Work Text:
It wasn't William's fault. There was no way he could have known.
In the heat of a confrontation with a local gang operating as a front for foreign intelligence, it had been a last minute alteration of the plan which had seen him thrown across the floor of a warehouse with the critical documents safely tucked in his jacket, but the jacket itself was an unfortunate casualty. He'd rolled to his feet hardly registering the dull ache of impact under the adrenaline, and a moment later Sherlock was there looking him over, and William had grabbed his wrist and they'd run, down the back stairs and along the alley while the local police kicked down the front door.
After a couple of blocks he'd started to feel the wet sting of blood and sweat where the shoulder of the jacket was torn, but it was superficial. As they'd reached the dark quiet street beneath their building and waited, catching their breath and looking for tails, Sherlock had frowned at the torn fabric again. 'You're bleeding.' William had rolled his shoulder to prove it wasn't dislocated or broken and quickly regretted it as the fabrics caught and pulled at the abrasion, or what he assumed it was- it was difficult to see for himself without a mirror.
'Nothing serious,' he'd said. Blood had trickled unpleasantly down to pool at his elbow, but the back of his shoulder wouldn't bleed heavily enough for concern. It was in fact- based on the sticking- already coagulating, albeit uncomfortably.
'Too dark to see it proper,' Sherlock said. 'Come on.' They climbed the stairs to their flat and Sherlock herded William like a determined sheepdog into the bathroom. With all the lights on, in the mirror, he can see the mess of the tattered jacket, stained from the outside with grime and from the inside with blood. Fragments of his shirt, also, and the raw skin underneath. Now it's started to hurt, enough to make him tense, which doesn't help. Sherlock runs clean water in a basin. 'Take all that off,' he says, throwing his own jacket aside.
'You're shameless,' William says, and laughs. Everything feels so warm and bright; his shoulder is on fire but it will be fine, they've just run a successful mission and had a satisfying fight and he's got the documents in his ruined jacket and his lover in their cozy little bathroom. He sets the papers safely aside.
'Who's shameless,' Sherlock demands. 'Go on, it'll stick if you wait.' He pulls the jacket off William's uninjured side first, then carefully separates it from the wetness of the injury. 'Pretty nasty scrape.'
William bites down on the inside of his lip and breathes. Not so bad. The waistcoat has survived but his white shirt is also torn and bloodied, and Sherlock curses under his breath as William undoes the buttons. They pull that one off the same way, but it's already caught in the congealing abrasions and cuts underneath. William twitches as it pulls at the wound. 'Sorry,' Sherlock says. He pours water over the fabric, stiff with fluids. 'Let that soak, I need to get it clear so it won't get infected.'
'Try it again,' William says. He sits down on the stool next to the sink and holds himself still while Sherlock peels the shreds of fabric from his raw skin. Breathes in little hitches with his feet braced against the tub. Sherlock, very close and warm, smells familiar and lovely. He slides the sleeve over William's wrist and curses again. William stretches carefully, his injuries twinging in response. His hands are shaking slightly. It's so good to be alive, he thinks, to have this body that still stings and bleeds in such human fashion, to experience everything life has to offer.
Sherlock hands him the small shaving mirror. 'You want to see? 's got a lot of dirt and I think a few splinters rubbed in; that place was a mess.'
William takes it and angles it to see at least some of the damage. There is debris in the wound. The cuts and scrapes are mostly shallow, just a few slow trickles of blood, but it needs to be cleaned. 'I can manage,' he says, reaching for a towel.
'Like hell you can,' Sherlock says, 'you can't even see what you're doing. Sit back down.'
'Fine,' William allows. Sherlock is right, the towel won't be enough.
'This is going to hurt some,' Sherlock warns.
'It's alright,' William says, settling again on the stool, and means it. Sherlock tsks, rolling up his sleeves and sluicing water over William's shoulder again before applying a washcloth. It brushes against the inflamed outer edges of the wounds first, and then goes from mildly irritating to knife-sharp as it contacts the crusted dust and dirt in the cuts. William swallows and breathes carefully. Takes pride in not flinching, and then flinches sharply as the cloth brushes over something that sends a shock of pain towards his spine.
'Shit, sorry, that's embedded,' Sherlock says. 'Wanted to get the worst of it off so I could see what was what.'
'And what is it?' William asks. The sting echoes through his skin even though Sherlock isn't touching him anymore. Sherlock takes a little pair of tweezers from the cabinet.
'Metal, maybe,' he says. 'Bit of sand and gravel in there too, but not too much. Nothing you'd want inside you, though.'
William licks his bitten lip and smiles. 'I'm sure.'
'You remember skinning your knees as a kid?' Sherlock says as he starts to pick the trapped grit from William's bare skin. 'Mine looked like this all the time.' William doesn't doubt it. The whole of his shoulder feels held to a flame, but he can still feel the little needle-prick stabs as Sherlock works.
Sherlock's hands are steady. He has such long deft fingers. William shifts his weight, pressing his feet against the floor and tub again. It hurts, but he imagines it feels slightly better with each irritant prized free. It hurts, but he doesn't quite want it to stop. He breathes with the pulse of it, understands the pain to be part of him. Sherlock spreads his free hand against William's unbroken skin as if to steady him when he shivers. Oh.
'Easy,' Sherlock murmurs. The searing heat from William's shoulder drips down his spine, molten gold. 'You doing alright?'
William very nearly moans. He swallows and crosses his legs instead. No, in fact, something is wrong. 'Fine,' he bites out. 'Keep going.' This shouldn't feel like- it isn't the same as-
'Alright,' Sherlock relents. 'We'll get it over with, then. But if you need a minute, just say so.' He runs his cool fingers down William's side and the heat pools in William's stomach. Something's snapped in him, finally, or maybe he doesn't remember hitting his head?
Something catches as Sherlock pulls at a splinter in his raw flesh and William makes a choked-off noise, the pain compressing his throat, and even he sounds as if-
'Sorry,' Sherlock says again as he stops and strokes William's good shoulder. His hair smells like smoke and spice as he presses a kiss to the back of William's neck. 'Just another minute, love-' William turns sharply, grasps the front of Sherlock's shirt and kisses him desperately on the mouth. Funny place to completely lose his mind, William thinks, but it's too late now. Sherlock makes a little surprised noise but kisses him back, thoroughly. Finally he pries William off of him without even dropping the tweezers and gets out, 'Liam- are you looking to be distracted, or-'
William fixes him with his most intent stare, which usually gets him what he wants. 'I want you,' he says. 'As soon as you're done-'
Sherlock sputters for a moment. 'What- wait- are you- are you hard about this?'
'Don't ask me that,' William pants. If he gets any harder about it he's going to start leaking in his clothes.
'Because I'm fishing gravel out of your shoulder?'
'Because you're touching me,' William says, 'and it hurts, and it feels good. I don't know.'
'My god,' Sherlock says, pushing his unruly hair back. 'You really are a madman.' He smirks. 'I'm sitting here trying not to hurt you any more than absolutely necessary, and you're sitting there getting off on it, huh?' He pulls something else free with a spike of pain, not any rougher than before, but William gasps.
'Finish what you started,' William insists.
'Oh, I intend to,' Sherlock replies. 'Hold still.'
William tries. The irritation of being washed and prodded has caused the abrasions to swell, he can tell by the throbbing. He can't differentiate which spots Sherlock is easing grit from anymore, it's all melted into one seething, tingling mass. Sherlock's beautiful hands with the sharp silver tweezers have William's blood in small smudges on his fingertips and the heel of his palm. William shudders at that. He wants Sherlock down on his knees in front of him, sucking him off like his life depends on it. He wants Sherlock to bend him over the sink and leave rusty fingerprints on his hips like a crime scene.
'Almost there,' Sherlock says. 'You're bruising here too.' Runs his cool fingers over the ache. 'Bet you'd even like it if I pressed on them, huh.' William can't suppress his moan this time, his cock twitches sharply at the thought. 'No,' Sherlock says, 'I'm not going to make it worse. You don't get everything you want.' He presses another kiss to William's spine.
William's flushed all over, caught between the burning pain and arousal, with no room left to think about anything except the most important things. He wants to come so badly he feels almost faint. Sherlock holds him steady with one hand and draws a shard of metal from his open wound. It hurts almost worse than anything yet. William's back arches and he almost sobs. It's fine if Sherlock does it- Sherlock won't hurt him any more than he has to. Not more than he can handle. A little shiver of relief follows even amidst the screaming nerves once the sliver is out. William's cock leaks a bit. There was a time not long ago when he'd barely have felt any of this, no amount of blood or pain meant anything to him, and no one to kiss his spine and take all of his unfathomable emotions and desires in stride. He's experiencing some kind of miracle.
'Sherly,' he whispers.
'That's the last of it,' Sherlock says. 'Much better.' He wipes his hands on the damp towel. William sighs. 'Just need to disinfect it and get it covered so you don't bleed on the sheets, yeah?'
'Mm.'
Sherlock opens the bottle of spirits, the mercilessly sharp scent rising. One William has associated since his own youth with healing, the last most painful step before things are bandaged and better. Sherlock actually smells of it from time to time given how prone he is to little nicks and burns from chemical glassware. A harsh scent, but not one William minds.
'Look at you,' Sherlock says. 'You're going to come as soon as this touches you, aren't you.'
'You don't know that,' William chokes out.
'Sure I do,' Sherlock says, because he's William's own God-given punishment. 'It's going to hurt like hell, and every muscle in your body's going to snap taut and knock the breath out of your lungs and you won't be able to help it.'
'Just do it,' William snaps.
With the towel pressed beneath the wounds, Sherlock simply tilts the bottle and pours it over William's shoulder. A single warning pinprick is all he gets at the first contact of the liquid to open skin and then it becomes a supernova. Every muscle in his body snaps taut and the breath is knocked from his lungs and he can't even hear what kind of sound he makes as he comes.
In sufficient quantities, it seems, pain and pleasure converge and transmute into something different than either, a sensation at such intensity that his vision whites out and he has to try to remember, some time later, how to breathe. By the time he's surfaced Sherlock has affixed a serviceable wrap of gauze to keep the injury clean and is rinsing his hands in the sink. All that remains is a soft, tender echo of the pain, as if the antiseptic had flared it up into such a conflagration it had burnt itself out. As Sherlock ducks out into the hall, William looks blankly at the wallpaper, feeling like even his mind has been washed clean.
'Still awake?' Sherlock asks as he drapes a soft shirt for sleeping in over William. 'Thought you might fall asleep sitting up after all that. Put that on, you'll get cold.'
'You're the one who's always putting his cold feet on mine in the middle of the night,' William mutters, carefully pulling the nightshirt on. Sherlock leans on the counter, watching in a way that feels distinctly pleased. William's hands are still shaking as he does up the buttons and tries to keep his eyes open.
'Is that illegal?' Sherlock says. 'Don't think you've got any room to be making criminal accusations, you deviant. Can you even stand?' Without waiting to find out, he leans in and picks William up off the stool.
William wants to protest- the hall and doorways are narrow and he has to tuck his feet in and cling to Sherlock, and really it's been almost a year since he was so frail that it was easy for Sherlock to carry him, so at this point it's just showing off- but he is so wrung out from the pain and the relief and the release that it does seem easier to let Sherlock do what he wants. 'I'm the deviant?' William says. 'Last week you let me handcuff you to the headboard.'
'Mmm, yeah,' Sherlock says, setting him down in the bedroom and stealing a kiss. 'Wanna do it again tomorrow?'
Helpless, William tries and fails not to smile. 'Alright.' As a matter of fact, he does. But for now it's enough to curl up on his uninjured side, wedged safely against Sherlock's body, and sleep.