, lungs a gusty set of bellows, and on the verge of twitching right out of his skin. Everything is sharp and fast and wrong.
“And if we calm you back down again?”
John has no idea, doesn’t know if anything will work, will help, and he feels helpless and hopeless and useless, and it seems all he can do is pant, shift over onto his side, paws facing away from Sherlock so he doesn’t accidentally gouge him. His breath rushes harshly through his throat, through the chill passages of his nose, and it’s all too much. He closes his eyes, keens, legs thrashing a bit before he gets a grip on them. Good thing he aimed them away from Sherlock.
The detective makes a noise, considering, and then his hands are pressing into John’s fur again, and John takes a deep breath, feeling the flat’s air, scent saturated, shudder down into his lungs, out again. Repeat.
“You find my presence calming.”
John snorts at the tone of Sherlock’s voice, trying to convey all the very human layers of meaning he’s missing right now.
Sherlock grins down at him. “Granted, I think this is the first time I’ve ever had a soothing effect on anybody.” John huffs out another breath, as close to a halfhearted chuckle as he can get right now, his tail thumping the floor once, loudly: Yes.
Breathing feels wrong, but Sherlock’s fingers move through his fur rhythmically, and John feels his chest expand and contract almost in time, and then those motions are synced, and Sherlock slows his strokes, and John’s body matches the pace and he no longer feels like the world is tilting out from under him.
His paws twitch, and Sherlock alters his hands’ movements to include trailing down John’s forepaws, and the touch is good, paints presence and awareness into John until he feels aglow with it. His heart is still painfully loud to his ears, he can see it shaking his thoracic cavity.
“Hmm,” Sherlock says, and John can see the cogs turning behind those quicksilver eyes, not blue or green to his sight right now, but still bright. “Let’s try –” and then he’s lying down behind John, pressing his chest against John’s back, arms wrapped around and under a bit awkwardly, and John yelps when his tail gets trapped under a bony hip before it’s draped over the top-most thigh, and this is ridiculous –
But then Sherlock pulls him close and John can feel and hear Sherlock’s heart as it beats quickly behind his own, betraying his exertion and uncertainty, but after a few moments it calms, drifts slower and slower, and John feels like he can release a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and his heart cycles down from frantic to merely distressed. Sherlock must sense the change in John’s panic, because he sighs, arms tightening ever so slightly as the rest of him sort of relaxes into a lean against John. It’s lovely and leaves John achingly aware of all the hollow spaces within himself, and he closes his eyes.
After a few minutes of breathing and beating together, John feels almost drowsy. He can feel his adrenal glands give up the fight, blockers losing their grip on him, on his panic, and it feels dreamy, loose, like coming down from some dizzying high. His medical training tosses out hyperventilation and oxygen saturation levels as likely causes, but the wolf is fixated on how much Sherlock smells like both of them, their scents sort of smeared together, a glorious muddle of right and good.
John whines as the change tips over inside him, like a wave cresting, but slowly.
The whine slides lower, becomes something like a groan as his voice box shifts. His heart thuds hard against his suddenly too-small ribcage, knocking about painfully before adapting, accepting, and there’s the odd sensation of too much space around his heart as the rest of him rushes to catch up.
His skin itches something fierce as the topcoat sheds and falls away, pink skin emerging once more, flushed from the stretch and growth. His bones creak, and he knows Sherlock is listening, those hands gone still against John’s limbs and chest while his mass is in flux.
The tail is always a bit awkward, resorbing being neither comfortable nor elegant, and then John is naked and breathing hard and almost sobbing with relief in Sherlock’s arms.
He shudders and there’s wetness on his cheeks, and hands feel foreign with such long fingers, but they’re his, and he brings them shakily to his face and just looks at them. He can still feel Sherlock’s heartbeat against his spine, although he can no longer hear it as clearly.
“Thank you,” he says at last, and his voice is hoarse from the change (protective mucous layers every time), and then he says, “Sherlock –” and turns, to say sorry, or something, but what he sees in Sherlock’s eyes stops him. He takes a deep breath –
Sherlock still smells like John, like them, and the weight of it, the potency in each sip of air, rolls over John like thunder.
The turn becomes a roll, and Sherlock gasps as John presses their mouths together, and pale hands come up to card through John’s hair, pulling him closer, and they share a groan, and John pulls away, because his eyes can see Sherlock’s pupils blown wide and dark, his palms can feel the flush of his skin, his nose can smell Sherlock’s arousal, but John has to ask:
“Yes?”
And he waits, trembling, as Sherlock swallows and breathes, eyes re-focusing, to hear:
“Yes.”
John lurches forward into the next kiss, drunk with proximity, but it feels like every pore, every cell, every last bit of him is not even remotely done drinking in Sherlock, the delight of his skin, the desire in his scent.
His mouth finds its way to Sherlock’s neck, where bruises from cruel intentioned fingers are already purpling the skin, where the wolf had licked before, and now John smears kisses all along that skin, finds the crook of Sherlock’s neck, nips the skin, and then bites, hard, because this is his skin now, and his teeth shock a moan from Sherlock’s lips, an arch from his spine, a thrust from his hips.
The shirt is a lost cause. Close-fitting trousers are shoved down roughly, slim hips hitching upward to help. John’s skin is hungry, his hands ravenous, and Sherlock, his Sherlock, is beneath him, naked, spread out against the dark of the floor like pale perfection – but a flush follows John’s touches and attentions. Colour steals into those high cheeks, brushing rose down the column of Sherlock’s exposed throat and his sparsely furred front.
For one wild, insane moment, John thinks of red riding hoods and hungry wolves, but then he loses all sense and thought, because Sherlock is arching his back, pressing upwards to seek contact, pressure, friction –
He finds it.
John stutters out a groan – half growl, half moan – and grinds down against Sherlock, pulling long, silken sounds from that kiss-rouged mouth. Sherlock tries to swallow back against his own spilling voice, John can feel the efforts of the muscles beneath his fingers – and when had he cupped the back of Sherlock’s neck? When had he pressed his palm over Sherlock’s jugular, when had he slotted his thumb between Sherlock’s ear and jaw?
John shakes the questions away, slots his lips to Sherlock’s instead, frames Sherlock’s face with his hands, Sherlock’s breath with his mouth, Sherlock’s body with his limbs. The fact that Sherlock lets him is heady, intoxicating. John can feel waves of sensual onslaught washing over him; he could drown if he let himself, but if he does that he won’t be able to say: “Sherlock,” and: “bed.”
“Sofa,” Sherlock counters between kisses.
“Lube,” John reminds, hoping –
Sherlock kisses and licks into John’s mouth. “Bed,” he agrees, pulling away with a nod. He adds: “Now.”
John catches Sherlock up against the wall before they even make it to Sherlock’s bedroom doorway. “Sorry,” he murmurs as he kisses and presses into Sherlock’s skin, not sounding sorry at all. “Instinct.”
Sherlock gasps as John ruts against him, nothing so elegant as frottage, just an animal want, raw and greedy. “John –”
They stumble through the doorway, topple onto the bed. John is almost whining with desire now, and it would be embarrassing if Sherlock’s breath weren’t coming in little huffs of its own, his body wriggling free of his normally elegant and fluid control, twitching and arching and seeking –
One long arm extends to a bedside table, thrashes about, knocks aside a series of antique postcards and three boxes of what sound like thumbtacks to the floor before latching onto the drawer and pulling it open. More scrabbling, more scraping and rustling, and then a slick sound, followed by a slick touch –
John gasps as Sherlock’s fingers slide up and down his cock, just once, luxuriously slow, deliciously firm. The sound John makes has him worried for a second – no human voice should sound so ragged.
That touch disappears, and John is equal parts frustrated and relieved. Those fingers find John’s hand, grip it messily, lacing their fingers together. John realizes Sherlock is coating his hand rather too thoroughly, too intentionally, for it to just be a messy joining of hands.
“John.” The husky baritone confirms it. “John, please –”
John could no more deny that voice than the wild in his blood.
He uses his less messy thumb to paint circles of touch lower and lower down Sherlock’s body, nosing and licking at nipples and neck and suprasternal notch as he does so, until his thumb nudges the root of Sherlock’s erection, until the tips of his slick fingers just barely brush, just barely breach –
Sherlock’s body stiffens as if electrified, his voice is a cracked gasp, but those reactions are almost lost under the sudden drench of pheromones, an over-saturation of arousal. John can barely breathe for it, gasps in air again and again, aware of the ache in his cock, the burn in his skin, the clench of all his muscles.
Fingers dig into his shoulders, blunt nails leaving half-circles, and John comes back to himself, realizes he’s frozen with two fingertips almost inside Sherlock, and with a shake of his head he slips one finger all the way in, looking up to see the dark of Sherlock’s gaze, the jump in his pulse. He can feel it inside, tight heat fluttering with tension and the beat of a distant heart.
Sherlock shifts, shuffles lower, taking more, and John adds another finger, breathing through his mouth to keep from slipping under the spell of the air. Sherlock gasps, and for a moment John thinks the man can smell it, too – but no, his fingers have found their mark.
John grins, sudden and sharp, a baring of teeth, possessive more than friendly, and curls his fingers over and around that spot, and god but Sherlock is responsive, his body seething with each touch, a turmoil of reaction. John adds a third finger, pushes deep and stays, keeping the pressure constant, slowly twisted inside Sherlock, and Sherlock shudders, splaying his legs wide even as his arms pull John up for a kiss.
One hand disappears, returns to John’s cock freshly slicked, and the coldness is startling, but the touch is teasing perfection.
“Sherlock –” John tries, but his voice is tight, deep, rough, more of a growl than anything, made animal by lust, but Sherlock must understand, must hear the very human hesitation – concern and care, because he answers:
“Yes,” and then: “Please.” His words are powerful, but his voice, his tone, his body, are potent beyond speaking; John is wanted, feels wanted, and here is the proof in sight and touch and sound, in scent overpowering, and Sherlock is ready –
John sinks into Sherlock, and it feels like the world comes into focus, his two worlds aligning at last, because whatever else John is and wants, all of him is present now, wants this, wants Sherlock, who is squirming and breathless against and beneath John’s weight.
“John, move –”
John does, snapping free of his reverie, then pushing into Sherlock deeply, breathing slowly, tucking his nose against Sherlock’s pulse point and just thrusting into Sherlock again and again.
It starts deep and slow, stays that way for a while as John drinks in Sherlock with all his senses, slotting their bodies together, grinding side to side, all the while reveling in the noises escaping Sherlock’s mouth: surprised, tight gasps, low, devastated moans, tight grunts and greedy cries, all these notes issuing from the instrument of Sherlock’s body, and it reaches a tipping point inside John, and he finds a new speed coiling and uncoiling his thrusts, a new strength gripping Sherlock’s hands and pressing them above his head, elongating the shuddering frame beneath his, and the snapping of his hips just keeps increasing tempo –
“John, oh – John –”
John keeps that angle, fucks into Sherlock’s eager body hard, again, again, and those eyes snap open, stare at the ceiling in shock, that mouth falls open –
“John – oh, oh god John –!”
Sherlock comes and for one breathless moment falls completely silent, every muscle in his body tightening, his throat closing, and then sound spills forth again as his body succumbs to waves of release, and the rhythmic clutching of his muscles around John’s cock have John right against the edge of his own orgasm, and then Sherlock whines –
The world contracts to a point, light and heat wrapped into one glorious tipping moment, and then it comes apart, and John comes undone, unspooling into sound and brightness and touch and scent.
John comes back slowly and from far away, it seems, a rushing in his ears and in his blood leaving his skin buzzing, and he shakes with tremors for long minutes after, his vision regaining colour saturation slowly, his breathing settling down to a human level, his everything settling down to something that isn’t utter insanity.
He slumps forward, employing his elbows to keep from crushing a breathless Sherlock beneath him. “I – did –?” John huffs, but before he can fill his lungs for another attempt at a sentence, he’s interrupted:
“You did not hurt me, no – although I would appreciate it if you could, um –”
John colours. “I, yes – of course –” He pulls out, not all the way flaccid yet, and blames that bit on Sherlock still smelling like Sherlock but now with dense, rich infusion of John’s own scent, which is much more interesting (to his own nose, at least) now that it is blended with Sherlock’s.
Sherlock shivers as John slips free, winces at the very end, then sighs and lets his legs flop to the sides. One hand snags his sleep shirt from under a pillow, and he wipes his stomach down perfunctorily. He breathes deeply, colouring the world with his exhales.
John crawls up beside him, wants desperately to tuck his face into Sherlock’s neck or armpit, and doesn’t. That’s…not quite a human impulse, and besides, it seems like a big assumption as far as Sherlock’s willingness is concerned. Instead of burrowing into that tempting skin, John keeps a bit of distance between them, fingers itching to touch despite his body’s sated state.
Deprived of touch, John stares at Sherlock’s body next to his, the calm rise and fall of his chest, the even, sunless grace of his skin, although now marks are beginning to cloud those sharp hipbones and trim thighs. John can see the stains his kisses left behind, the will-be bruises where he gave into the urge to bite at Sherlock’s shoulders and neck.
His eyes finally follow the long line of Sherlock’s marked throat up to his full lips, his aristocratic nose, his sharp cheekbones, his slanted, mercurial eyes –
Sherlock is staring right back at him. That’s to be expected, John supposes, but what he doesn’t expect at all is Sherlock rolling closer, reaching for him, and then kissing him, softly at first, then with growing depth and heat. Long fingers run lightly along the mangled skin of his left shoulder, the only scar John will ever carry, now.
John can’t quite believe he’s here, that they are here, post-coitus and still wrapped up in one another, and it’s all so mad that John pulls back, almost laughing, his breath rhythmic with it. Sherlock arches a brow in question, and John blurts out the first thing that comes to mind:
“You should have gone for the gun.” He doesn’t mean to come off sounding so morbid, but Sherlock’s reaction doesn’t read as shocked or appalled.
Instead, Sherlock simply snorts, sated, exhausted, satisfaction rolling off him in hazy, mirage-inducing waves of scent. John could quite happily drown in that air. “Maybe next time,” he says with a feral grin that reels John in for a taste.
“Seriously though,” John insists in a murmur when they part. He’s blissed out on endorphins and Sherlock and skin still so close and perfumed by what they just did, but this is going to bother him until he voices it. “You weren’t frightened,” he adds. “I could smell everything, and that man that attacked us was just about pissing himself…and you weren’t even a little bit scared. Why?” John honestly doesn’t understand how seeing your flatmate and friend turn into a nightmare doesn’t tear your heart in two with panic.
“Should I have been?”
“Sherlock – I could have killed you.”
“You would no more have killed me in your wolf form than you would now, here, in all your bipedal glory.”
John snorts, halfway between humorous and bitter. “One of those is a bit more dangerous, Sherlock.”
“It’s just transport, John,” Sherlock says, just the edge of a longsuffering sigh tucked in at the end. “It’s still you inside. Your body changes, but you remain constant, a fixed point of sorts.”
The way he says it convinces John for the first time that it might be true. That maybe it hadn’t been luck that kept him from attacking Sherlock, from thinking him a threat. But what if –
Sherlock sighs, a gusty, eye-rolling affair, and brings John’s mouth close again. “Stop worrying,” he almost pushes the words into John’s mouth, “it’s tedious.”
“You‘re not –”
Sherlock snorts again and continues kissing John as he does so, which should be a turn-off, but is in fact the exact opposite.
“You don’t mind.” John says it like a statement, but it still tastes like a question.
“I don’t care,” Sherlock counters.
“You should,” John says quietly, pulling back. “I’m dangerous – no, listen,” John talks over Sherlock’s attempt to cut him off again. “Under the right circumstances –”
Sherlock pulls back, tilts his head. “Every person on this planet is dangerous, under the right circumstances. John,” he adds, his voice a bit quiet, “surely by now you’ve seen enough of my world to know yours won’t shock me.”
John thinks about that – the murders, the killers, the thieves, the thugs.
“And as for being a danger to me,” Sherlock continues, “I ask that you reexamine tonight’s events closely before continuing to fret over fangs and fur.”
The events of the night flood John’s mind, the sex, yes, but also the case before it, the dark alleyway, the man who struck John and tried to throttle Sherlock – or rather, the man who was succeeding at throttling Sherlock until John –
“Ah,” Sherlock says. “Knew you’d get there in the end.” There’s no reason for him to sound so smug. John glares at him, but there’s no fight in it, and it melts away completely when Sherlock leans in and kisses him again. “Thank you, by the way. For that. That thing you – it was –”
“Good?”
Sherlock nods. “Yes.” His throat works against whatever it is he’s feeling.
John watches Sherlock struggle for a moment, then asks, “And this?” His eyes flick down to their arms, their naked bodies pressed together. Semen is drying on Sherlock’s side where his earlier swipes had missed some. “Are you sure –”
The breath creaks from his lungs as long, pale arms tighten around him.
“Sherlock?”
The head buried by his neck shakes twice, and Sherlock’s breath huffs against John’s nape in shaky gusts. John holds still, holds Sherlock, holds his own breath.
“When you fell, earlier – the blow to your skull was – I’d never –”
John breathes in sharply, pulling Sherlock’s sweat and musk deep into his lungs. “I’m hard to kill, Sherlock.”
“You weren’t moving.”
“I’m sorry.” John knows what it’s like to see that, has seen it so many times. If he could have spared Sherlock that, he would have. “I’m going to be around for a while, Sherlock.” For the first time since the bite, that seems like a good thing. John takes a deep breath and says what he’s been holding inside his ribcage for weeks now, in one form or another: “Longer, if you’ll have me.”
Curls shift against his cheek and neck – nodding?
“Sherlock?”
“Yes.” It’s a tight little sound, and John doesn’t know what to do with that, so he closes his eyes and breathes in Sherlock, follows his nose, his lips brushing here and there against soft skin, the beginnings of stubble, cheekbones and chin.
Their lips touch, they kiss, their hands clutch and press, and John pulls Sherlock on top of him, holding him close. They stay like that for a while, moments blurring into minutes, a smear of time and thought and breathing.
“It’s the start of my moon tomorrow,” John says at last.
“I know,” Sherlock says. Of course he does. John smiles against his skin.
“I – you…” John starts again: “Want to come with me? When I change, I mean?”
“I know what you mean,” Sherlock retorts, but his eyes are wide.
“And?”
His eyes are shining with excitement when he pulls back to look at John. “I’d love to.”
John sighs. “No samples.” A pout snaps into place immediately, and John has to laugh at that. Sherlock grins at him, impish, a little wild, and John relents:
“Well, maybe one or two…”