Bone Fiddle-verse PWP: "Bear Necessity"

[vulgarweed]

Title: Bear Necessity
Fandom: Sherlock (Bone-Fiddle-verse; Appalachian AU)
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: NC-17/Explicit
Summary: The 1970s were possibly the last decade when anyone could have sex on a bearskin rug in front of a roaring fireplace unironically. It's up to the reader to decide if Sherlock and John managed lack of irony.
Warnings/Content: Dirty talk, boundary-pushing and also fur. This story is not vegan. Do they even spare a thought for the bear who helped bring them together in the graveyard scene in The Bone Fiddle? Probably not. It's not the same bear, though. This story takes place in between the two main scenes of Splat! and might make more sense if you've read that.
Notes: Huge thanks to htebazytook, winter_hermit, and snogandagrope for feedback. This thing has been floating around for months. Thought I'd finally post it while the weather is still cold.

 

There were no maggots, and that was problematic. Under realistic field conditions, there should always be maggots. So true realistic re-creation was unfortunately out of the question now. Out of season. So he was going to have to make do. Perhaps the maggotless data could at least function as a control in future attempts.

So Sherlock settled the last of the mold spores into the subdermal layer of the opossum carcass, mentally freezing the precise look of it into place in his mind. Several hours still before the growth would begin to tell him anything – more if the temperature dropped, as it likely would. Less if it rose, though.

Did it seem likely that John would add more wood to the fire? (New environmental factor. A constant adjustment. Well worth the inconvenience, though.)

The snow had changed to freezing rain, so there was a slight warming outdoors, but not enough to reduce the danger of weather-related interruptions. The backup generator lay in wait. A temporary loss of electricity wouldn't be an insurmountable problem if it only lasted a short time, but a few days without would turn unpleasant. Phone line could break, and the radios would become more important.

John would want the lamplight to stay on, and he'd want his hot shower and his TV reruns and his instant-gratification coffee. And if the temperature started to drop ever so slightly he'd add more wood. Or rather, if the flames seemed to be looking less orange and robust.

If he'd stayed in that trailer . . . if he hadn't come to live here . . .

Futile line of speculation, since John had. His comforts were simple, but he was attached to them. And John looked comfortable now, stretched out on the century-old sofa. Still cold despite the blazing hearthfire just on the other side of the bearskin rug. His feet were bare, and one rested on the scuffed oak floor, toes just shy of the shaggy fur. He was reading his pulp novel (thriller – espionage – why?) consistently despite the flickering light.

Hiss of sleet on the windowpane.

Sherlock's attention kept involuntarily coming back to John now even as he tried to shift it. The rest of the room diminished in significance and all but disappeared from his peripheral vision. The heat of the fire. The one bare foot visible, the other tucked beneath the brown afghan. John's plaid flannel shirt, buttoned all the way up.

That was the problem. It was at odds with the picture of contented warmth. It had to be constricting. Stifling, even. And yet John would not undo it. It was as if he didn't even notice the discomfort.

Everything in Sherlock's focus now pinpointed that tiny thing, that button at John's throat, almost perfectly centered below his laryngeal prominence, the band of red patterned cloth all the way around his neck in a straight line that didn't give with the contours of his tendons.

If it didn't chafe John at all, it was certainly beginning to do so to Sherlock. Why? Military formality? He'd hardly kept himself up to drill standards while running and sweating through the tropical rainforest. No. Nothing else in his manner to suggest that. His sense of modesty, also not remarkably strict.

With a sigh, Sherlock turned quickly and removed himself to the kitchen to wash his hands. Perhaps the strange irritation would disperse.

It didn't. Back in the living room, that button still taunted him.

Light and shadow. The logs – the distinctive cracklings of hickory and poplar and black locust, each species giving its own sound and scent in the transformation to ash, to charcoal, back to carbon. Northwest wind – far edges of Great Lakes weather, the snows of Minnesota and the gales of Canada, carried down by the buckling jet streams as far south as Bluefield on the Virginia border. The fire's light should begin to fade, even as the breeze swirled down the chimney to rouse it a little.

And John would move then. He'd put another log on the fire. Would he loosen that thrice-bedamned button?

But then, John was drifting. His pace of page-turning had slowed and his eyelids grew heavy, and there was a slow downward tilt of his chin. Clearly feeling safe in his surroundings. Clearly able to doze, if not sleep deeply, even with that ridiculous collar.

Sherlock did not want to startle him, but he needed to get this done.

Quietly, carefully, toeing out of his shoes, Sherlock padded over the fur rug, his back to the blazing fire, and cast his shadow over John. John's eyes turned up to his. Quizzical. Trusting. Sherlock leaned over, braced one hand on the back of the couch, and with the other, he reached down and undid the offending button.

He'd meant to do that one simple thing and that was all. (Had he really? Yes, until now. Only a partial self-deception. Touching John so rarely served only one function.) But his fingertips brushed tender skin, and lingered.

The slight steady throb of John's pulse; Sherlock could feel it changing tempo ever so subtly, as if a skilled maestro were conducting and knew how to keep the build of the long crescendo virtually unnoticeable up until the point where it became overwhelming.

A slight movement in peripheral vision – John's bare foot flexing, toes curling at the very edge of the fur rug. As if he didn't own it, Sherlock watched his own foot shifting in its black sock, just far enough to rest his toes over John's.

Two points of physical contact, so very light (anchoring and intensifying) – plus the psychological grip of a long shared steady gaze. A quick flash of John's tongue licking his lips – habitual, probably unconscious, not always revealing of information, but sometimes charged with meaning.

Sherlock was captivated by this, that it now took so very little to trigger the release of the chemicals in his body that started the process of sexual excitement. Though, to take all factors into account, the mirroring of those symptoms in John had to contribute to the speed and intensity of the effect.

“Your button was bothering me,” was all Sherlock said, pitching his voice down below the crackle of the fire.

“Your buttons bother me too,” John said. “Your shirts are so tight. I keep thinkin' one of 'em's going to pop any minute.” And then John reached up out of the afghan and retaliated, opening not the first button below Sherlock's throat, but the second one down, dead center over the sternum, and the tickling brush of John's fingertips there made Sherlock shiver.

John's fingers ran over the light dusting of hairs they found there, and pulled back just enough to take one button more, lower, the one closest to Sherlock's diaphragm. Why? Why that one? Sherlock wondered for long burning seconds. Oh.Because it allowed enough room for John's shorter hand to push in far enough to brush Sherlock's right nipple with the lightest of fingertip-strokes. It was already hardening, of course, the exposure to cool air was all it took. But John's fingertips teasing it, pinching it, driving into it with that edge of thumbnail, oh, that did raise the stakes so very much higher; that little spike of lust was so small, but so sharp.

John's fingers moved lower--barely, millimeters--stroking the undercurve of the pectoral, drifting to the thin ticklish skin over Sherlock's ribs.

John had not yet run out of places to touch him that felt new, that shocked Sherlock with tiny revelations – how does this feel so good? And this, and this?

Oh, he should have known. And Sherlock had known, of course he had – the compact strength hidden in this mild-faced little man, the interplay of acquiescence and stubbornness, the coiled, banked fire, the surgeon's hand and the sniper's eye . . .

Ever so slowly, Sherlock's hand curled higher up around John's neck.

John's fingertips were lightly tugging at the sparse hairs on Sherlock's chest. Sherlock held that admirably steady gaze as John undid another button, the one over Sherlock's upper abdomen. Sherlock retaliated with another button of John's, over his chest, which was now swelling and shrinking faster as John breathed harder.

Sherlock thought he could never get enough of undressing John slowly, revealing his skin step by step like the unfolding of a problem's solution. Someday, one of these days, he'd try erotically dressing him – slowly, deliberately.

Pull John's humble dime-store socks onto his broad feet; slide his plain but well-made underpants up his shins and his thighs till they stretched tight and comfortable over and around and between, hugging his solid buttocks and remarkably perfect package.

Pull his jeans up the same path, and take extra time to make sure John's penis was positioned for comfort – oh, but could it be comfortable when it would never, ever lie still and soft while Sherlock was touching him with such focused intent?

(It worried Sherlock that his glimpses of John's flaccid penis at complete rest would be few and far between, since John desired him so much. Sherlock's very presence would change the perfection of John's natural relaxed state. That really bothered him.)

Breathe. Slow down. Sherlock's sense of time went strange in his sexual reveries as it did in all his others – might snap out of it to see John staring as the clock hand had moved half an hour, or almost seemed to speed backwards. John was touching him right now, and he was touching John right now, and things had to move at a speed that pleased both of them, and so Sherlock would have to be aware of pacing for the both of them.

John's lips parted. His tongue flicked out again. His foot moved against Sherlock's, and his fingers took another button, letting him caress Sherlock's side, gently poke a fingertip into his navel.

Sherlock leaned over further, rested one knee on the couch edge for leverage, and opened John's shirt completely. Time to escalate. He pulled the afghan away from John's lap and openly admired the growing swell in John's jeans. “You don't look comfortable,” he said softly, with just a hint of the precise tone of mockery that would make John want to attack him. “Poorly dressed for a nap. Even more so for--” and he interrupted himself with a little gasp when John's bare foot ran up the back of his calf.

The fiery look in John's eyes stopped him in his tracks, and the commanding, desperate way John said, “Come down here,” broke Sherlock's resolve, and he folded down on his knees beside the sofa, just barely weaseling out of John's attempt to seize him for a kiss, and he pressed his face to John's chest to hear his thrumming heart, turned his neck just the right way to take John's right nipple between his lips. (The more sensitive one; nerve damage from his shoulder wound had rendered the left less responsive. Godawful. Just a tiny bit of reduced sensitivity in John's left nipple was more than enough reason to hate war, as far as Sherlock was concerned.)

John moaned and grasped his hair, arching up sideways, as Sherlock teased the little peak with his tongue. Sherlock's hands tangled in John's open shirt, pulled and lifted it, and Sherlock quickly ducked his head up and nudged into the tawny tuft of hair in John's armpit, inhaling to the bottom of his lungs.

“You sniffing me, you freak?” John murmured, hand clenching and releasing wildly in Sherlock's hair. The tug and drag of it, the tenderness and the threat, that felt so good. Why?

Sherlock turned to look him deep in the eyes. “Your pheromones intoxicate me.”

“Oh Jesus,” John moaned and tightened his hand again against the back of Sherlock's head, pulling again, his mouth open and wettened and wanting Sherlock's mouth so badly . . .

Sherlock pulled out of John's grasp and leaned back on his knees, knowing that he could make John pursue him. Sherlock shrugged off his shirt completely and lay down, inching on his back over the bearskin rug until at last his head came to rest pillowed on the taxidermied bear head, with its glass eyes and bared teeth.

With a little smile – he was finding it very difficult to not smile – Sherlock planted his feet on the fur and lifted his hips, shimmying out of his pants and making sure to emphasize the eroticism of those motions, caressing his own thighs once he'd kicked the clothes away. (He left his socks on. John could take care of those if it mattered to him.)

Sherlock watched John's face intently, adjusting his nearly-full erection through his plain grey cotton briefs, palming the thick line of it slowly as it grew. John's gaze was so locked to him, John seemed to have momentarily forgotten about his own body. Those dilated dark blue eyes roamed every inch of him, and John had taken on a mesmerizing stillness. What was he waiting for? An invitation?

“Come down here, John,” Sherlock said, stretching out an arm over his head. He pushed the waistband of his underpants down and thrust his hand inside them, showing off the dark fringe of his pubic hair, pulling his erection free until the reddened wet head poked out towards his navel, its anticipatory slickness gleaming in the firelight. “Lie with me.”

Half of John's face was golden in the firelight, half of it sharp in shadow. Then John made an amazing little sound – half whimper, half growl – and stood up, shucking off his jeans and his undone shirt, but keeping his red cotton briefs on as Sherlock had done, and crawled down onto the rug on his hands and knees, fingers tightening in the thick black bear fur by Sherlock's shoulders as he tried to cover Sherlock's body with his own.

But Sherlock wriggled until they lay side-by-side, and slid a leg over John's to pull their hips close.

“You don't like this rug, John,” Sherlock said as he ran his hand over John's hip, sliding fingers under stretchy fabric. “You think it's tacky. And you're sentimental, you feel sorry for the bear, even though you know that won't bring it back to life. You feel those fake eyes watching you, and you don't like the teeth.”

John's eyes went wide at what must seem to him like the utmost of irrelevancies, especially when Sherlock pushed his hips forward against John's, feeling out the hard, hot swell of John's erection with his own, lining them up and starting a slow, deliberate, filthy rub and slide.

With a shove and twist, Sherlock had John on his back underneath him, sliding his thigh just right so that he could part John's legs with his own, watched that fascinating face shifting and changing as John's neck arched in pleasure and those expressive eyes closed for a moment, the lines around his eyes and mouth smoothing and tightening. Oh, that look. John writhed beneath him as he struggled for more friction, shoulders rolling back and chest pressing upward. Yes, Sherlock thought. He appreciates the rug now, the thick, coarse fur on his back and my skin on his front, look at him.

Sherlock surged up with a lewd roll of his hips and fixated on John's mouth – first open, now licked and bitten; John's restless tongue, his clenching teeth – and sank his own lips against it, eating out John's mouth with the same motions of teasing and tasting he used when rimming his hole and licking his cock. John moaned deep into his mouth, hand clenching once again in Sherlock's hair, pulling and clutching and holding him in place for the mutual dance of devouring.

Then John's hands were all over him – over and into, beside and above, between and below. Sherlock broke off their filthy kiss with a gasp and nipped at John's neck, nuzzling just below his ear, breathing heavily into it as John's hands grasped and pulled at his buttocks, trying to gain control of the pace of movement.

“Look at you, John. Did you ever imagine yourself like this, driven so wild by another man's body?” Sherlock purred into John's ear. “Is it the taboo that does it? Forbidden fruit?”

“You're the fruity one,” John chuckled shallowly.

“As you say, while you're sliding one of your hands in between us and fondling another man's testicles.”

“Shit,” John said. “I never thought that was a sexy word until I heard you say it.”

Sherlock went on with it. It was hard to muster enough breath to get it all out, what with the heat of the fire on one side of his body, and the heat of John all along his front, and those lewd movements he was trying so hard to keep slow and steady – but he was a champion talker and had sustained a monologue under far worse conditions than this. “. . . And your other hand is clutching at my ass like it's saving you from drowning, and it's obvious you want to finger-fuck me so very badly, but your arms are too short to really achieve that in this position . . .”

John growled again and tried to turn his head to bite, but Sherlock had his head nearly pinned with his shoulders and his words. “What do you want, John? You want to penetrate me, don't you? Do you want me to hold you down and ride you? Oh, you love that position, I know you do. You love to feel dominated by me when you've got your cock deep inside me. You love to watch my body move while I impale myself on you again and again. You love to feel me clutch and pull at you with my internal muscles. You love to watch me lose control and sweat, you love to thrust up so fast you bounce me on your hips, you love to fight your hands free and grab at me and jerk me off until I tighten up inside and come all over you...”

“Oh God, Sherlock,” John moaned. “I can't last long if you keep doing that, I'm gonna . . . ”

“You love my voice. You love it when I say filthy things to you, you love the sounds I make when I need to be touched, when I'm begging to be sucked, when I'm so, so close to coming, don't you?” With great effort, Sherlock gritted his teeth and slowed down further, and eventually his motions rubbing John's cock with his own had slowed to a teasing throb. “Do you want to fuck me now?” he nearly-whispered, his voice a wrecked, hot-blooded rasp.

“Oh God yes, please, I want to be inside you so bad, I just want to give it to you hard, just the way you like it, I want to come inside you, so deep, please, Sherlock...”

“Well, that's too bad,” Sherlock said, hoisting himself up on his hands and knees. “Because you can't. Not tonight. I won't let you.”

“WHAT?”

“Remember our little game, John? Our little hunting game? The one where I won the first round? Remember how I pushed you down and took you from behind right there in the grass?”

John whimpered and writhed. “Yeah, that was amazing. Christ, Sherlock, you can fuck like a wild animal, I never knew . . . ”

“You have to earn the rights to my anus now, John,” Sherlock said, his control at a much higher percentage than it had been a few minutes ago. “You have to win it. You have to put your mark on me.”

“Hell,” John gasped, looking downright offended. It was a good look on him. He was easier than usual to confuse when so much of his blood was in his prick. “I could go get the paintball gun and shoot you with it right now if that's what you want.”

“That would hardly be sporting.” Sherlock felt his flushed face split wide open in a grin. “Don't look so ill-treated. You can do anything else you want to me. You can use your hands and your mouth as much as you like, and I will gladly use mine to merciless advantage on your body, John. You can rut up against my cheeks, you can thrust between my thighs or into my mouth. Any other act our two bodies can do, I'll do with you with relish, as long as you can stand it. But I'm not letting you put your cock up in me, and I won't put mine inside you either.”

John clutched at Sherlock's arms with a painful grip. “You're pure evil, Sherlock Holmes. 'Cause that's all I can think about now.”

“Forbidden fruit,” Sherlock said, and couldn't help but smile a little more, sideways. “My dear John Watson.”

“Don't 'my dear' me, you,” John said, his frustrated smile wide and brilliant and deadly and so very enticing. “The next time I have a clear shot at your luscious little hole, I'm gonna wreck you. I'm gonna use you like a one-man gangbang. I'm gonna shoot my load so hard up inside you, you'll taste it in your mouth.”

“That's not - ”

“It's dirty talk, Sherlock, it doesn't have to be medically accurate.”

Oh. He was right. It really, really didn't. And talking wasn't the point. Not of this. “What else do you want right now?”

“Alright, okay, your rules. No fucking tonight, I promise. But, God, my cock is so hard for you. Will you suck it? I really wanna watch you suck it. You did say anything.”

“I did. Indeed. Of course I will.”

Sherlock lowered his mouth to John's chest again, particularly that sensitive right nipple. He didn't lick it or bite it or suck it; he just passed a glancing kiss over it and moved down, down, down, brushing his lips over John's skin the whole way down until he bumped the wet, slick head of John's cock.

Larger than you'd think from his height, but human bodies vary so much; well within the range of normal; still delightful. There IS such a thing as too big; he isn't. Circumcised, unlike mine. Not for religious reasons; he's obviously from a Christian Protestant family; it was done routinely at birth like most baby boys of our generation; it's normal, common, ordinary. My mother had to sign papers to refuse it for Mycroft and me. She didn't believe in it. In the bathhouses, my unaltered status was desirable because it was exotic and rare. WHY is it rare? IS the head of his cock less sensitive than mine? If so, that just means I must work harder.

Sherlock heard John's voice, miles above him. “I see you staring at my dick, and I'm glad you appreciate it, but can you just . . . ?”

Sherlock went down, mouth trailing over John's lower belly, following the line of his light bristly hair, sliding his hand down to coil around the shaft of John's erection and pulling it up to take the head between his lips and tease it for a few moments of light sucking, just before he took a deep breath and pulled as much of John's cock as he could down his throat.

John's breathy moan synchronized with the groan of the house as every single electrical appliance went down; and then that ambient electrical hum was gone, and there was no light but that of the fire, and no sounds but John's panting and Sherlock's slurping and the fire's weakening pops.

Sherlock jerked his head up. “The generator – why isn't it working now?”

“Fuck it,” John gasped, tugging at Sherlock's hair. “I don't care. Please just – you know, orgasms now, electrocution later – ”

And then John's eyes narrowed.

And then Sherlock realized his fatal mistake, being so distracted at such a crucial point.

John Watson was no idiot. Relatively speaking.

John pushed Sherlock's head back down onto him. “That feels nice,” John said calmly. “You sucking me. That's good.”

“Only good?” Sherlock pulled his mouth off just to ask that. Because it stung. He wanted to hear John telling him it was amazing, brilliant, perfect . . . File under: things you can never tell him.

John squirmed and sighed. And breathed in deep. “It'd be better if . . . I could suck you too. Or at least lick you and eat you. At the same time.”

Sherlock breathed in deep in relief; he should remember; his John did not like to be completely passive for long. He always wanted to do his share. “Very well. But it could be awkward, considering . . . “

“If you say it, I'll spank you.” John squirmed and wriggled and pushed Sherlock down onto his side. John pushed him away for just a moment to work his underpants all the way down and off, and Sherlock did the same. Yes, much better. They were fully naked, facing each other's groins, head to tail. Yes, Sherlock wasn't entirely wrong, this almost worked; on their sides, heads pillowed on each other's inner thighs.

But Sherlock wound up grunting in discomfort as John had to bend his erection down so far it nearly bent painfully, just to get at it, and John, bless him, knew the difference between a grunt of 'yes' and a grunt of 'ugh', and finally just submitted to being underneath again.

Sherlock could bend his back in all sorts of ways at least, and he could offer all the attractions of his undercarriage at least to John's mouth if he was on top, and once John had accepted this, he was laving Sherlock happily from balls to bottom, moaning and squirming and giving off delicious vibrations as Sherlock went back to work on his cock from an awkward angle.

Still, it was clear that both of them were simply working too hard to come – both too focused on the other's pleasure, neither of them comfortable.

Sherlock's mind went into overdrive: Mistake. This is a good position in theory, but we haven't practiced it as we should to account for our size differences. I am feeling pressure to perform and so is he, and this isn't conducive to –

John. Moving. Breaking his train of thought. Pushing him over and away. Was it that bad? Did I offend?

There was the amazing sight of John, pushing himself up from the rug. Standing. Firelight accentuating every detail of him; of muscle of fat of hair of magnificent erection. Smiling. The look on his face: not angry, not disgusted. Upturned index finger: wait a moment. Walking away. To the kitchen. Hungry? No, no, he loves sex far too much to interrupt it for food, as much as he loves that too.

Oh. He's looking for something to put to a sexual use. Bang and clatter of cabinets, glass bottles in the dark. John returning wearing nothing but a smile and a bottle of olive oil in his hand. Interesting. No, not just interesting. Mesmerizing. A beautiful sight. Why is it so beautiful?

Sherlock found himself kneeling up in anticipation, waiting as John came around with that smile. As John slowly stalked around behind him, and then knelt down, and opened the bottle, pouring a little bit over his left hand, and reached around to suddenly grasp Sherlock's cock.

Sherlock felt the slick pressure of the skilled fingers, pulling at him; felt John's mouth breathing hard at his shoulder; couldn't help but moan as he heard the bottle gurgle again, knowing it had to be spilling oil into John's weaker right hand, and even as Sherlock thrust helplessly through John's tight fist, he felt John's oiled cock right up against his buttocks – moving strongly, powerfully, but in a controlled, certain way.

And Sherlock heard John's gasping and panting in his ear. Felt a slippery bite at the nape of his neck. The pressure in the cleft of his ass was maddening; the firm strokes of the shaft of John's cock between his cheeks and against his hole . . . oh, this was most excellent, John was making him almost regret his impulsive rule. He had to test it. He just had to.

“John, that's so good,” Sherlock groaned, rolling his hips. “Right there. God, the way you're rutting against me. I want you to fuck me. Please, just . . . press me down and put it in, it'd be so easy, bend me over . . . “

“NO,” John said, pumping Sherlock's cock harder and – oh, that evil creature – slipping a hand around his throat. “I promised I wouldn't, remember?”

Honorable man, John Watson. Makes extremely foolish promises and then actually keeps them.

“But I want . . . I want . . . ”

“No.”

And with that, Sherlock came. It hit him suddenly, a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky, ground-to-cloud this time, from the inside. He'd been just about to speak when his body was overtaken by shudders of pleasure, and then he was arching away from John's body and spurting hard, all thoughts ruptured and gone except the one where he was hoping that John would find a way to push him down and forget the promise, to sneak inside him like a burglar.

But then John was pulling Sherlock's shaking body back against him hard, and Sherlock could feel John's hips jerking and twitching and warm threads of wetness spilling up his back, smeared in between them as John moaned out his climax into Sherlock's shoulders.

They shook and shook, and then they were both sinking back down into the fur rug as their muscle tension relaxed. John's chest was fused to Sherlock's back with sweat and semen, and Sherlock was boneless against the rug, eventually realizing just how hard the wooden floor was underneath that fur.

John nuzzled him and laughed. “Your ass smells like an Italian restaurant now.”

Sherlock couldn't help but smile. “Is that a problem for you?”

“No, but I'm gonna want to lick spaghetti sauce off it next time.”

“Do you need to eat again?”

John was rubbing his face against Sherlock's shoulderblades. It tickled. It was distractingly intimate. It was nice. “Not just yet. I'm wonderin', though, if you know how to get come and olive oil out of bear fur.”

Sherlock squirmed until their bodies had less abrasive bone-rub and more cuddly meeting of meaty places. “I have no idea, but I'm sure Mrs. Hudson does.”

“If you ask her, I'll have you for a rug,” John murmured.

Sherlock just hummed, under John, on the fur. Electricity could wait.

About ten minutes, and then he was pushing John off to go see to the generator. And he only realized it was a problem for him to be naked outside in an ice storm when John followed him and pointed that out to him.

Never mind that he wasn't naked exactly, since he was wrapped in a bearskin rug, with the bear head flopping awkwardly on top of his own, and then slipping to his shoulder to give him a second, much more upsetting face.

"Sherlock!" John was protesting, though he had barely a leg to stand on, wearing mostly a thinner wool afghan. The ice-glaze of each blade of grass crunched painfully under their bare feet (not, alas, their bear feet). "It's cold, and it's slippery!"

"Yes."

Sherlock turned around to see John's face crumple into helpless giggles. "You look like you flunked out of shaman school," John said. "and the cold air makes your dick look small. Which it ain't, don't worry!"

Sherlock wasn't sure to laugh or pout so his face did a a little bit of both, and he felt a little warmed inside when John said, "But still gorgeous. Idiot. Come to bed. Deal with that in the morning."

"But there's no lights."

"Don't need 'em. Come to bed."

"For . . . more?"

"Any time. As much as you want," John said.

I will hold him to that, Sherlock thought. I'll hold him to all sorts of things.


~end