Archive of Our Own

He holds the gun steady with both hands even as the other four men advance on him. There's a wall to his back: good that he doesn't have to worry about any attacks from behind but terrible in that he's stuck, that he absolutely has nowhere to retreat.

"Just be good," one of them coos, "Just be a good little omega."

"Fuck you," John snaps, leveling his gun on the man. Can't shoot until they really move in on him--he's only got two bullets and there's four of them and where the hell was--

A shadow drops behind the four men. It takes only a moment for them to register the unmistakable scent of a furious alpha.

"About time," John says, and everything turns into a blur of action. Sherlock's snarling, literal goddamn snarling with his lips peeled back from his teeth as he forgets that he's got a gun of his own and opts for fingernails and knife. One of the men staggers away with his hands clutched to a jagged gash across his neck and Sherlock screams this terrible guttural roar that John's never heard before.

He can't shoot--not with Sherlock locked in the middle of the frenzy. John barely sees the flash of a knife lifted over the back of Sherlock's neck before he's on the move and slamming into the knifeholder's side, tackling him into the wall. He puts his gun to the man's side but before he can pull the trigger, there is a crushing pain at the back of his head.

Everything goes black.

~

When he comes back to, his head hurts like hell. It's dark. John's been in far too many hospitals to mistake the scent of hypoallergenic laundry detergent and hand sanitizer for anything else.

He closes his eyes and lifts a heavy hand to touch the stitches at the side of his head. He didn't think he'd been hit there.

"John?"

John grunts. Too tired to talk.

He hears the scrape of chair against floor. Then Sherlock's head dips the mattress next to John's hip and a hand settles on his stomach. John exhales and puts his own hand over Sherlock's.

~

When he sees Sherlock properly, the first thing out of his mouth is: "You colossal idiot!" because the stupid moron is sitting in John's room in a hospital gown of his own with a truly spectacular cast on his left arm and more stitches than John would care to count. When Sherlock opens his mouth to argue, John counters immediately with, "You had a gun."

Sherlock scowls.

"You stupid alpha," John says because there's a bruise on Sherlock's cheekbone and who the hell knew how much worse the entire affair could have been? They'd been lucky.

Sherlock frowns at the ground and scratches idly at his stitches.

John sighs and shifts over on the bed. "Come here."

Sherlock stares at him. Then he slowly and unsteadily gets to his feet to shuffle over. He looks down at John and says, "There's not enough space."

"Shut up," John says, "And come here."

Sherlock obliges and carefully gets onto the bed. John puts his head on Sherlock's shoulder, tucking it under his chin, and loops an arm around Sherlock's side.

"John," Sherlock says. His voice is a rumble against John's cheek. John presses his face into Sherlock's neck, taking in the familiar scent. He'd had fleetingly imagined himself doing this--moments when they looked at each other after a wildly successful case and John had thought--

"I'm sorry," John murmurs: for this, for shouting, for what had happened, for a million things he can't articulate. He breathes Sherlock in, can't help the way that he pulls Sherlock closer.

"I'm just sorry--" Sherlock says, "--that I couldn't kill all of them."

"Did you find it?" John asks, "The omega ring,"

"Lestrade eventually found it. I left to track you."

John lifts his head and noses along the underside of Sherlock's jaw. Sherlock lets out a shuddering sigh and John puts his closed mouth over the quickening pulse in Sherlock's neck. Sherlock's fingers are in his hair, Sherlock's breath against his temple, and yes: John knows what this means.

It's been leading up to this all along. It was only ever foolish to fight it as long as they did.

~

John's tried charting multiple times but he always forgets after a week or so in--despite his estrus only happening four times a year--or maybe because it only happened four times a year. Every time he has to fend off leering commuters on the tube or make awkward excuses to the overenthusiastic store clerk, he resolves to do it with more dedication that he always forgets by the end of his heat and it's a good few months until the next one.

But he's never had such inconvenient timing before: halfway into an afternoon with back-to-back appointments at the surgery, he'd noticed that his patient (who had been moments before been complaining about feeling feverish all week) had gone rather quiet while John'd been typing into the computer and started eying him rather speculatively. A quick confirmation on the patient records that he was an alpha and John had excused himself to find something to hide his scent and another physician who could take over for the rest of the afternoon.

But all his irritation fled him the moment that he opened the door to 221B and realized that this would be the first heat that he and Sherlock would share.

~

Sherlock's head snaps up from where he'd been reading something, the moment that John walks in.

John closes the door after himself. He watches the way that Sherlock's head slowly turns, the way his nostrils flare to catch John's scent more fully. His lips part, breathing in audibly through his mouth like he could taste John just by breathing the air.

John locks the door. He takes a step forward.

Sherlock rises to his feet, eyes fixed on John. His body is responding, pheromones released and mixing in with the heavy scent of John's impending heat--just a tiny taste of what was to come. John licks his lips.

"Stop there," John says. Sherlock's eyes meet his, and then he stops, his entire body leaning forward towards John. He has a hand on the back of John's chair. John is hyperaware of every movement: the way that Sherlock's chest rises and falls with every desperate lungful of air, the tiny tremors in the clutch of his fingers.

John's body has been slowly dialing up the temperature ever since leaving the hospital, but walking into the same room as Sherlock felt like cranking up the heat within moments. His clothes are uncomfortable, rubbing against suddenly oversensitive skin. He starts to unbutton his shirt, eyes on Sherlock the entire time.

Sherlock makes a sound between a growl and a whine with his eyes fixed on the expanse of skin that John is slowly revealing to him. He makes a movement forward but John just takes a step back--even as his body is screaming for him to throw himself at Sherlock--and Sherlock's eyes flick briefly up to John's face as he makes a visible effort to control himself. Sherlock's pyjama bottoms do nothing to hide his interest and John tries to keep his eyes fixed on Sherlock's face because he knows if he looks down, he'll give in.

John lets his shirt drop to the ground. Sherlock's grip tightens on the chair and his voice is a low rasp, "Bedroom."

"You first," John says, undoing his belt. Sherlock's eyes are glued to John's hands. John has no idea if he's even listening. "Go the long way. Around the kitchen table."

"John," Sherlock whines and he takes a step forward. John yanks his hands away from his trousers with some effort. Sherlock's eyes meet his face again and he seems to understand. He starts to move.

John undoes the button of his fly. He slowly unzips his trousers and lets them slip down his legs before stepping out of them. There is a dark spot on the front of his briefs where the tip of his cock is pressed against the cotton, and a much wetter spot around the back where he's been leaking lubricant since the moment he walked in.

"I want," Sherlock says, and leaves the thought unfinished. His eyes are dark, his hands opening and closing as he stares.

"Take off your shirt," John says. It takes a long moment but Sherlock does it--pulls his shirt over his head with some effort. He's halfway down the hall now and John takes a step forward, hooking a finger under the waistband of his own briefs.

"Good," he says, backing Sherlock into the bedroom, "You're doing so well, Sherlock."

Sherlock closes his eyes as the back of his knees hit the bed, his lips moving wordlessly like he's trying to control himself. John pushes him down, bracketing Sherlock's head with his arms as he crawls onto the bed. Sherlock's hands come up automatically, sliding down John's back until his fingers are digging into the cleft of John's arse, slippery with lubricant. John pushes back against Sherlock's hand, breathing hard against Sherlock's collarbone.

"I've never--" Sherlock says and bites off his words with a whimper as John's hand slips past his pants and finds his cock. John bites against Sherlock's chest and mouths his way down his stomach. Sherlock pulls his hands away reluctantly, bringing his fingers up to smell them before slipping a few of them in his mouth. It's the hottest thing that John's seen and he pulls Sherlock's trousers halfway down his thighs before he presses his nose into the crease of Sherlock's thigh, fingers stroking against the base of Sherlock's cock where the knot is slowly starting to fill.

"God," John hears himself say, and Sherlock spreads his legs, hips moving of their own accord towards John's face. John licks around the head of the cock and barely gets more than a few inches of it into his mouth before he has to pull back, feeling absurdly empty--he needs--

"Please," Sherlock whines, "I don't know--please John." His hips keep moving restlessly, his eyes squeezed shut as his breathing shallows out.

John presses a kiss to the side of Sherlock's cock, then crawls up the length of Sherlock's body to kiss his face. Sherlock's fingers catch the back of his neck and John murmurs, "trust me," against his lips, "trust me," against his jaw, "trust me," against his neck until he pushes himself up and reaches back.

Sherlock's eyes are wide open as John sinks down on him, slowly lowering himself and holding Sherlock's hips down with one hand so he doesn't jerk into John too quickly. It's painful--the stretch--but exhilarating, the way that Sherlock disappears into him, inch by glorious inch, until that emptiness is gone and he's just stuffed, arsehole barely nudging up against the swell of Sherlock's knot. And he knows he'll take that too--probably scream as Sherlock shoved it into him--but for now he adjusts to having Sherlock inside him.

"So full," John groans, lifting up and back down, shuddering again as his arsehole stretches a tiny bit more as he pushes against the knot. They're both breathing hard, one of Sherlock's hands gripping John's hip, the other clutching into the sheets. "God," John breathes, barely coherent, "If you could see yourself."

Sherlock breathes hard, makes a sound like he's sobbing John's name.

John moves faster. His own cock is smearing all over Sherlock's stomach and he's pushing down a little harder every time he goes down. At some point, Sherlock's hand wraps around his cock, thumbs across the tip and pressure all the way down before sliding back up to start all over again and John feels it meld with his building orgasm, lightning to wildfire.

He can't count the number of times he pushes against that knot until he finally does it--until it finally pops in and John has never felt like this--like he was being cleaved in half with the most pleasurable pain, sparking down every nerve in his body. Sherlock cries out beneath him and John rolls his hips, milking Sherlock for every last drop that he can get.

Ragged breathing. John collapses onto Sherlock, still joined. Sherlock relaxes for only a moment before he's tensing up again, a whimper muffled by John's skin as he comes again inside John.

John strokes the side of Sherlock's face, kisses him in encouragement.

Sherlock lets out a weak laugh before tensing up again, his fingers against John's back. John presses his forehead against Sherlock's cheek and rides it out.

~

A few hours later John wakes to Sherlock's tongue in his arse and the spike of arousal spilling into the air. The laugh that comes out of John's mouth turns into a whimper.

Sherlock had always been a fast learner.