Work Text:
Some people of a certain standing see a moderately well-off widower, a physician with a greater reputation for his romantic fiction than his bedside manner, and believe that such a fellow could only lack for a wife. An eligible man remade a bachelor such as he, they reason, must surely hope to be claimed sooner or later by a newer, younger, suitable distraction from his bereavement.
I hope to impress upon the reader that he does not hope, nor does he lack. Whenever he looks like he might need a distraction, he is well provided.
Young women do not threaten me. Watson, though he still has eyes for the occasional fair-haired beauty, shows no lasting interest in women. He has had his fill, I suppose. Perhaps the memory of his wife is precious enough to sustain him. Perhaps the looming presence of a hawk-nosed, meddlesome detective deters him.
I had never considered myself a jealous person until John Watson came into my life. The depth of denial that I sustained while he was married astonishes me sometimes, for it was only after I returned to London and found him as solitary as myself that I found I could no longer stand the idea of him sharing a life with another. I had been so angry with him for leaving me, and at myself for allowing his departure, that I resolved to never let it happen again.
His amenability to my amorous proposal was almost as shocking to me as my return was to him. I remember I had to sit down.
No, women pose no threat; it is men I have to worry about now. I believe Watson had some small experience with men when I first seduced him— he knew where to put his hands, anyway, and didn’t leave the room in disgust when I suggested certain acts— but his attractiveness to men has obviously increased since we began our affair. He is appreciated in a way he wasn’t before, and it makes me burn.
I trust him. I do. He has a generous soul, and listens well, and people are drawn to him. I do not blame him for that. Indeed, I think he does not know that he draws the eyes of men; that their gazes linger; that they flirt. He is used to me and my brusque approach to things: good evening, Watson; I think I’d like you to fuck me tonight. I should be the only one allowed to touch his elbow like that; the only one to gaze into his eyes with such attention; the only one offering to refill his drink.
He is mine to care for. He is mine.
He needs reminded.
It’s terribly rude to interrupt a conversation by taking one participant by the arm and dragging them away, but I’m doing it anyway. Watson gives a manly yelp, his drink sloshing dangerously, but my grip on his bicep is inescapable. The man he was engaged with—married, house agent, cricket player, I don’t care— gets a warning glare and makes no attempt to protest. He knows he has overstepped, and in such a place! A gentlemen’s club; not even that sort of gentlemen’s club.
Watson is known here, but so am I, and we are given a wide berth. Watson’s fruitless pulling grows first stronger and then resigned as I drag him through the smoking room, the billiards room, and out into the hall where the grand staircase coils upon itself.
“What is this about, Holmes?” he demands, when I finally let him go.
“That man—“ I say, jabbing a finger over Watson’s shoulder in the direction we have come, “was making advances.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Advances,” I hiss, aware that my voice will carry if I’m not careful. “On you.”
Watson’s eyes widen. “He what?”
I knew it. The dear man doesn’t know when he’s being flirted with. No wonder it took us fifteen years. “Two more minutes and he’d be suggesting you take him back to Baker Street to show him your original manuscripts.” I am practically vibrating.
So is he. Damn him, he’s laughing at me. He’s shaking with suppressed laughter, and it bubbles out of him in a great guffaw as I look on in astonishment and fury.
“Watson! This is serious!”
“Holmes, your face!”
“That man cannot be allowed to— to—“
“What?” Watson asks, lowering his voice. “Ask me about my impact on the Strand subscription numbers?”
“Look at you the way he was,” I grit out. “No one should.”
Watson’s eyes flash, and suddenly I’m in dangerous waters. “No one?”
“No one, save me.”
“Indeed? You reserve some kind of right?”
“Don’t I? Can’t I lay a claim upon you? You’re mine and it makes me absolutely sick that no one is allowed to know it.”
“No one but I,” Watson says. “And I know it very well.”
I bite my lip.
Watson says, “This is not the place to have this conversation.”
“No,” I agree. “Come.”
“Wh—“ he starts, but I have him by the arm again and I am pulling him into the lavatory. “Holmes, no.”
I lock the door behind us.
“Holmes. I meant at home.”
“I’m afraid the laying of my claim will not wait so long,” I tell him, untying his tie.
His hands come up to grapple with mine, and he bares his teeth at me. “You’re mad,” he says, and I get the tie unknotted. “This is too risky— Sherlock!— listen to me—“
I kiss him instead, and his mouth is soft and lush and ferocious under mine. He bites my lip hard and I grip the back of his neck. My fingers dig into the base of his skull; he melts against me.
“Damn you,” he murmurs against my mouth, and he grabs my lapels in his fists.
I bite him back, reddening his lip, and use my grip on his neck to move him to and fro as I kiss him. “Mine,” I say, as if he needs a reminder. He doesn’t. I do.
His collar comes loose in my other hand, and I open the first three buttons of his shirt. I release his mouth and turn my attention to the column of his throat; his jaw, shaved that morning, prickles against my cheek. His pulse races beneath my lips. I bite down here, too, and wish I could raise a mark. Once I covered him with little bitten bruises, sucked the blood to the surface and embarrassed him. No one else ever saw them, but he blushed like a girl when I touched them. I wish I could be so blatant. No one would so much as look at him if they knew.
Then I think, as he shudders and murmurs at the touch of my lips and tongue upon his delicate skin, that people ought to look at him. He’s splendid. His posture alone could bring me to my knees; it occasionally does. His hands are works of art— he wastes time describing mine, when his own can take a man apart and put him back together again. His eyes— God! his eyes!— are the blue of the English channel in the summer. No wonder people fling themselves at him.
I am guilty of this myself, as evidenced by my willingness to lock us both in a toilet at a club and have my way with him. I press one last kiss to his collarbone and kneel.
He says, “Oh, for God’s sake,” but his hand is in my hair. I cup him through his trousers and find him eager enough to work with; he twitches beneath my palm. He is blushing, too, and still holding his drink. He realizes it, blinks, and then finishes the brandy.
I take the glass from him as he grimaces and set it on the floor. Then I turn my attention back to his trousers. He unfastens his waistcoat, grudgingly, and I undo his braces and his fly. His prick tents his drawers. I press my face against his open placket and inhale and he mutters, “Bloody hell,” above me.
I smile. I know more than enough tricks to remind to whom he belongs. I work his prick out of his drawers and weigh it in my hand. He sighs, his thumb against my forehead. He rubs it across my eyebrow, which I arch in acknowledgment— or perhaps in protest— and tightens his fingers in my hair. The oil in my hair is no match for my lover’s grip. I will look debauched, obscene. Anyone could see.
A shudder of desire wracks me from shoulders to shins, and I fit the tip of his prick into my mouth with a little moan. Behind the flies of my own trousers, my cock throbs. I love to do this for him. I am serving myself here, as I service him. He knows it, and a little jolt of his hips pushes him between my lips. He stiffens further in my mouth, the tip of him growing slick. I lick it away and twist my hand around the base of his prick. With my other hand, I reach into the humid gap in his drawers to fondle his bollocks.
They tighten at my touch and a sharp breath escapes him. There were so many things I thought I knew about him before we became lovers, and so many new, delightful things I learned when he finally fell into my bed. Things I would have never guessed, could never have imagined. How he spreads his legs and gives in to my whims at a caress here, for instances. His knees bend and he arches, making room for my hand.
“Please,” he whispers.
My reply is to pull back, wet my lips, and take him in a little deeper. I bob my head, working him inch by inch, until my mouth meets the side of my hand. Then I retreat and begin again.
God, how could I ever doubt him? The way he trembles, his little gasp of arousal at the rub of my fingers at his sac, the heady smell of his body here; they are mine. I treasure every detail, and he knows it.
“Stop,” he says, his hand suddenly firm upon my head. I almost choke, and sink back on my heels, wiping my mouth and staring up at him in astonishment.
He reaches down, gets a grip on my shirtfront, and hauls me to my feet. In a moment we are spun around, and I am flat against the door. He steals the air right from my lungs with a kiss, deep and keen. He tastes himself in my mouth and groans. His bare prick rubs against my trousers, which can’t be comfortable, but the pressure on my neglected prick makes me shake.
“You,” he says, grinding his hips hard against mine, pinning me with the weight of his body, “are utterly mad.”
I can’t think of an answer to that, so I kiss him again, gripping the back of his neck. He shoves against me again, and then all at once pulls back to open my trousers. My prick springs out to meet his hand, and then he has both of us in his grip.
He thrusts into his hand more than he strokes us, and our mingled excitement slicks his way. My knees are weak, and I tip my head back against the door. His teeth dig into my throat, beneath my ear. His other hand works its way under my waistcoat, shirt, and vest to my skin, and his broad palm on my belly stokes the fire within me.
“And,” he growls, “you are wrong to ever wonder at your claim on me.”
“John—“
“Say it,” he says, squeezing us tight. He laughs against my throat. “You’re not wrong often, but you’re wrong about this. Say it!”
I try to obey. “I’m— oh, John!” He has let go of himself to work me hard and fast.
“Say it,” he demands, and fits our pricks together again. “You don’t need to drag me into a toilet and spill your seed on me to tell everyone I’m yours.”
The image of it— disgusting, wicked, inappropriate— has me groaning in surrender, clinging to his jacket sleeves.
“Everyone in the world knows who I belong to,” he grinds out. “Say it!”
“I’m wrong,” I gasp, “everyone knows!”
“Knows what?”
“Knows you’re mine.” My orgasm is barreling down on me. I’m up on my toes, tensing with everything I have, trying to stave it off. He smears his mouth along my jaw and kisses me again, licking into my mouth and biting at my lips.
“Twenty thousand,” he says.
The non sequitur is a welcome distraction, for a moment. “What?”
He grins. “Strand magazine subscriptions.”
I reach my glory, spurting over his hand with a helpless groan. He follows me in an instant, his spending hot on my skin, and I swear it causes another spasm in me.
“That’s how many people they lost when I wrote you had died,” he murmurs, easing his hand out from between us and retrieving his handkerchief from his sleeve. He cleans his fingers off and gives me a cursory wipe. “Five hundred thousand people know who I belong to.” He balls up the handkerchief and stuffs it into my pocket— charming. His hands are gentle as he tucks me away and does up the buttons. “Every month for three years, five hundred thousand people read about you, but what they were really reading was me watching you. Admiring you. Worshipping you.”
I’m blushing now, embarrassed at my jealousy. He finishes doing up his own buttons again, tucks in his shirt and fixes his braces. I help with his waistcoat, silent, cheeks flaming. We are neither of us respectable anymore, but the quick application of our coats and hats will save us from being ejected from the club indefinitely.
“Come here,” he says, and pulls me down for another lingering kiss.
“I love you,” I manage, disgracefully emotional all of a sudden. “It isn’t fair I can’t—” As I turn my face away to hide my reaction, he kisses my cheek, his lips soft and warm.
“It isn’t,” he agrees, a murmur in my ear, “but after that display I’d be shocked if anyone has any lingering doubts.”
I manage a smile, throat tight.
“Let’s go home before anyone tries to use this lavatory.”
He goes out first, and I stare at myself in the mirror. I’m a wreck: on the verge of tears, my hair disarranged, my shirt buttoned wrong. It takes a few minutes to put myself back together, and when I make my way downstairs, Watson is holding my coat in the foyer. He helps me into it and sets my hat upon my head. Then he bends my arm and slips his hand into the crook of my elbow.
“Never again,” he says as we go out, “d’you hear me? Incredibly dangerous and not at all seemly.”
I squeeze his hand against my ribs. “Yes, Watson.”