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“Army omega,” Sherlock sneers, tone conveying his real meaning of ‘slut.’
John grins into it, all teeth and challenge. “My parents always told me to hold out for a job I loved.” As though he hasn’t heard everything people have to say about army omegas. They can go fuck themselves. He’s proud of his service.
Not that Sherlock actually buys into any of that rubbish. He’s just being bitchy. John can’t honestly hold it against him. With John in proestrus, ramping up towards his heat next week, his pheromones are bringing out Sherlock’s inner (very shallowly buried) chest-thumping diva. That sneer Sherlock’s wearing? John doesn’t need to be a genius to recognize a jealous snit when he sees one, but Sherlock would cut off his own arm before he’d admit to having a hormonal strop.
Which is too bad for him, because biological imperative or not, John doesn’t tolerate bullying. “What’s the matter?” he taunts. “Feeling threatened?” The alpha ego lost its charm when he was still in his 20s. Sherlock’s an adult, alpha or not; he can damn well take responsibility for himself.
Sherlock puffs up like an angry pigeon. John has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, because Sherlock’s hilarious in this mood, grumpy over a persistently free-willed household object (namely John) insisting on living his own life. Even funnier is that it pisses him off more when John calls him on it, because Sherlock’s made no secret of his opinions of hormones, heats, breeding, and all things related—namely, that they’re distracting, messy, ludicrous, time-consuming, irrational, and disgusting.
In short, Sherlock is offended at the very idea of getting a piece of John, but he’s pitching a fit about anybody else getting one either. That kind of childishness makes John want to roll on the floor, convulsing with mirth. At this point in John’s life, there isn’t a sexual slur Sherlock can level that has the power to get a rise out of him, let alone shame him into being a good little omega.
Which doesn’t stop Sherlock from trying, of course. “Why should I feel threatened?” he snipes. John surrenders a moment to admiring the scornful glimmer of Sherlock’s slitted eyes. Nobody should be able to make petty malice look that good. “If your taste is so poor as to let a pack of jugheaded-”
John hisses and takes a swipe at Sherlock’s face. Sherlock jerks out of the way; not difficult, because John had no intent to connect—this time. But Sherlock knows better: he can hurl any insult he can think of at John, but his army mates are off limits. “They were some of the finest men I have ever known,” John snarls, “and you will never speak about them like that again.”
He means it. Another word and the next swing will leave a mark. From the twitch of his mouth, Sherlock takes it seriously, but John’s fierce loyalty only makes him more crabby. “Twelve of them,” he says distastefully. “Honestly. How badly could you possibly need it?”
“Very,” John says, still in his level warning voice. “Not that you’d know. You’ve never dealt with anyone’s heat in your life.” Sherlock wants no part of his heats, so John keeps him well clear of his periodic inconveniences. “It’s none of your concern anyway. It’s not like you’re ever going to top me.”
Hell, not even if Sherlock wanted to. John’s not a bloody science experiment. Sherlock’ll try just about anything once, for the sake of curiosity, but he’d drop John like a hot potato the minute he got his answers, and then John really would feel like a whore. Sex doesn’t always have to involve love, but respect is not negotiable.
John’s got a good life here, better than he ever imagined he could have after he was discharged. He won’t ruin that by overreaching, no matter how much he misses sharing his heats with an alpha who values him.
Sherlock’s only response is to scowl and shove his chin into his chest so hard that John fancies he can hear it rap off his sternum. But he has nothing else to say.
This is why John likes these arguments so much. They’re the one time when he can get the last word in.
***
John doesn’t lie to himself about this. Unlike an alpha, an omega can’t afford to be out of touch with his feelings.
John knows better than to ever think about them. As in, together, that way. Sherlock is brilliant and gorgeous and amazing and dangerous and altogether just about everything John has ever wished for out of life, and John loves him like he loves his own breath. Which is why he wouldn’t tap that with a ten foot pole.
Of course Sherlock cares about him. John would have to be blind to miss that. Sherlock is also an alpha who’s focused so exclusively on his intellectual development that he left off his emotional growth at about five years old. Sherlock’s idea of expressing anything akin to desire, liking or need for something is to make grabby hands at it and snarl at anyone else who gets too close.
For John, who’s had more than his fill of grabby hands in his life, that sort of behaviour is normally enough to make him want to put his fist down an alpha’s throat and pull out whatever he finds there. As always, however, Sherlock seems to be the exception to all his rules.
Then again, coming from Sherlock, it’s not so much objectification as it is a toddler’s idea of affection. Which may be why Sherlock’s ridiculous, possessive sulks have a history of managing to melt John’s heart.
But that’s as far as John will let it go.
Because Sherlock doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. Grabby hands and alpha dominance are his answer to everything, from a craving for cigarettes to his obsessions with his cases to the rare individual who manages to catch his fancy for five minutes together. If John shook his metaphorical tail under Sherlock’s nose, he’d probably go for that, too, and whether he was doing it because he wanted to be with John or because he wanted to experience the novelty of raging hormones, Sherlock would probably never know, but he’d treat it the same either way: just another thing to seize, squeeze until dry, and then bin.
For all his addictions and hedonistic impulses, Sherlock keeps his habits unsullied by emotional entanglements. He’s explained his theory of ‘transport’ to John; for him, mind and body are separate things and he resents anything that mucks up that nice, clean dividing line. John’s sat through rants on the useless complications of alpha hormones, with Sherlock sunk in on himself and grumbling about how splendid it would be to be a beta. And after the number of rows they’ve had that boil down to Sherlock’s resentment of the disruptiveness of omega needs and sexuality, John’s thinking about investing in a brick to the head for the next time he has to hear about it.
So he keeps it out of the flat, out of their life. When John’s got a girlfriend or boyfriend who’s willing to be a part of it, it’s no burden to camp out at their place and share his heat with them. He's shared with others, too, friends and army buddies and even the occasional fling he’s developed a good rapport with. If he’s flying solo, he’s got standing arrangements with a couple of omega friends; he can pick up and stay with them for a week and take care of his problems with the aid of his trusty dildo. It's not ideal—it never entirely scratches the itch to go it alone—but a man does what he has to do.
John’s been through too much shit in his life to let himself be touched by someone who holds his body in contempt. He knows Sherlock doesn’t mean it personally—it’s physicality he resents, not John—but that difference is an unbridgeable chasm between them. He’s old enough to know better than to invite a man he loves to hate him.
***
John walks into the sitting room, smiling down at the letter in his hand. “Sherlock. Russell says he’s getting discharged. He’s coming home in two months.” Russell’s included a recent photo of himself, rolling around half-dressed and sweaty, half the desert sticking to him and wearing an idiotic grin during what’s obviously a pickup football match. John sighs nostalgically. He looks great. Christ, John misses him. He misses all of them.
A ‘humph’ thumps like a drumbeat by the window. John looks up to find Sherlock’s rock-crystal gaze on him. “I take it Russell is one of your harem.”
John narrows his eyes warningly. “We’ve been over this.”
A long hand flaps out, dismissing the issue. Sherlock stares at John in intent silence, tightness pulling at the corners of his eyes. “What will you do about it?” he asks finally.
“Go visit him, obviously.” John feels his eyebrows draw down. What, is Sherlock anticipating having a case that weekend?
“Just that?”
“Yeeeeeees.” John tilts his head, a little lost as to what Sherlock could be fishing for. “What else would I do when my friend gets home from war? Sherlock, I know you’re not good at sentiment, but I know for a fact you’re not that thick.”
Sherlock’s lip quivers sulkily, and John can’t stop his smile. “No,” Sherlock grumbles, “but apparently you are. He’s all but propositioning you with that photo he included. He doesn’t have a mate. He’s single, attractive, he’ll land a well-paying job as an engineer within months of his return, and you’re more than a little fond of him.”
John blinks at him. “You think. Wait. Me and Russell?” Good grammar flees in the face of his shock. “I. No. God, no, not Russell.” He begins laughing. “No, it’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?”
Sherlock sounds so sullen that John gives him a longer look. The man’s slouched down in his armchair, glowering at John through his own personal gloom, little baby rainclouds all but dripping on his hair. His eyes glitter grumpily in the face of John’s laughter.
This isn’t alpha possessiveness. This is just Sherlock, never harder than when he’s vulnerable, watching John like he’s steeling himself for pain. John’s grin eases from amusement to fondness. “Sherlock? Are you afraid I’ll leave?”
“You can do what you like.” Sherlock’s eyes rip away from John with an actual physical tearing sensation, swinging down to fix on the cold hearth.
Oh.
John crosses the room in a few steps to sit on the coffee table, leaning forward till only a couple of feet separate them.
“Sherlock,” he says gently, then waits till the other man’s eyes settle back on him. “I have no plans to leave.”
Sherlock watches him with a sort of brittle, curled-up wariness. “Why not?” he asks belligerently. “You’ve told me about them. I know how you feel.”
“Because.” He dares to reach forward and place a hand on Sherlock’s knee, feeling suddenly, impossibly tender towards this brilliant, hard-edged man who pays no dues to the softer sides of humanity. “I like it here. With you. This is my home.” He doesn’t even try to hide the affection in his smile. “With you.”
Sherlock’s expression crumples slowly, from hooded resentment to embarrassment, with only the briefest pleased flicker in between. John feels his own face flush, and sits back, withdrawing his hand as unobtrusively as he can manage so that they can both pretend it didn’t happen.
They both spend a moment looking anywhere but at each other.
Then Sherlock’s eyes slide sidelong back towards him. “Yes. Well. You’re indispensable to my work.”
John nods solemnly. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He means it.
***
Sherlock has no clue what a boon he is to John. Or, well, more accurately Sherlock is well convinced that he’s God’s gift to John, but he isn’t precisely clear on how. And John will never let on that Sherlock is right. He’s insufferable enough as it is.
John hates it when alphas patronise him. Because he’s short and omega, and apparently he looks so haplessly ordinary, they come at him like he’s some delicate hothouse flower that needs to be sheltered from the world’s brutalities. It makes him want to broaden their experience of pain.
Once, when he was young, drunk, and stupid, he flipped a prick over his pub table and started a brawl, then walked out whistling halfway through, once everybody had discovered that he was the last guy in the place they wanted to hit. That’d been a good night.
Obviously, he’s too mature now to revel in those kinds of hijinks. Well. There was that tosser he headbutted a few months ago, when the git wouldn’t take a hint while John was waiting for Sherlock to break into a flat and unlock the door for him. He was just asking for it.
But still, the point is that, assuming they’re not acting like cocky arseholes—which, granted, is most of the time, and Sherlock takes it to whole new levels—it’s a bit nice having an alpha around the place. For one thing, it’s smoothed out a lot of the mood blips and unsteady heat schedules he’d suffered from since being shot. Besides, there’s a comforting domesticity about it. John can’t deny the appeal of having someone to look after, and it’s a steadying feeling to know Sherlock will be there in return if John ever needs him, without being an overprotective, condescending git about it. Or no more condescending than Sherlock always is, at any rate, but that’s not alpha machismo, that’s just Sherlock. He thinks everyone is an idiot, but he does give them credit for being fundamentally capable of surviving on their own until they demonstrate otherwise.
It makes John feel welcome and at home to know that he’s both wanted and needed. One day he needs to sit Mycroft down and get him to explain how Sherlock managed to survive on his own to his mid-thirties. That tale might just contain miracles that could convert him to God.
Sherlock’s never said anything, but John thinks he may take a little bit of satisfaction in having an omega in his life, too. Every so often he’ll take advantage of the acceptability of letting one’s barriers down around a familiar omega, and curl up on the sofa with his feet tucked under John’s thigh, or press up against him when one or both of them is shivering in the damp London cold at a crime scene. It’s hard to tell, because again, Sherlock. The man has never heard the words ‘personal space’ anyway. Good job John doesn’t mind, coming from him.
***
Another heat. John’s looking forward to this one; he’s spending it with Russell. It should do them both some good. John knows how hard it can be, readjusting to civilian life.
Sherlock doesn’t want him to go. He’s done everything short of actually saying so to demonstrate his disapproval.
“You shouldn’t go.”
Ah. There it is.
John sets his bag down—again—and turns back to the sofa. “And what would I do if I didn’t?”
Sherlock tucks his chin down. He’s biting something back, John can tell. He sighs. “You might as well come out with it. You’re about to piss me off. I know it. I’m braced.”
Sherlock’s jaw clenches, face settling mulishly. Oh. This is going to be bad, if even Sherlock knows he should keep his mouth shut. “I don’t want to share you.”
John’s chin comes up slowly. “Share me.” He licks his lips, discarding his first few responses—along the lines of ‘What the fuck?’ and ‘Where do you get off?’—in favour of something that can actually progress the conversation towards uncovering what the hell Sherlock is thinking. “Sherlock. You have no percentage in this,” he waves his hand down along his own body, “to share.”
“Of course I do!” Just like that, Sherlock’s on his feet and looming into John’s space. John glares up at him, jaw tight. “You’re mine! My flatmate, my friend, my assistant, and you’re leaving me for a week to be with this man who-” A hand flutters upwards through the air to John’s left. “Who- What can he do for you that I can’t?!”
Oh.
The rage explodes to life in John’s chest. “He won’t hate me for being what I am!”
Sherlock recoils. “What?”
“You do!” John realizes he’s shouting when he hears his own voice bounce off the walls. How dare Sherlock. All the shit John goes through for him, to cater to his lifestyle and his decisions and desires, because fuck if John doesn’t know what it’s like to have your choices derailed by the bollocks other people throw at you. And this, this is what he gets.
Fuck alpha hormones. Fuck Sherlock. The man’s 35. He owns responsibility for the utter bullshit that comes out of his mouth. John takes a step forward. Sherlock takes a step back.
“You like me for being John. And I appreciate that, Sherlock, god knows I do. You’re my best friend. But this,” he slices the air, indicating his own body again, “you want nothing to do with! I can’t help it, Sherlock! This is what I am. This is how I work. I’ve spent my entire life being called names, taking shit, having to compromise my life because I was born omega and my own fucking biology won’t get out of my way. I’ve had to fight for everything I’ve ever earned. You can’t comprehend how much it took for me to get to where I am! After all that, Sherlock, I refuse to hate myself, and I’m sure as hell not going to start doing it just because I’m inconvenient for you!”
Other things want to come out, too, less forgivable ones. But John is hurt, and Sherlock is already staring at him with a wide-eyed wounded expression, like an infant that doesn’t understand it’s just been hit, and John just takes a deep breath, drawing all the rest back into himself. He grabs his bag and turns towards the door. “I’ll be back in a week and a half when all the icky stuff is over and we can get back to pretending it doesn’t exist.”
Sherlock lunges, all but tackling him from behind. John staggers into the doorframe, the bag goes sliding out into the hall, and there’s a horribly awkward fumbling scramble to sort out their limbs and stand independently again.
“Sherlock, what the fuck-”
“I don’t hate you.”
Sherlock is clinging to him, pressing John’s chest into the doorjamb, arms wrapped awkwardly around John’s shoulders to fist in the lapels of his coat. His head is pressed down into John’s neck.
“I don’t hate you, John. I don’t hate anything about you. I want- I just don’t want you to go.”
A heavy breath escapes John as he softens despite himself. He reaches back to pat Sherlock’s head. “That’s the hormones talking, Sherlock.”
“It isn’t.” The arms squeeze tighter. “I’m not an idiot, John. I know my own mind.”
“You don’t want anything to do with this.”
“What if I do?”
John hesitates, frowning, then shoves at his friend. “Look at me.” He shoves again, till Sherlock loosens his grip to let John turn around. John opens his mouth to tell him he’s wrong…and then some instinct changes his mind. “Do you want me to spend my heat with you?” He stares intently up into Sherlock’s face, looking for cues. “It’s a week and a half, Sherlock. You can’t just pick up and wander off to do an experiment for hours at a time, or run off on a case and only come back when it suits you. I’d be counting on you.”
Sherlock looks down at him, lips set in a thin line. For a long moment he says nothing, until, “Yes.”
John blinks. It’s the only external sign that he’s so taken aback that his brain has just stopped working. “…Okay. Okay. Why?”
Sherlock hesitates. “I…” don’t know. John is so ready for the words that he almost hears them. But that’s not what’s on Sherlock’s face. Sherlock does know. He just doesn’t want to say it.
“Tell me,” John says gently.
Sherlock’s chest expands on a deep breath, and then sinks again. “I told you. I want you. You’re mine.”
Oh Christ. Sherlock has no idea what he’s saying. But he’s trying to say something he’s never put into words before, and John isn’t going to shut him down for that. “And what does that mean for you?”
Sherlock pulls himself up and visibly sets aside uncertainty. It rends John’s heart a little to see him so intent on getting it right. “John. There is nothing of you I don’t want to know about. I want to experience this. What you are. What it means for you.”
John finds himself revisiting his reasons for refusing to consider spending his heat with Sherlock. Maybe…maybe that was the wrong approach. He’d thought it would ruin everything, but this…John could work with this. It wouldn’t even break his heart for only having it the once. Not if this is what it would mean to Sherlock.
His first heat. Something shared with John.
John smiles. “Yes. Next time.” He runs the backs of his knuckles apologetically over Sherlock’s cheekbones.
And then chuckles when Sherlock all but yelps. “What? Why?”
“I’m still going to Russell’s, Sherlock. I promised him. And it’s about more than just sex. He needs a friend, and we can do this together.” He brushes his fingertips over Sherlock’s face again. “But next time, I’m all yours. If you don’t change your mind.” He cuts off Sherlock’s protest with a shake of his head. “Waiting is a good idea. You haven’t done this before. It’ll give us time to prepare.”
Sherlock stops him from turning to go by grabbing his wrist. “John!”
That wild look in his eyes; that’s all alpha. But it’s so lost that John can’t help but respond. “I’ll come back. I told you. This is home. You’re part of it.” Or no, maybe it’s not alpha at all. Maybe that’s just Sherlock, not sure what to do when his heart has a vote in his decisions.
He tugs gently against Sherlock’s hold. Sherlock lets his wrist slip from his grip. “Text me.”
John catches his fingers and squeezes by way of answer.
***
So, okay. Maybe he was wrong about Sherlock. John’s still not stupid enough to think this means more than it does. But what it does mean is enough.
Sherlock studies. John spends two weeks getting sneak-attacked by enthralled recitations of Sherlock’s latest discoveries about omega biology. He’s heard it all before, of course, but frankly, it’s a bit disgusting to watch Sherlock fill up in two weeks on what it took John months to learn in med school. Ugh, bloody geniuses.
The week after that, Sherlock decides he must consume every available datum on the eventuating condition of alpha heat.
John laughs. “Google ‘rutting.’”
The look on Sherlock’s face after he tries it has John practically howling. But when he isn’t put off by the flood of breathtakingly crude and catastrophically spelled fetish porn sites or his brand new computer virus, John dares to believe this might actually be a thing that’ll happen.
Sherlock gets his revenge, though, two days later. Gliding up behind John while he’s making tea, Sherlock speaks right into his ear in the most debauching purr John’s ever heard. “So I’m going to ‘breed’ you, am I, John?”
The tea bag misses the cup and hits the floor; the cup is only saved from following by Sherlock’s interception. There’s a broad, bracing hand resting on his waist, and John has to try twice before he manages words. “Still exploring the porn websites?”
Sherlock just laughs at him. John shoves an elbow into his ribs and snatches the mug back. “Berk.”
It’s a pejorative term for being mated by the same alpha through an entire heat, considered wildly slutty behaviour outside a long-term relationship as it’s the best possible way for an omega to end up pregnant. As it happens, the observant git, it’s also one of John’s more embarrassing kinks: mounted over and over again by one alpha intent on impregnating him. Not that he’s ready to think about kids, but then that’s why they call them fantasies.
They talk, often and late into the night, curled up in their armchairs with the lights dimmed and mugs of extra-sweet tea held tucked between their thighs. Bless Sherlock and his utter lack of boundaries. When he gets curious, ‘taboo’ becomes a meaningless word. He enquires into John’s experiences of heat in graphic detail, absorbing every scrap of information about what happens to his body, his mind, his emotions, and what he thinks of it all, along with what John knows of alpha heat and what Sherlock can expect once he encounters John’s pheromones. He probes into the intimacies of John’s sexual exploits and shares his own with equal nonchalance, exploring what they’ve tried, what they liked, what they’ve fantasized about.
It should probably be more awkward than it is, chatting explicitly with his best friend about their sexual histories, but Sherlock is so offhanded and interested about the whole thing that all John can feel is a sort of unburdening. It dawns on him that he’s never talked so freely about sex—his sex, that is, the sex that he has—with anyone.
“It sounds appalling,” Sherlock says out of the blue one night. “Heat,” he elaborates to John’s confused look. His nose wrinkles. “How do you put up with being so vulnerable?”
A smile spreads across John’s face because by Jove, the boy’s got it. “That’s why I spend it with people I trust.” He raises his eyebrows pointedly at Sherlock. “People I want to share myself with.” He doesn’t look away from Sherlock’s eyes till he sees comprehension settle in.
A fine porcelain pink tint colours Sherlock’s cheekbones, neck, and forehead. “Oh.”
“Yes.” John sips complacently at his tea.
The stuffing in Sherlock’s chair crunches and creaks while he fidgets in restless thought. After a bit, John gets up and leaves him to it. They can talk about sex in explicit detail till it rains in Baghdad and Sherlock will never flinch, because it’s all just the workings of the machine, but now they’ve stumbled into feelings. Give the man some time to process that.
He comes back from his shower half an hour later, wrapped in his dressing gown and still dripping a bit, and pauses before Sherlock’s chair. “Still thinking?”
Sherlock looks up at him, eyes darting over John’s body in a startled way that puts a grin on John’s face. Apparently John leaving the room is news to him. Again.
But he straightens in his chair to stare gravely up at John. “I can’t help but wonder if you aren’t making a serious mistake.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m not a nice man, John.”
“No, that’s true.” John uses the collar of his robe to wipe away the water that’s tickling the nape of his neck. “You’re a bit of a dick, really. Tell me, Sherlock. How far out of your way would you go to keep me from being hurt?”
The question catches Sherlock—here’s a rare one—off-guard. He sits there with his mouth open, hands braced flat on the arms of the chair.
“I can answer that for you,” John continues, as if his always-poised flatmate weren’t gaping like a fish in front of him. “Because you’ve gone fairly far in the past. True, you do fuck up sometimes, but Sherlock.” He plants his hands just in front of Sherlock’s on the chair’s arms and leans down into his friend’s personal space. He may be smiling. It might be a bit menacing. “Vulnerable is a far cry from helpless. If you ever start thinking I can’t take care of myself, then it will be my very great pleasure to disabuse you of that notion.”
Sherlock is frozen. Riveted on John’s face, his eyes sharp and dilated to midnight. His mouth works. After a moment, he finds his voice. “I would never be so foolish.”
John’s smile softens. “Yes, you would. Don’t worry, I’ll kick your arse for it.”
An answering smile steals across Sherlock’s face. One hand comes up to brush along the side of John’s neck, chasing stray runnels of water.
John’s eyelids flutter. “Still haven’t changed your mind, then?” he asks, a touch breathy.
“No,” Sherlock answers. His voice is nearly sub-sonic.
John catches himself swaying in towards Sherlock without meaning to. He drops his chin before the movement can become anything regrettable, and withdraws with a smile, pretending that he’d only been shifting his weight.
In the kitchen, safely out of Sherlock’s line of sight, he scruffs his hands roughly over his face. Get hold of yourself, John.
He starts making tea. With conviction. Using the familiar patterns to sort himself and shove things back down where they belong. For an alpha, heat needn’t be anything more meaningful than fornication. An omega doesn’t have that luxury. It’s always a risk. It’s always giving someone else power over his life and his choices. He can either hand that power over to a complete stranger, with a connection that’s hollow and selfish and stupid, or he can loan it to someone who values it for the gift it is. He’ll never disrespect himself with anything less.
That’s a kind of love, that bond of shared trust and appreciation. But it’s not the same kind of love as sharing a kiss with his flatmate in their sitting room. Sherlock asked for his heat, not that.
***
John can smell everything, and it’s disgusting. By the time he gets home from work, his nostrils have been treated to chunks of asphalt, ozone, construction dust, about 50 different cuisines, medical disinfectant, and every single person he’s shared space with today—if one more man had tried to sidle up to him on the Tube, bodies would’ve started going out the window—all stirred together with the sticky animal sweetness of his own rising arousal.
The concoction’s got John’s stomach doing somersaults. If poor Sherlock has to catch a whiff of this, it’ll send him into a tailspin; he’s never had to deal with heightened senses before. Fucking heat. It’s sold up as a transcendently sexy experience, but it doesn’t feel very damned sexy when it’s cramming London’s stench into his sinuses. He also feels revoltingly slippery and squishy, and prickly with sweat, and his clothes are stifling torture devices designed specifically to soak up all the gunk and set him itching in terribly inappropriate places.
The first item on his to-do list once he gets home is ‘shower.’
It’s a spiritual unburdening to ditch his clothes and their cloud of funk. Not to mention that being clothed right now feels like wearing a belt sander. His skin is so sensitized that a crease in his jeans feels like a gouge. He’s optimized for the caress of air over his body, the satin of running water; he wants to be touched and kissed and stroked, not chafed to death by rough seams.
Oh, god, he’s looking forward to rolling around in 750 thread count Egyptian cotton. Yeah, he’s a big enough man to admit to lusting after Sherlock’s sheets.
He hits the shower spray with a sigh of relief…and then spends a bit coughing up the noseful of water he’s just inhaled, but it’s a small price to pay for freedom. The nauseating odours sluice away till he’s left with nothing but the metal tang of warm water in old pipes and the familiar bouquet of 221B: old wood, carpet dust, and a fridge that could use a cleaning, mingled with himself, Sherlock and his chemicals, Mrs Hudson and her perfumed hand creams. Comforting. Safe. Home.
He’d meant to be quick, but the water is exquisite, pouring over him in waves of living silk, and Sherlock’s scent wraps around him in a promise of the man himself. Before he knows it, the greedy tingle inside him is building into an ache. John arches his back to stretch his pelvic muscles, but it’s as much a tease as a help. A couple of squeezes to his dick produce a similar result—definitely nice, but not the main event just now—so he slides a hand back over his hip, savouring the contours of his own body, to tease at his entrance. Even with water sheeting over him, he’s slick with an abundance of his natural lubricant; wet and yielding to a press inward. The penetration when he pushes his fingers in is a delicious reprieve. He can’t get very deep, but mmm, yeah, the stretch of his anal muscles is—
When the bathroom door bangs open, he jerks them out and begins to turn, but Sherlock—clothes and all—crowds into the shower and shoves him forward into the tiles.
“I could smell you when I opened the front door,” he growls, grinding against John’s arse.
John steadies himself against the wall because Christ, that voice gone dark with arousal is a crime. Is he going to sound like that the entire time? Good god, how’s John meant to cope with that?
Sherlock’s alpha scent begins to rise and mingle with John’s as he wrestles his belt off, struggling against John’s back. His clothes are going to be wrecked, John thinks randomly; he’s catching most of the spray. He clearly doesn’t give a damn, though, and neither does John when Sherlock’s cock nuzzles into the cleft of his arse. John’s pretty sure there’s something he should be remembering just now, but he’s too focused on, “Come on come on yes just push a bit more,” to be able to think about anything else.
Sherlock obeys. His tip presses in, spreads John open, and oh Jesus, that tingle goes straight up through his synapses. He groans as the fog of desperation clears from his mind. It’s just what he needed—
“Fuck!” He bucks Sherlock off him and shoves away from the wall, because his goddamned brain just started working again. Sherlock bounces off the glass splash guard with a yelp. A struggle for traction follows, the two of them slipping and scrambling not to crack their heads open on the tiles.
Once he’s caught himself, braced spread-eagled between opposite shower walls, Sherlock scowls through his sopping fringe. “John, what the hell!”
That’s why they can’t do this here; they’ll kill themselves. Besides, Sherlock just got home. He may be out of his mind with lust, but his body can’t possibly have had time to respond to John’s pheromones yet. It’s not like alphas have an on/off switch to become multi-orgasmic sex machines. He needs time to adjust or he’ll sprain something vital.
Very, very vital...oh, look at it. John’s vaguely aware that he’s been posed some kind of question, but language takes a flying header off the parapets at the sight before him: Sherlock, water dripping down his cheek from the coils of hair stuck to his face, his white—transparent! transparent white—shirt plastered to him. His trousers are also notably plastered, where they’re not gaping open with the dark head of a very generous, very promising cock peeping coyly out...
He manages to close his mouth before he starts coughing on water again. “Yes. Right. No! Bed!” Egyptian cotton sheets and naked Sherlock. Right. Goals are important. “Bed, Sherlock! This is a terrible place to start this.”
Sherlock’s mouth puckers into its ‘I’m about to start complaining’ shape and…honestly? Now? John seizes the lapels of his ruined jacket and starts conducting him backwards out of the shower and out the bathroom door.
Stewing in the hormonal soup of early alpha heat, Sherlock fights daftly against being steered. Oh, look at him, what a hot mess; jacket drenched, shirt drenched, trousers clinging and revealing and halfway down his hips and John needs to make a list of ways to get Sherlock soaked to the skin more often. His eyes are dark, so hazed with lust that John’s not sure he sees anything. John wants to eat him. He wants some mutual consuming going on. He needs all this stuff to get out of his way. “You are wearing too many clothes.”
Sherlock takes the hint and loses his shoes when John kicks at them, tugging John close for stability while he toes them off. John runs his hands over the provocatively wet shirt, appreciating the cool slickness coating the firm warmth of the body underneath. He tackles the poor overtaxed buttons, hands unsteady with desire for all that tempting skin, while Sherlock begins nuzzling along his neck. John shivers at the possessive gesture; it’s intensely intimate, being scented by an alpha in heat. His scent reveals so much about him, and with Sherlock’s perceptiveness, John may as well lay out his entire life story.
They’re only steps from the bed, and John’s just got the last buttons undone when Sherlock goes from scenting to tasting, his tongue stroking at John’s pulse point. John has to grab at Sherlock’s shoulders to keep from crumpling. He hangs there, wide-eyed and paralyzed with indecision between ‘stop’ or ‘more’, while Sherlock bathes his throat, collarbones, and shoulders, lapping beads of water from his skin in broad, flat strokes. Fingers cup John’s arse and dig in, pulling him flush against Sherlock’s enthusiastic erection and setting John wriggling with their purposeful kneading.
Heightened senses. Sherlock is new to them. The taste and texture of a willing omega must be going off in his brain like fireworks, but he’s still in the early stages of alpha heat. While John is entirely prepared to be fucked till he passes out with Sherlock’s cock locked inside him, Sherlock will hurt himself if he tries it now. The craving is twisting in John’s pelvis and tapping at every neuron in his brain with insistent little spider fingers, but tormentful as it is, he can’t, yet. Sherlock needs a bit more winding up first.
So John’ll fucking wind him. He grabs vengefully at the collar of Sherlock’s suit jacket. “Too many clothes, I told you.”
“John? What-” Probably good the fabric’s wet, or it’d tear with the wrench John gives it. Sherlock splutters as it catches tight around his upper arms. With a twist of his fist into the yoke, John pins Sherlock’s arms neatly behind him. Sherlock jerks angrily. “Let me go!”
John reaches back with his free hand to touch himself, unable to bite back a cry as he works his fingers back into his fluid-slicked channel. When they’re good and coated, he presses two fingers to Sherlock’s lips.
Sherlock’s eyes actually roll back in his head as John’s fingers push into his mouth. John can sympathize as he’s sucked greedily deeper, till Sherlock’s soft palate is flexing against the tips of his throbbing fingers while that filthy velvet tongue ripples against the pads. His mouth is lined with sin. Somebody’s making an absolutely humiliating noise and John can’t for the life of him figure out which of them it is.
He thrusts his fingers in and out a few times, the stubborn vacuum of Sherlock’s mouth dragging at him, because Jesus, somebody needs to get some thrusting in or John’s going to melt into a quivering puddle, and then...he pulls out. He’s not sure why; maybe as a sexy little experiment, but probably because he’s a needy bastard who wants Sherlock to share his pain. Either way, satisfaction clutches at his tailbone when Sherlock lunges after them with an angry yelp. Those obscenely full lips wrap around him to re-establish their seal, while behind them, his teeth sink into John’s flesh in gentle warning. John might actually die from the way that tongue is writhing around his fingers, exploring each ridge and crevice, searching out every trace of omega lubricant. Sherlock moans when he finds one, that indecent voice vibrating through the bones of John’s hand and oh, there’s the limit.
Ignoring the rake of teeth over his knuckles, he yanks his hand out of Sherlock’s mouth and grabs the sodden folds of his shirt, falling back to drag Sherlock down with him into the bed sheets. 750 count, yes, Christ; John squirms shamelessly, rolling in the luxuriance of expensive fabric under him with Sherlock sprawled warm and heavy on top of him. “Fucking gorgeous,” he announces.
Sherlock’s startled laugh rumbles into John’s shoulder, as though he hadn’t expected sex to be entertaining. A twist of his shoulders shakes the jacket off and to the floor, then he pulls himself up to his elbows over John, locking gazes with a look of intent that makes John shiver with a delicious sort of fear. He wants to wrap his legs around Sherlock’s hips to make sure he can’t do something stupid, like leave, but that reminds him: there’s an obstacle left to deal with.
He pokes a knee into Sherlock’s flank. “Trousers off.”
Sherlock literally snarls, but even his powers of sulking cannot evaporate cloth, so he shoves himself grumpily to his knees to yank at them. It takes some prying. The fabric parts from his hips and thighs with a sucking sound, and then he literally has to peel off the moulded-on black silk shorts underneath. John swallows convulsively at the image of Sherlock straining in gleaming black bas relief.
Sherlock tries to shimmy out of the mess once he works it all loose, but it clumps into a wet knot at his knees, forcing him to flop sideways to work at it. John watches those long pale limbs thrash around, struggling with their inanimate captor, and starts laughing.
Sherlock pauses to glare, mid-flail. He’s arched backwards over John’s left thigh with his hips in the air, head jammed into the duvet and locks of dark hair glommed messily onto his face.
“It’d be easier if you just stand up,” John suggests, grinning.
Sherlock snorts his disdain for that idea. Instead he sticks his legs up to kick till his trousers fly off to splat on the floor somewhere, leaving John laughing so hard he briefly forgets that he’s in urgent need of fucking. Socks follow, and then Sherlock rolls back to his knees with a triumphant quirk of eyebrow, hands on hips forming a tasteful, and very deliberate, arrow downwards.
“Oh.” John licks his lips, grin going from amused to epiphanous. Is that a word? Who the hell cares? Because Sherlock’s cock is at least nine inches long, standing out from his body at just about a right angle, and delectably thick. The base is swollen slightly where Sherlock’s knot will expand when he comes, and suddenly all John’s got room for in his head is how that’ll feel inside him.
“Foreplay’s over. Get down here and fuck me now.”
He tries to pull Sherlock to him and can’t quite process it when Sherlock resists, catching himself on one hand. “Ah. How should we…?”
For the love of God.
Sherlock shouts in surprise as John tackles him, his own shriek of frustration stifled with a bite to that insufferably elegant collarbone. Sherlock instinctively grabs him as they roll together, John ending up draped on top of him. Perfect.
Sherlock doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, John tells himself. He’s trying, bless his overdeveloped thinky bits; he’s shaking with self-restraint under John. The thought of how much that must cost him flows down John’s spine with molten affection. He tangles his fingers in Sherlock’s hair to look him in the eyes. “You’re wonderful.” And finally, finally he gives in to the long-denied urge to kiss him.
John kisses deep with the joy of long-awaited discovery. Let Sherlock think heat makes him mushy. He’s ached for geologic ages to learn the plush mobility of Sherlock’s lips beneath his, the mocha and mint flavour of his mouth as their tongues curl together, the brush of his fingertips through the wet hair on the back of John’s neck. Sherlock kisses back like he’s trying to devour John in return, alpha-hungry and demanding, and John doesn’t mind if he takes charge so long as he can get more of the dizzyingly layered, magnificent scent that is Sherlock. Mouths and noses fitted together, John can taste Sherlock’s diet, his habits, his desires and fears. He can taste the nicotine he’s been sweating out since he quit smoking again two weeks ago, and the electrolyte tang of his habitual sleep deprivation, and he’d swear, he’d swear he can taste the cold cut-glass sparkle of that incredible mind.
It’s intoxicating. Despairingly, John recognizes his instant addiction.
With another hard kiss in wordless praise of the glory spread beneath him, he gathers himself up onto his knees. Sherlock latches onto his hips, fingers digging into the muscle, as though he’s afraid John’s about to get up and leave. John reaches down to lay one hand comfortingly over Sherlock’s, lacing their fingers, and reaches back with his other hand to grope behind him.
Sherlock’s eyes light with comprehension—starlight, John thinks, and prays it’s just the hormones—and he begins guiding John down.
John whimpers when he feels the broad head of Sherlock’s cock poke into the cleft of his arse. It’s all he can do to keep from shoving down and hurting himself on it. “Sherlock!”
Sometimes John is unbearably glad for Sherlock’s perceptiveness. One big hand shifts to wrap like an iron band around the back of John’s thigh, holding him up. John nods gratefully. “Slow,” he sighs. “Give us time to adjust. You’ll feel it.”
Then it becomes Not John’s Problem, because the world smudges into irrelevance as that cock nuzzles ravishingly into him. It’s galvanizing, his soft tissues being pressed open by that hardness, sending a sweet electric tingling to his extremities. His back bows as the current of pleasure pulls him taut.
“You...angelic fucking...oh. Oh, yes, just like that.”
He rocks into the penetration of his vaginal opening with a delighted shudder, Sherlock’s cock massaging at that tight ache with every roll of his hips. Sherlock strokes deeper at the same time John gives him an encouraging shimmy. They both hiss at the resulting jab. Sherlock’s hands bite retributively into John’s quadriceps; John takes the hint and lets him take control.
It’s like dancing, moving to Sherlock’s lead, letting himself be guided by the phallus inside him as well as the hands on his body. Sherlock is fucking telepathic when he applies his full focus; John feels laid open, like his every thought is visible to those starlit eyes. He’d swear he can feel them fucking him. Sherlock guides his hips in little circles as he breaches deeper and deeper by inches, riding the rhythms of John’s body as though he can feel John’s every ache, craving, and stretch for himself. It’s perfect.
Sherlock grins up at him, eyes radiant and with his devil’s halo of dark curls spread on the pillow around him. “You’re exquisite, John,” he says, that gorgeous rich voice crumbling at the edges. “You should have warned me. You know how hard it is not to roll us over and just take you right now?” He tugs John down onto him as his knot begins to swell, laughing at the way John gasps and throws his head back, and repeats in a softer voice, “You really should have warned me.”
The knot isn’t big enough to inhibit John’s movement yet, but it’s an undeniable presence. That’s Sherlock. Sherlock occupying him, nestling into him, rearranging his body to fit the knot growing slowly inside him. The flawlessness makes John’s eyes water.
Sherlock’s fingers skim through the tear tracks on his face, then down to tap at his chest. “Breathe, John.”
John breathes. Then he laughs, because they’re together, arse to groin, and he’s leaning low over Sherlock, shoulders curled and their faces less than a foot apart, and fuck heat, because this is something better and altogether more…everything.
This is making love. John loves this man, and he wants everything Sherlock is willing to give him.
That glorious cock is standing inside him like a girder braced through his core. John is so close he can’t stop careening, bearing his entire body down on Sherlock’s burgeoning knot till he’s glossed with sweat, clawing towards orgasm, and he’s so close but he can’t quite… He whimpers frantically. God, fuck, it’s not fair that he can be this turned on and still not be able to get there.
Sherlock’s hands grip painfully into John’s neck and the small of his back. It’s a struggle to lift his head from Sherlock’s chest, just enough to drink him in. Sherlock’s body is hard and gleaming with sweat against John’s, shaking with the strain of reaching for his own climax. If he weren't almost burning hot and thrumming under John’s hands, he’d think he was impaled on an erotic sculpture. Sherlock looks helpless with his own need, a sacrifice to pleasure, long throat bared like debauchery’s battle flag.
Sweat drips from John’s eyelashes to roll down into Sherlock’s jugular notch. He thinks it’s sweat. He doesn’t think he can spare the focus to cry, though he can feel sobs pooling at the back of his throat. It’s beyond bearing, the feeling of their bodies juddering together, hardly able to breathe. He reaches out to sweep away the tendrils of hair that’ve stuck to Sherlock’s face. They cling to John’s hand, tiny begging tongues of silk, and with a shuddering cry, he’s dragged under by the first convulsions of orgasm.
It rolls on and on through him while Sherlock keeps right on taking him, leaving him wracked and mewling with pleasure against the warm shoulder beneath him. The passage of time is beyond him, but he recognizes Sherlock holding him tight and panting with lust and exertion, unspeakably turned on by John caught twisting around him in ecstasy. The contractions are still shaking him when Sherlock gives a full-body shudder and his cock pulses hard inside John.
Every throb stretches John wider, intensifying the ripples of pleasure till a second orgasm crashes through him. This time he screams—Sherlock’s shout follows just a beat after—because his body is tightening fiercely on Sherlock’s fully formed knot, spiking sensation through his prostate and driving Sherlock’s tip straight into his G-spot. He whites out with pain/pleasure and snaps upright, spine curving back like a bow.
Sherlock drags him back down. John goes limp on top of him, letting the knot have its way with him.
They lie there that way for a few minutes, trembling with reaction; overheated, overstimulated, and so slick with sweat that Sherlock has to squeeze John to keep him from sliding off with the movement of their heaving chests.
Eventually, once his mind has crawled back into his head, John strokes a hand down Sherlock’s flank. “Alright?”
Sherlock nods. After a second, he goes to the effort of lifting his head to look John in the face. “I’m…” Fine is obviously going to be the next word out of his mouth, but then he stops with a quizzical expression. “It’s not exactly what I expected.”
John laughs softly into Sherlock’s shoulder. “Yeah. I did warn you it wasn’t like normal sex.”
It’s a gentle ‘I told you so,’ and Sherlock snorts accordingly.
Sherlock’s brain seems to be coming back online too. Draped across him like a scarf, John watches, admiring as always, while he takes stock of their situation. Big, tapered hands sweep soothingly over his back and arms, and then Sherlock shifts a bit beneath him, apparently accounting for all his limbs. John feels the startled little twitches inside him when Sherlock registers the knot, but the experimental hip roll that follows is a lot more obvious, drawing gasps from both of them. John tries to relax again and let it settle back into place.
Sherlock raises a hand to stroke John’s damp hair. “These other orgasms I’m meant to be having, they’ll be weaker than that first one.” John hums in agreement. “That’s covering a very wide range of potential.” John snickers, and Sherlock smiles at him, looking a bit smug. “And how many can you expect to have?”
“Oh,” John drawls, “many.” He gives a faint, cautious wriggle of his own hips, and hums again at the feeling of being anchored. He’s already aroused enough to come again without much effort; he can feel Sherlock’s heartbeat, fluttering sweet and intimate against his prostate and vaginal entrance and making the head of his cock twitch faintly against John’s G-spot. He’s tingling everywhere, behind his elbows, across his palms and the pads of his feet and his entire back. It’d be a bit embarrassing, if he could bring himself to feel anything but smug about the copious amounts of excellent sex he’s looking forward to sharing with the most remarkable man he’s ever known.
After a moment, he lifts his head from Sherlock’s chest again. “Is that the shower still running?”
***
Dawn is glimmering through the windows when John wakes, face-down in the bed sheets. Sherlock’s knot has gone down in him again, and now he’s draped asleep over John’s back like a great, decadent cat.
It’s nice to lie there and listen to the heavy, reassuring sigh of Sherlock’s breathing, but it feels a bit like sleeping in a toaster oven. After a moment, John pushes himself up and tilts till Sherlock slides off to one side. He shivers pleasurably at the sensation of Sherlock’s cock sliding free, and then rolls over to snuggle in against him.
Sherlock’s arms tighten around John as if to make sure he can’t change his mind. Once he’s got John snugged in satisfactorily, he gives a contented, purring rumble that makes John smile against his shoulder.
The need won’t lift entirely till the end of his heat, but the intensity of it rises and falls. Sometimes it’s all John can do to lie twisting in the sheets, begging shamelessly, but right now the hunger isn’t strong enough to overcome this delicious sense of exhaustion. Sherlock is a warm weight of silk, the bed sheets caress and wind possessively around them both, and John can almost fancy he’s died and entered a hedonistic heaven, surrounded by the taste and feel and scent of this man who drives him mad in body and mind, whether he’s in heat or out of it.
Sherlock smells like smoke and spice and sandalwood. He tastes like salt and sex and coffee. He’s warm and heavy, smooth and sweaty and earthy, real in a way John’s not sure he ever entirely believed in before. Curled against him like this, John can feel the ebb and flow of his breathing and the tiny burbles of his digestive tract, and the idea of ever letting go of him is such a physical pain that he chooses not to face it. Instead, he lifts his head to nuzzle, seeking Sherlock’s lips mainly by feel, wanting to kiss him until they forget how to breathe by themselves.
Sherlock kisses back, deep and lazy, like they have all the time in the world and no reason to ever stop. For now, John has this. A week, a little more, when Sherlock is his, and John can pretend, down in a quiet little corner of himself, that his affection is more than friendship and chemistry. And after that...he doesn’t need to think about ‘after’ until it gets here.