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For years after his estrangement from Mycroft, Sherlock hadn’t had anyone to talk to except his skull. Not the most convivial of companions, but at least the skull didn’t tell him that he was working through some kind of childhood sexual trauma or ask him if he was on drugs again. Now, he could talk to John. But as grateful as he was for John’s companionship, for the way he encouraged Sherlock and praised him, for the way he always made observations which, even if they weren’t correct, helped Sherlock make the correct deduction, he regretted having asked John to move in with him. Because having a flatmate made it infinitely harder to keep his secret.
The conversation during their first meal at Angelo’s had been excruciating. Sherlock had said that girlfriends weren’t really his area, and then John had asked him if he had a boyfriend, and his heart had started pounding and he’d stammered something about how he wasn’t looking while he tried not to imagine what the thing might do if he tried to date.
He’d initially feared retaliation for inviting John to live with him. But the assaults had actually been … gentler … since John had begun sleeping upstairs. They still happened every night; four minutes and thirty seconds after he went to bed, the tendrils and hands rose up from the mattress, tied him down, then forced his body to take pleasure in his violation. Sherlock had always been relatively quiet, knowing no noises were permitted except the occasional moan. Now, he stifled even those, not wanting to draw John’s attention to his … predicament, and he locked his door at night. The thing had obliged him for the first month, almost as though it didn’t want to draw attention to itself. But recently, it had begun to treat Sherlock’s silence as a challenge or game, seemingly trying to make him cry out. He’d managed the last few weeks by biting his pillow, lips, whatever was at hand. When that failed, he opened his mouth and put out his tongue, enticing it to fuck his throat. Usually the thing succumbed to temptation and shoved in a thick tendril which muffled his screams. He hoped if John heard anything, he’d just assume Sherlock was masturbating. But even that thought made him uncomfortable.
There were times Sherlock wished he could confide in John, but he didn’t dare. Not even Mycroft had believed him - Mycroft who had always, always listened - and Mycroft had known Sherlock his whole life. John had known Sherlock a mere three months. No, he’d think Sherlock was deranged, or worse, lying to get attention. He would move out, and then Sherlock would truly be alone again.
Other times, he wished he could kiss John. The thing had no mouth to speak of, and Sherlock had never been kissed. Sometimes, when he saw John’s tongue flicking over his lips, he wondered what it might be like to have that tongue flick into his mouth, what it might feel like to run his fingers through John’s short, golden hair while their mouths pressed together.
He thought John might be amenable. He’d certainly seemed interested at Angelo’s.
You’re unattached. Like me. Fine. Good.
John, I think you should know that - I’m being assaulted nightly by a tentacled monster who would likely kill anyone I brought home with me - I consider myself married to my work.
John seemed to interpret that to mean that Sherlock was asexual, which he supposed he was, in a manner of speaking. Even if the assaults ever ended and he had the opportunity, he doubted he’d want to have sex with anyone, ever. He’d had enough sex for a hundred lifetimes. But he didn’t think he’d been born this way.
When he’d been at his lowest, when he’d realized that drugs made the attacks bearable but that they made his life unbearable, he’d wondered if he might be better off dead. But when he’d leveled his gun at the semtex, when John had nodded, signalling his readiness to die for Sherlock - their readiness to die together -he’d desperately wanted for John to live, for both of them to live. And then Moriarty’s phone had rung and he’d changed his mind and Sherlock had never been so grateful to be alive.
He’d wanted to kiss John at the pool. John had quipped about how people would talk if they could see Sherlock taking off his clothes; the air between them had crackled with unspent tension. He’d wanted to kiss John in the back of the town car that Mycroft had provided to escort them home, to roll up the little divider between them and the driver and pull John to him and snog him until the windows fogged over. He’d wanted to kiss John at the door, when he’d fumbled his key because his fingers were still trembling with adrenaline. He’d wanted to stop and turn and kiss John on each and every one of the seventeen steps up to the flat. He hadn’t dared. He couldn’t live with himself if the thing became jealous of John Watson.
But after he’d hung his Belstaff on the peg next to John’s parka, when he turned to go into the kitchen and make tea, John pulled his face down and kissed him.
For a single, blissful instant, Sherlock’s mouth yielded against his. And then Sherlock’s eyes widened in terror, and he shoved past John and bolted into his bedroom. The lock clicked behind him.
John stared at the closed door and balled his hands into fists. That had been appallingly stupid. Sherlock had made it clear that he didn’t do sex or relationships, that he was married to his work, and John had let the wrong head do his thinking and now he’d possibly bolloxed their friendship.
He padded to the door and rapped his fingers against it twice. “Sherlock?”
No answer.
“Look, I’m sorry about that. I thought you were - it doesn’t matter what I thought. I should have asked first, but I was worried I’d spoil the mood, or something. Which I guess I did anyway.”
Sherlock remained silent.
“Right.” Annoyance flared in him, and that wasn’t fair. He’d clearly crossed some sort of boundary. Still, he’d apologized - would it really kill Sherlock to acknowledge it?
It took some effort, but he turned his back on the closed door and went upstairs to secure his gun, which he’d confiscated from Sherlock after he’d scratched his head with it at the pool, in his bedroom. But the door called him back down again. He stopped his hand from knocking on it mid air and ducked into the bathroom instead. He needed to scrub the rank adrenaline off his skin.
What he really wanted was to have a long soak in the tub. But probably Sherlock wanted to clean up as badly as he did, so he opted for an army-quick shower instead. The water seared his skin, turning his arms and chest red. He’d chalk up his compulsion to kiss Sherlock to adrenaline, which had precipitated his encounters in the army, except - except that he’d wanted to kiss Sherlock since … probably since Sherlock’s lips had shaped a perfect ‘O’ when he’d been laying on the sofa with the nicotine patches on his arm, and that’d been the night they met.
And now he was hard. Damn. He was not about to stroke himself off fantasizing about the man who’d just rejected him. He still didn’t understand why that’d happened. He’d been convinced Sherlock had wanted to snog him in the back of the cab, that they’d start tearing each other’s clothes off as soon as they got to the door.
He turned all the taps to cold, forcing himself to stand under the water until his chest constricted and his erection wilted. After a few miserable seconds, he turned the water off, then toweled himself vigorously to warm back up. He wrapped the towel around his waist, brushed his teeth, then stepped out into the hall. He shot another look at Sherlock’s locked door. They could talk about what had happened tomorrow. Or whenever Sherlock brought it up. If he brought it up. And if he didn’t, John wouldn’t.
He made his way upstairs and climbed into bed. What if Sherlock asked him to leave? He might have screwed himself out of a flatshare as well as a friendship. Maybe he should bring it up even if Sherlock didn’t, if only to apologize. He rolled onto his side and adjusted his pillow. That was when he heard the sounds coming from downstairs.
A low, rhythmic moaning. Undeniably sexual. He sat up in bed. God, Sherlock was wanking. John had read it right, then. There had been sexual tension between them, but John had come on too strong, too fast, and spooked him. Maybe it had been a long time for Sherlock. Maybe he’d never been with anyone before.
The moans tilted into a series of sharp, keening little cries. The kind of cries that made John think less of someone rubbing one out and more of someone getting fucked. Thoroughly. He imagined Sherlock impaling himself on some kind of toy.
The cries continued. Sherlock’s headboard banged against the wall.
There was no way that he was moving about that much wanking. Sherlock had made a booty call while John was in the shower. His face flushed.
Okay, so his flatmate had invited someone over. It wasn’t as though John had never brought girlfriends back to Baker Street. Doing so right after John had kissed him was kind of a dick move, sure, but it sent the unambiguous message that Sherlock wasn’t interested. Which John would have known if he’d have asked before he’d planted one on him.
A muffled shriek came from downstairs.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He should go downstairs and -
And what? Knock on the door and ask Sherlock if he was alright? Sherlock was a grown man. It was none of John’s business whom or how he fucked.
He did wonder, though, who Sherlock might have over. John couldn’t recall having seen Sherlock show anything resembling sexual interest in anyone, ever. Except -
I gave you my number. I thought you might call.
No. Sherlock had rolled his eyes when Jim had put his number under the dish. But he’d been ‘Jim from IT’ then, hadn’t he? Sherlock had called Moriarty brilliant, elegant, neat. He’d agreed to meet him, alone, at the pool.
Surely he wouldn’t have taken Moriarty up on his offer? Not after he’d almost killed John, almost killed them both. Except that Sherlock had probably thought being nearly blown to bits was the highlight of his day. He was a danger junkie, and Moriarty was the most dangerous thing in his world right now.
John pulled the box where he stored his gun out from under the bed, retrieved the Sig, and stashed it in his waistband. He’d just go downstairs, brew some tea, and listen in and make sure Sherlock was alright.
He made his way down slowly, stepping over the stair that squeaked. By the time he reached the living room, the cries had risen in both pitch and volume, and the headboard banging had resumed.
Maybe he could knock on Sherlock’s door and ask him to keep it down? Warn him not to wake Mrs Hudson? Sherlock would probably just tell him to piss off. But if he really were in distress ….
John marched to the end of the hall and banged on Sherlock’s bedroom door with his fist. “Sherlock?”
“Go away! I’m -” Sherlock’s words devolved into gurgles, as though someone had choked off his hair.
“Sherlock!” he shouted.
Silence.
Fuck it. He turned his good shoulder towards the wood and charged.
Sherlock forewent his pre-assault ritual. John was in the shower. And anyway, it wasn’t as though brushing his teeth and rubbing lotion on his skin would make this any less terrible. The thing would punish him for kissing John tonight. That much he knew already. He changed into his usual drawstring pyjama bottoms and climbed into bed. He’d thought he was far too jittery to fall asleep, but the flood of adrenaline that had filled him earlier was dissipating and with it the energy. He’d been awake for the better part of the last three days, solving Moriarty’s cases to rescue the hostages, and his limbs and eyelids were becoming heavy. Might as well get this over with.
After the usual four minutes and thirty seconds, disembodied hands rose up out of the mattress next to his head. Only the hands, and only two of them. They threaded their way through his curls, stroking almost like a lover, or how Sherlock imagined a lover would stroke his hair. He curled onto his side. The bony fingertips traced down the curve of his back, paused at his hip, then dipped beneath the waistband of his pyjama bottoms. The hand palmed at his limp cock; its thumb and forefinger formed a circle around his foreskin.
Sherlock crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for the tendrils to pull his wrists away, to restrain him, but they didn’t. Instead, the hands shucked his pyjamas down and flipped him onto his belly, then pushed his thighs apart. Fingers squeezed the flesh of his buttocks and pried his cheeks open. A single fingertip pressed at his hole.
He flinched. This wasn’t the way things went. The hands never touched him there, only the tendrils. He made a mewling noise in the back of his throat. One of the hands covered his mouth, shushing him. The fingers pushed their way past his teeth into his mouth. They stroked his tongue, pried his mouth open until he drooled, then returned to his arse. A finger, slick now with his spit, pressed in again, not ungently. He clenched his eyes shut. There was a second finger now, pressing in next to the first. Bony knuckles breaching him by twisting and stretching. He moaned. The thing made no attempts to stop him this time.
The fingers curled up against his prostate, circling inexorably. He whimpered, soft breathy cries in time with the stroking fingers, because like this, with just two hands, he could almost imagine that he was with a person, that he was with -
The thing was punishing him for kissing John by mocking the human intimacy he could never have. One of the hands closed on the back of his nape, pressing his face against the pillow. The other hand encircled his throat. The fingers withdrew and a tendril brushed against his entrance. Even without the usual restraining tentacles, he knew better than to struggle.
The tendril insinuated itself between his cheeks. Its thrusts were shallower than usual, and precisely struck his prostate. He moaned again. Even though he knew he was reacting exactly how it wanted, it was still better if he tried to imagine that it was a human cock, that it was John. It had been years since he’d discovered anything that made the assaults more bearable. He’d figured out the rules early on, and after that every night had been the same, not counting his brief forrays into sleeping in unusual or public places to see if the assaults would stop (they didn't). Now, for the first time in a long time, things were different.
Except - John would have pressed Sherlock’s back against his chest, would have kissed the nape of his neck, would have whispered endearments into his ears. His lover had no arms with which to encircle him, no mouth to kiss with or speak to him - just a writhing mass of tentacles and two disembodied hands.
Two tendrils lifted his hips, rotating him from his side to his hands and knees. Sherlock clutched the sheets as the tendril worked its way in and out him. He was groaning in earnest now, breath coming out in gasps. The tendril pushed him forward. He scrabbled to hold on to the sheets. The headboard smacked into the wall. The tendril surged in and out of him, hard and fast, and then another was encircling his testicles, pulling downward until his vision went green and he screamed.
Fuck. There was no way that John wasn’t hearing this. There was also no way John would dismiss it as Sherlock wanking.
He bit hard on his own lip, tasting blood. John couldn’t hear him like this. See him like this. Unless there was nothing to hear or see. Unless it was all in his head, like Mycroft had said.
The tentacle drove him forward, and the headboard smacked the wall again. And again. Please John, I’m sorry you think our kiss meant nothing to me but please just imagine I’m fucking some anonymous man met over the internet and leave me alone.
“Sherlock?” John rapped at his door.
“Go away! I’m -”
The hand in his hair twisted viciously and pulled his head back until he was staring up at the ceiling, and one of the tendrils wormed its way down his throat. He choked, feeling his diaphragm twitch and bile burn his esophagus.
The tendril in his arse snaked deeper, squirming inside him, and two more sprang up from the headboard and wrapped around his wrists, drawing his arms up and out.
“Sherlock!”
The door rattled in its frame. John had put his shoulder to it. The wood held.
Warring desires dueled within him. He’d never forgive himself if the tentacles attacked John, if he pulled him into this waking nightmare. He was desperate with hope that John would see the tendrils. See him. See that he was not mad.
There was a louder crack, and the door gave way, springing back and slamming into the wall. A trapezoid of amber spread across the ceiling as light streamed in from the sitting room.
“Sherlock?” John’s footsteps thudded to Sherlock’s bedside table. He switched on the lamp.
Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut.
John was no stranger to PTSD induced hallucinations, but the scene illuminated by Sherlock’s bedside lamp was more terrible than anything he’d seen in the grip of a night terror. Glistening gray and purple tendrils bound Sherlock’s wrists to the headboard. Another was forcing itself down the length of Sherlock’s arched throat and was probably what had stifled his scream. John’s gun was drawn before he’d even had a chance to think.
He took a cautious step forward, steadying his weapon with both hands. Two of the tendrils terminated in hands. One of these was pulling Sherlock’s head back by the hair. The other crooked a finger at him in a ‘come hither’ gesture.
He swallowed, looking for anything he could shoot. He didn’t want to risk hitting Sherlock. He froze when he realized that two more tendrils that appeared to rise straight out of the mattress were twined around Sherlock’s spread thighs, and another, thicker one was in him. The edges of his vision went fuzzy and everything was painted over in red.
John pointed his weapon at the tendril binding Sherlock’s left wrist to the headboard, aiming at the spot furthest from Sherlock’s hand. He squeezed the trigger.
The tentacle he struck didn’t bleed, or even recoil. A divot appeared on the appendage, which then slowly filled back out, as though he’d pushed his thumb into a piece of memory foam. The bullet popped free and bounced into the bed sheets.
The finger that had beckoned him moments before waggled at him as though he were a puppy that had piddled on the rug.
The tendril in Sherlock’s throat retreated, leaving a trail of saliva across his cheek.
Sherlock gasped, sucking in great gulps of air, and opened his eyes. Tears welled in them. “It’s no use, John. They can’t be damaged and are impervious to pain.” He swallowed. “Take the magazine out of your gun and put it away.” He licked his lips. “Please. It has a history of seizing weapons you attack it with and retaliating with them.”
The hand in Sherlock’s hair stroked him, as though rewarding him for having done something good. Sherlock closed his eyes again. John released the clip from the Sig and let it drop to the floor. He walked slowly into the room, and deposited the gun atop Sherlock’s dresser.
The tendril in Sherlock’s arse attacked - there was no other word for it - with incredible force and speed, like a teased cobra coiling and striking again and again. Sherlock made a series of anguished keening sounds that made John’s breath catch.
John raised his hands above his head, palms outward, to indicate his surrender.
The thing seemed placated. The tendril in Sherlock’s arse pulled out, exposing his pink, puffy hole, which gaped like something out of an exploitation film.
The two hands curled into claws and raked forwards across Sherlock’s back, ragged fingernails leaving red trails. They cupped his full buttocks, stretching him still wider.
John swallowed. Most of him felt equal parts disgusted and horrified, but there was a small part, the animal part, which responded to the sight of Sherlock spread in front of him. He’d imagined a similar sight before with his hand tightening around his cock in the shower, Sherlock bound to the bed, prepped and waiting. Except the Sherlock in his fantasies had been breathlessly urging John to take him, and the real Sherlock was not. He tore his eyes away.
One of the hands made the beckoning gesture again.
A weight pulled at his stomach.
“I think it wants -” Sherlock began.
“No.” John shook his head. “Not like this. I’m not going to -”
The tendril sprang up from the sheets again, diving deep into Sherlock’s body. Another shot from the headboard and impaled his throat. Yet another twined around Sherlock’s bollocks and squeezed.
“Stop it!” John shouted.
To his surprise, it did. The tendrils in Sherlock’s arse and mouth retracted, releasing him. Only the one around his bollocks remained, twisting like a boa constrictor. Sherlock whimpered.
The tentacle that had been inside Sherlock tapped at his hole twice, then moved out of the way.
“Please, John.” Sherlock’s voice was hoarse. “I know I’ve no right to ask this of you. It was wrong of me even to ask you to live with me at all.”
“No.” John shook his head. “Whatever this is, Sherlock, it’s not your fault.”
“But it is. I knew it would resent me having a - friend. But Mycroft didn’t believe me, and after -”
Rage flared within him, hot and white. A part of his brain knew it wasn’t fair to fault Mycroft. If he hadn’t seen this with his own eyes, John would have thought Sherlock was using again too, or possibly suffering from PTSD due to some kind of childhood sexual trauma. Still, it was easier to hate Mycroft for not having protected his brother.
John stepped closer to the bed. The thing remained completely still, as though it were waiting. His hands went to his pyjama bottoms, pushing down the elastic waistband. He thrust his hips forward.
“Is this what you want?”
The tendril unwound from Sherlock’s bollocks and circled twice around his cock instead.
Sherlock grunted.
“Right,” John muttered.
The hands spread Sherlock’s arse again.
Sherlock felt his face heat. He felt sickeningly grateful that he was facing away from John, that his head hung heavily between his outstretched arms and his hair hung over his face. The fingers dipped into him and spread him open; he knew he must look obscene, gaping and glistening like a rotisserie chicken pulled off the spit. He felt a hand on his flank, broader, warmer than its hands, and he shivered.
“Sorry,” John whispered.
“I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“Not your fault, Sherlock.”
It was, though. John would realize that once the adrenaline wore off. He would lay on his back and stare up and the ceiling and wonder what they’d just done together, what Sherlock had pulled him into.
The mattress sunk as John sat behind him. Cotton whispered against skin as John pulled his trousers off. There was a pause. Then the mattress trembled again as John pulled his t-shirt over his head. Not strictly necessary. He was stalling for time, of course. He didn’t want to do this.
John’s hand settled against the small of his back. “Do you have lube somewhere?”
“Not necessary.” His voice sounded ragged in his ears.
John didn’t reply, but he shifted his weight.
“The … tendrils secrete some sort of lubricating substance. You won’t hurt me.” Unless that’s what you want. If you’re angry with me for dragging you into this.
John crawled on his knees and came to a stop behind him.
Sherlock closed his eyes.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, John climbing into his bed unwilling, a pawn in a rigged game between Sherlock and this thing.
Skin slipped against skin as John took himself in hand, then stopped. “I’m sorry, Sherlock, I can’t.”
“’s okay.” His own voice sounded small and far away. The thing would be angry if it didn’t get its way, of course, but Sherlock had survived its rage before. The last really bad time had been when he’d attempted to examine the lubricating substance it secreted beneath his microscope.
“No, I mean, physically. I can’t.”
Oh. John was unable to achieve an erection. He’d seemed attracted enough to Sherlock when he’d kissed him at the door, so, apparently he was now repulsed by him after seeing him in this situation. Or he felt guilty about penetrating Sherlock, which was absurd, really, as though it wasn’t something he’d grown accustomed to by now, as though having John inside him wouldn’t be infinitely preferable to the thing.
The tendrils encircling his knees and calves pulled him backward. The air whooshed out of his diaphragm as he crashed into the mattress with a thud. The tendrils around his wrists and ankles twisted, flipping him onto his back like a capsized hammock.
He turned his head to the side, not wanting for John to look to closely at what he was keenly aware was a scrawny, gangly body. All limbs, no real muscle.
One of the tendrils snaked up from the space between his thighs and twined around his cock, stroking and pulling him to hardness. He closed his eyes, hips bucking up involuntarily as the slick tendril encircled his shaft and swirled over the glans. Two other tendrils pulled his legs apart, and then pushed them back, bending until his body folded in half and his ankles were above his ears and bound to the headboard.
The position didn’t hurt, exactly; the thing had made his body pliant over the years. But at least before, he’d been able to hide his face. Now he was completely exposed. His cock leaked against his belly as the tendril milked him. He couldn’t help it, not after so much classical conditioning. He hoped that John understood that much, that he wouldn’t just think Sherlock was some kind of freak that got off on his own violation.
A tendril circled his hole, then pushed just inside the rim. Sherlock twitched in his binds. The tendril pulled all the way out, leaving him open, then thrust in again, slithering up until it found the spot that made him whine.
Sherlock moaned. The tendril thrust again. John looked away, cheeks flushed dark. Sherlock glanced down and saw that John’s erection had returned, that his fingers were curled around the shaft of his cock and he was stroking slowly.
“I’m sorry, Sherlock.”
“A minute ago you were apologizing for not having an erection and now you’re apologizing for having one. Really, John?” He’d tried to come off as blithe, but his voice was thin in his ears. Brittle.
John’s face crumpled.
“I’m babbling. Really you should ignore me. Or else put your cock in my mouth, that’s usually -”
“Stop talking.”
“It’s a completely physical response, John. It doesn’t say anything about your moral character.” He glanced at his own cock, flushed and dripping. “It’s just the transport.”
John made a cracked, barking noise that Sherlock supposed was meant to be a laugh. “Wow. You machine. I’m glad you can compartmentalize this, Sherlock, but I can’t. I’m about to rape my best friend.”
Sherlock pursed his lips. He suspected telling John that every millimeter of his skin wanted to soak up John’s touch like slab of desert clay awaiting rain would be very Not Good indeed. John didn’t want this. Really it was John being raped, not Sherlock. All he said was. “What do you need?”
“I need you to be quiet,” John hissed.
Sherlock bit his lip and turned his face away as John crawled between his legs and lowered himself on top of him.
John set his forearms on either side of Sherlock’s head, trying to keep his full weight off of him.
Sherlock looked away.
The hands rose out of the mattress, and grasped the sides of Sherlock’s face, tilting his head up, towards John. The bony fingers with their gray, dead nails forced their way into Sherlock’s mouth, prying his jaws apart and holding the sides of his lips back like a gag. He cursed himself for having told Sherlock he should be quiet.
He inched his body closer to Sherlock’s, cock angling forward blindly. A slick appendage encircled his length. He froze, watching Sherlock’s eyes widen. The tendril pumped up and down his length once, feeling rather like a well lubed handjob except with only a single thick finger spiraling up around him and really no it was nothing like a hand job at all but he didn’t really want to think about how very alien it felt to have a tentacle wrapped around his cock.
The tendril guided him forward into Sherlock.
John had had anal sex before, with women (his experiences with men had been limited to mutual hand jobs and a single, drunken blow job). But he’d never been with a partner who had been prepared so thoroughly beforehand. Sherlock wasn’t tight at all. John slid into him effortlessly, in a single thrust; the tendril pushed him along and then slithered away, leaving him buried to the hilt in Sherlock, who was still staring at him, unblinking.
John shuddered, bracing himself on his forearms. Sherlock’s heartbeat pulsed in his insides, hot and slick around him. When Sherlock shifted his hips, bearing down, John closed his eyes. This felt too good. It wasn’t right for it to feel this good.
He took a breath, pulled back, and then rocked forward. Sherlock moved with him, insofar as he could; the tendrils pinned his wrists to the mattress just below the headboard, and his ankles were bound above his head, which had to be excruciating. The horrid hands were still holding Sherlock’s mouth open wide, and as John glanced down as yet another tendril shot up from the sheets at the side of Sherlock’s throat and dove down, making a u-shaped bridge across his neck. But Sherlock’s internal muscles relaxed to let John enter him and tightened around him as he pulled back. If Sherlock kept that up, he wasn’t going to last very long. And that was good, right? That was what he wanted. That was what they wanted.
He wished that he could kiss Sherlock. But he was terrified of those unnatural hands, and the tentacle restraining Sherlock’s neck. He remembered the sounds Sherlock had made before, when the thing had been choking him. He didn’t want to see or hear that again.
Instead, he tried to be gentle, to thrust slowly. He let more of his weight fall on Sherlock, brought his arms closer to Sherlock’s sides, bracketed his body. Sherlock’s eyes fluttered closed.
A tendril slithered up the inside of his thigh. He broke rhythm for a second, then resumed, feeling the tendril slide along the cleft between his buttocks. He clenched. He knew that was the exact wrong thing to do, but he was not ready for this. He enjoyed the occasional finger up his bum while having his cock sucked, but he’d never had more than two, and he’d seen what it had done before, to Sherlock.
God, Sherlock. Clearly whatever had happened tonight had happened before. Nausea roiled within him as he wondered how many times. If Sherlock could take it, he could too, he supposed. The tendril slid back and forth across his hole without entering, leaving behind some sort of viscous secretion that reminded him of nothing so much as snot. He shivered.
Sherlock’s eyes were open, now. He bit hard on the fingers in his mouth, thrashing his head from side to side until they pulled free. “No!” he shouted. “No, no -” Another tendril rose up from the bed and plunged down his throat. John was so focused on Sherlock, bucking and gagging beneath him, that he didn’t realize that the tendril had actually breached him until it was already buried deep. For a loathsome moment, he felt as though he were going to void his bowels, even though the doctor in him knew that this was just his sphincter responding to the foreign body. The tendril stretched him to the point of burning.
John held his breath, then let it out slowly. Sherlock closed his eyes and went limp beneath him. His heart rate went wild for the few moments it took him to realize that Sherlock hadn’t blacked out. His breath was ragged, and tears streamed between his closed lashes. The tendril withdrew from Sherlock’s mouth, as though it wasn’t fun to continue suffocating him now that he’d stopped resisting.
“John,” Sherlock whispered. “I’m - I never should have -” his voice broke.
The tentacle inside him wriggled. There was no way he could imagine that it was a human penis. He’d wondered, before, what it might be like, to have Sherlock inside him, if that was something that Sherlock did.
And it made so much more sense now why Sherlock didn’t. He couldn’t imagine how lonely Sherlock must have been, knowing that anyone he told what was happening to him would dismiss him as a loony or try to have him sectioned. Bizarre and humiliating as the experience of having a tentacle shoved up your arse in front of your best friend was, there was something oddly comforting in knowing that he had a witness, that there would be someone to corroborate his story. He wondered if Sherlock felt the same.
“Shhh,” he whispered, dipping closer and pressing his forehead to Sherlock’s. He didn’t care, any more, if it angered the tendrils. He slid his arms beneath Sherlock’s shoulders and pulled him close.
Sherlock blinked back tears. This was all wrong. A nightmare within a nightmare. John had come in trying to save him, and now John was suffering because Sherlock had been stupid and selfish. And after, John would leave him, which was exactly what he deserved.
The pace of John’s thrusts increased as the tendril drove into him, which in turn drove him deeper into Sherlock. He tried to push back against John, but the tendrils around his hips tightened until he couldn’t move at all. He felt another tentacle tickling his bollocks as it encircled John’s cock. And then the tip of it pushed in alongside it.
Sherlock hissed. It was too much, especially in this position with his legs drawn back. Every time John pulled back the tendril twined further up John’s length and then stretched him further when John pushed in again.
John clearly felt it too. He was making broken, groaning sounds. “So sorry, Sherlock,” he whispered, and then his breath caught and he stiffened against him.
Sherlock had never felt another person’s climax. The tendrils were insatiable. They usually stopped once Sherlock reached orgasm, but he’d always been under the impression they could continue indefinitely. John, however, pulsed inside him, clutching Sherlock close as he twitched and shuddered. More than anything, Sherlock wished he could wrap his arms and legs around John, but the tendrils kept his limbs drawn taut.
His own orgasm seemed beyond reach. The pain from the combined stretch of John and the tentacle made him unable to concentrate on anything but the heat burning within him, which worsened with John’s every movement. But John had, at last, gone still and lay heavily on Sherlock’s chest. He showed no signs of softening. Sherlock realized the tendril served as a kind of cock ring, keeping the blood in his erection from receding.
The thing, as usual, didn’t intend to let him off so easily. Two tendrils squirmed between his body and John’s, spiraling up Sherlock’s cock from opposite directions. They slid back and forth, coating him in their slickness. The tendril wrapped around John twisted against the swollen lump of Sherlock’s prostate. After a few minutes of of burning, sickening misery, he felt his own stickiness between them.
For a few moments, everything was frozen in situ. Then the tendrils began retreating into the sheets. The ones holding Sherlock’s wrists released first, leaving his arms to fall limply to the mattress. His fingers tingled, having gone completely numb. The ones holding his thighs relaxed, as well. His half-hard cock protested when the tendrils twined around his erection pulled apart. The tendril bridging his throat slunk back into the mattress next to his ear. The fingers caressed his jaw and then disappeared beneath his pillow. By the grunting noise John made, the tendril that had violated him receded as well. Only the tendril wrapped around John’s cock remained, binding them together.
It unwound slowly, each corkscrew movement stretching him anew. John winced as well, squeezing Sherlock tighter. At last the tendril vanished. Sherlock felt a rush of wetness as what he supposed was John’s semen leaked out of him. It was completely different from the sticky, gritty goo the tendrils left behind. Hot and slippery and vital.
For a few moments they lay silent. Sherlock bent his knees and lowered his legs into a more comfortable position. His groin ached.
John pushed himself up on his elbows and began to pull away.
“Don’t!” He wrapped his legs tight around John.
John went still.
“There are rules.” He licked his lips. “Don’t fight. Don’t cry for help. Don’t leave. If you do, it will come back.”
He didn’t know for sure that John pulling out of him qualified as leaving. He told himself it was better to be safe, and hated himself for whatever motives he had for making John stay inside him.
“Jesus, Sherlock.” John whispered. “How long has this been going on?”
“A long time.”
“And if we follow the rules, it’ll go away?”
“Just for the rest of the night. It will come back the next time I go to sleep.”
John stiffened, and Sherlock chewed his lip. Perhaps it would have been better to be less specific about the frequency of the assaults. He didn’t want John to pity him more than he already did.
“I think - if you go back to your own room,” or if you move away, please don’t move away, “I don’t think it will follow. Though I can’t be one hundred percent certain.” He’d die if he were wrong. “It’s an untested variable.”
“And leave you alone with that monster! Absolutely not, Sherlock. If it comes back, it will find me here with you.”
Terror constricted his chest. “John, please, no. You can’t.”
“What do you expect me to do? Wear earplugs and pretend I don’t know what’s happening to you?”
“It’s not … usually this bad. It was angry tonight -”
“Because I kissed you.”
“It wasn’t your fault, John.”
“Don’t you dare say it was yours.” John’s voice was surprisingly vehement. “Sorry. It’s not you I’m upset with.”
“Not now. But you will be. You’ll hate me, and I won’t be able to bear it.”
“Look, Sherlock, this is a lot to process. And I’m sure once I’ve started to process it, I will find some part of me that is angry with you for not telling me what was going on, or for getting me involved.”
Sherlock tensed.
“But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to walk away and leave you to face this alone. Because I know what that’s like, Sherlock. Before I met you, I - I was so alone, and I owe you so much.”
Sherlock shook his head. “I’m the one who owes you, John. I was alone, too. I tried to tell Mycroft once, and he didn’t believe me, and after that I thought no one ever would, that I’d be stuck like this my whole life.” For as long as he could endure living. “I thought no one else would ever see.”
“I see you, Sherlock.” John whispered. He rolled to the side, sliding out at last, and clasped their hands together. “I see you. I don’t know how, Sherlock, but we will fix this. I’ll go with you to Mycroft, and we’ll make him believe us and we’ll find a way to make it stop.”
Tears sprang to his eyes again, which was ridiculous. He’d been weeping most of the night. He never cried this much, not since the very beginning.
John squeezed his hands. “And until we figure it out, I will be here, with you, every time you sleep.”
“You can’t.”
“I will.”
“You won’t. Mycroft will make me do some kind of sleep study in some awful government lab, and the last thing I need is for him to see -”
“Fine,” John grumbled, but there was no malice behind it. “But until then, I’m sleeping with you.”
Sherlock curled against John’s chest and closed his eyes. John’s lips brushed his brow, and a fragile feeling fluttered within him, like the wings of a new butterfly which hadn’t yet dried. He drifted into sleep, and did not dream.