Chapter Text
Despite a brief struggle over the hearse keys, with Sherlock simpering and sighing in the passenger seat, John felt a good deal more like all was right with the world again. All was not right with the weather, though - the skies grew heavy and the spring woods by the road turned twilight-dark as the railroad tracks and the occasional half-abandoned spurt of a town whizzed by. John didn’t think they’d be able to beat the rain.
“In about a half a mile, there’s a junction with an overgrown dirt road that leads to a clearing in the woods full of abandoned coke kilns. No one has worked there since the 50s. It’s a perfect place to pull over.”
“Why we gotta pull over, Sherlock?” John asked. He had insisted on taking the wheel of the hearse, to let Sherlock rest and let sleep and painkillers do their good work as much as possible. His passenger-patient wasn’t having the good taste to rest and be quiet though. “Are you okay? Are you feeling sick?”
“You made promises, John,” Sherlock said. He leaned over, and with his good hand he gave a sweeping, firm caress of John’s thigh.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to get your pulse racing just yet,” John said, trying to ignore the constriction in his jeans.
“Too late,” Sherlock said, chuckling. “I promise I’ll find a position where I can keep my arm and leg lowered if you’ll feel better. But I’m well out of the woods medically so it’s time to take a little time in the woods, literally.”
“Mm,” John said. “Light me a cigarette and I’ll think about it.”
Sherlock did so - out of the pack in John’s shirt pocket, not his own, and Sherlock took serious care to make sure his fingers and the shifting little box made as much contact with the skin of John’s chest as possible. Sherlock took a few languid drags of it before handing it over, pursing his decadent lips and blowing wispy rings.
John took the cigarette and sucked at it before setting it down in the hearse ashtray. He flicked on the radio to subdue his thoughts. Dammit, you always gotta cycle through a lot of preaching, and static, and staticky preaching before landing on any decent music. Staticky music. Clear-signal rock station at last, praise be.
Seasons don’t fear the reaper,
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain,
We can be like they are,
Come on baby…
Sherlock laughed deep and dark beneath the clean-toned mournfully pealing guitars. John tried to look away as Sherlock’s good hand palmed his own cock in his tight pants, squeezing obscenely.
Don’t fear the reaper
“That song turn you on?” John asked, hands clenching on the wheel and beginning to sweat. That old driveway to the abandoned place Sherlock mentioned had to be coming up soon. Dammit, he was going to take it, wasn’t he? He was. “You’re morbid. Death gets you hot. Bones give you a boner.”
“We both remember where and when we first kissed, John. The first time we acknowledged we were hot for each other. The first time you touched this—“ damn him, that was the luscious head of his cock now freed from his zipper, gleaming in the gloaming. “You were no less hard than me. You’d have finished the job in no time flat if we weren’t interrupted. It’s not the song, it’s not death, it’s you and me. Pull over so we can fuck.”
“Yes sir,” John said resignedly. They weren’t that far from home, after all, and if anything went wrong they had the CB - which John always had to double-check and make sure it was turned off, he wouldn’t put it past Sherlock to leave it on and give Lestrade a little radio play.
The old row of coke ovens being slowly reclaimed by scrubby trees was creepy as hell, in the way of abandoned places once full of human bustle and now being reconquered by the ancient mountains with their lack of care for human endeavor. In the dim dappled light below the forest canopy, the ovens looked like crumbling tombs.
“Sherlock, you’re still healing,” John finally said as he pulled the hearse to rest. “Be careful.”
“Mmm, yes,” Sherlock said, opening the passenger side door and stepping out. He only swayed a little. “Open the back, John, and let’s get in there. I’ve got KY, promise.”
John eyed him sideways, watching Sherlock wobble towards the rear of the vehicle. Holding his gaze, Sherlock started to strip as best he could, which was insufficient. Sherlock managed to bare his chest and open his pants but he had to work at it with one hand at half strength.
Sherlock shimmied through his mess of clutter in the hearse back, caressing himself, cajoling John to get on top of him. John shook his head for a moment and then zeroed in on Sherlock’s cock, still struggling but almost fully erect despite all the odds against that. Just on theorizing and talk and fantasy. John hadn’t even touched it, and he knew that Sherlock wanted him to. Desperately. He might want to play that off a little while. Sherlock would expect nothing less.
“You alright there, Sherlock?” John asked, teasing, crawling in. “You got everything you need? Cigarettes? A good book?”
“Everything except you,” Sherlock snapped.
“You got me,” John said.
“Good. Would you like to help me with a little physical therapy? Repetitive motion?”
John snickered a moment and shook his head, fixing Sherlock with a steady hungry gaze, letting him know the time for godawful pickup lines was passing by. He leaned in and crawled over Sherlock, letting his hand trail up the side of Sherlock’s leg the whole way, up his side, and over his chest until John was in position to brace himself on his hands over him. “You don’t ever give up, do you? Look at you. You’re still pale and sick lookin.’ Not half-dead anymore, but still about a quarter dead. I should lose my license for even thinkin’ about fucking you where you’re in this bad shape.”
Sherlock drew in a sharp breath and groped at John’s hips, thrusting up with his own. “I think I know by now what I can take and what I can’t.”
“Yeah, that’s the fucked-up thing,” John said, lowering his face, his nose nuzzling at Sherlock’s. “You do, don’t you? You’re a fuckin’ war zone of sex. You’re going and going, and you want and you want. And you need to rest but you can’t till something shuts you down, yeah? So I reckon I’m mighty biased and full of conflict of interest, but there ain’t no other doctor here to treat you but me, and my diagnosis is that you’re only gonna get the sleep you really need to heal after someone has worked you hard enough to wear you out.”
“John,” Sherlock said, panting, eyes only slightly glassy. “Thank you for falling for my manipulations so quickly. Normally I’d be up for drawing the foreplay out further by you playing dumb a little longer, but I appreciate your straightforwardness now.” With his good hand he yanked John’s head down to his with a ruthless grasp, and kissed him inexorably.
John gave out a little high-pitched sound, completely out of his control, as Sherlock plundered his mouth. But he still managed to reach out to Sherlock’s bandaged arm, and hold it down.
“I know you like to provoke me to get me to play rough,” he growled. “I’m all for it. When you’re healthy. You’re not.” He squeezed Sherlock’s wrist, and watched the resulting wince with some satisfaction. “We’re not gonna bite and scratch and roll the hearse. We’re gonna make love slow and easy, and by God, you’re gonna like it.”
“Mmm, yes, John,” Sherlock said, reaching up for more kisses. “Hold me down and force tenderness on me. You brute.”
“You…are…so…brilliantly perverse. Perversely brilliant.” John leaned up, finishing the last buttons of Sherlock’s shirt, laying him open to the caress of wandering fingertips. John leaned down and kissed the side of his neck, working his way down Sherlock’s right shoulder. Familiarity had spent all this time only breeding sharper, stronger, more refined and specialized desire. The fine hairs on Sherlock’s chest seemed to bristle and rise up to his light touch in that way that he loved, Sherlock’s sharper, deeper breaths animating him beneath John’s caresses. “We’re not in a hurry to go home.”
“I suppose not,” Sherlock murmured as a burst of rolling thunder almost drowned him out. His good hand worked quickly at John’s belt buckle, opening it up, popping the top button on his jeans. “This storm will hold us.”
John wriggled his hips, slowly, enough to allow Sherlock to work his pants down one-handed, groaning softly as his cock bounced out into cool air, and Sherlock was quick to caress it, engulfing as much as he could of it in his vast hand. John lightly bit his way back up Sherlock’s throat, over the little cliff of his chin to get back to those lips. As they kissed again, Sherlock moved obscenely, working John’s cock into the crease between his thighs, taut skin grinding on denim. John closed his eyes and saw the flash of lightning in the dark red of his eyelids as he savored Sherlock head to toe.
“How do you want it?” Sherlock asked softly, clenching his weaker hand around the back of John’s neck. “Oh, is my hand up too high? Not lower than my heart? If you want it there, then…I’m not going to stop touching you….so something has to change.” He laughed low in his throat, and before John could even register fully what was happening, Sherlock had flipped them.
Now pressed nearly against the left wall of the coffin compartment, on top of years of newspapers and emergency supplies and God knows what else, John was awkwardly half-naked and squirming underneath Sherlock, who had in one swift motion entangled their legs in an elegant knot. “Oh, you want it slow and sweet. Good.” Sherlock’s voice slowed and bent its vowels into a lazy summery Deep South accent like some kind of Gone With the Wind extra. “Good, that’s good…um, I guess I didn’t think this through, would you be a good sweet loverman and take my cock all the way out like I forgot to do? I did almost die, after all.” There was literal batting of literal eyelashes.
John laughed so hard his head hit the edge of a metal toolbox painfully. “You manipulative son of a bitch,” he said, as he did what he was told and almost lost it right there at the first touch of wet need, velvet slide, Sherlock’s gasp.
The scent of rain mingled with the scent of Sherlock - sweat and antiseptic and pheromones - as John stroked him with one hand and finished wriggling out of his jeans and underwear with the other. Sherlock lowered onto him and John adjusted his grip as best he could to take both of them, shaft to shaft, pulsing together. Sherlock made a low purring sound as he nipped at John’s neck, his injured arm curling under John’s shoulder as Sherlock leaned weight on his elbow and started to roll his hips. He gave a frustrated little sound as he hooked his good hand under John’s thigh and hoisted it up, sweaty grip sliding up to the back of John’s knee, opening him wide and pressing in, close, sliding the head of his cock out of John’s hand and into the crease between balls and thigh, aiming lower. “KY in the box below your head, John,” Sherlock murmured before he sucked for a moment on John’s earlobe, completely derailing his mind.
“You are a fuckin’ madman. You really want to…”
“If you’ll let me,” Sherlock said, licking that incredibly sensitive spot below and behind John’s ear, “and I think you will. You said you want it slow, so luckily that’s exactly how I want to do it.”
“Thought I was gonna be in charge of enforcing that,” John said, rummaging in the box over his head to find the gel, bringing it out and laying it down, and then letting his hands slide down as far as they could to cup Sherlock’s taut ass. God, John could get where he wanted to be just from this, just grabbing Sherlock and rocking him and letting him rut between his thighs, up against his cock and balls just like that, fuck yeah. Damn. He was too far ahead of himself. He was in no state to be bossing Sherlock around, and Sherlock would sure as hell pick up on that.
“You can be,” Sherlock said indulgently. “Here, why don’t you let me watch you finger yourself down here while I do things to you with my mouth?”
“You really are suspiciously healthy,” John said, managing to work the cap off the tube and squeeze a dollop one-handed. If it leaked all over, that was going to be Sherlock’s problem. “Suspiciously fast recovery. Should I tell Mrs. Hudson her mad-stone worked?”
“Might as well tell Helen her faith-healing worked,” Sherlock said. “But I still think it was the laying-on of your hands.”
“I mean it, Sherlock,” John said, trying in vain to keep his medical authority. “You’ve got to take it slow. You get too worked up, and I’ll make you stop, I swear I will.”
“No, you won’t.”
No, he didn’t.
John did as Sherlock asked, working the lube into his own hole while Sherlock watched in rapt delight close by, just propping himself up on his elbows over John’s torso and paying close attention to important points with his eyes and his nose and his mouth, inappropriately sniffing and nuzzling, appropriately biting and licking.
Sherlock reached out and reverently ran his fingertips over John’s hand and wrist as John worked, and then licked the base of John’s cock and the top of his sac with a perfectly obscene lather, leaving broad wet trails. John groaned as his body involuntarily arched and his thigh muscles tightened as his legs opened.
Sherlock didn’t quite have his usual power and grace - though he’d been well bandaged and medicated, he still had stiffness in his limbs, and with John’s trained eye he could see the twinges of pain and frustration when Sherlock’s muscles didn’t behave as they ought. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” John groaned, reaching up with his other hand to press the side of Sherlock’s hip. “We said slow.”
“Mmm,” Sherlock agreed. “You’ll have to be the flexible one this time.”
“I’ll manage - here, like this,” John murmured, lifting his good leg — no no you fool, they’re both good legs — up to the level of Sherlock’s waist, and wrapping it. Sherlock’s hips lunged forward, and John’s hand slithered down between them, stroking Sherlock’s cock with cool slick gel that quickly heated as his hand moved and his fingers tugged at Sherlock’s most sensitive skin.
Sherlock moaned and pressed forward, lightly fucking John’s hand and begging with his body for help. “Please,” he said.
“Please what?” John asked - pumping, guiding, caressing as best he could.
“Help me,” Sherlock murmured, leaning down on his elbows, hips squirming towards his goal. “Put me in you.”
That did it. Those words in that voice electrified John, melted him, commanded him, and he drew the head of Sherlock’s cock right to his entrance and swirled it around a little to help open up. Then he tugged a little, pushed a little, and then pulled him in, easy and smooth. They both shivered and groaned, rocking together slowly as they joined, and Sherlock buried his face for a moment in the crook of John’s neck, right before he started to thrust with cautious rolling motions. “I mean it now,” John gasped as Sherlock moved so good, so right, just perfectly there, and John grabbed Sherlock’s hair at the nape of his neck. “Easy now. Don’t you hurt yourself again.”
“I have a doctor handy,” Sherlock said, his voice purring and slurred. His impaired, aching arm still scrabbled to grasp John’s thigh around his side. “And there’s no sin . . . in putting myself . . . in his hands.”
“That ain’t my hand you’re in right now,” John chuckled, clenching his legs and arching up, feeling sweat start to soak through Sherlock’s shirt, finding it smelled wholesome and healthy - just the clean rutting sweat of sex in close quarters, not a trace of sickness or poison. Sherlock buried his face against John again and started to murmur, a strange litany of nonsense syllables. “Speakin’ in tongues?”
Sherlock said nothing in English but brought his tongue around to John’s mouth, where he put it to better, if more conventional use.
Their movements settled into a familiar, rocking pace, bodies locked together in just the right way as they tasted each other, Sherlock bending his back just so to compensate for the height difference. He only slightly winced in pain as his ankle was lightly jostled with each pulse and slide. John leaned his head back and nudged Sherlock up a little, enough to get some space in between them, and then he started to jack his own cock, slow and lewd, giving Sherlock a show.
John had never thought of himself as an especially handsome man, nothing like the hardbodied models in those old physique mags he knew that gay men liked, but Sherlock’s rapt attention gave him an ego boost - the way Sherlock never ever seemed to get enough of watching John get himself off. A little bit of a stroking demonstration could bring Sherlock nearly to the edge all by itself, and to give him this nice close-up look while Sherlock was buried balls-deep in him, well all for the better now. Because Sherlock was doing an admirable job of fucking him almost at full-strength, and John was still doctor enough to know that shouldn’t go on too much longer.
A roaring blast of thunder startled them, and heavy curtains of rain bathed the hearse’s windows as they steamed it with their breath.
Sherlock was literally drooling as he peered down, fixated on the motions of John’s hand, unconsciously replicating the rhythm with his hips. Then Sherlock gave a strangled sound of pain and pleasure at once as his leg cramped and his body tensed, and then he was shaking and whimpering as he came. John groaned at him in encouragement, “God that feels good, you filling me up, yeah, give it to me…” his hand sped to a blur. Sherlock’s eyes flew back open to catch the climax of the performance, and only just shut them fast enough to avoid getting stung by the hot jets on his face. Eyes still closed, by scent and feel he bent down to aim the last spurts onto his chest. Carefully Sherlock withdrew his softening cock and lowered his head to lick John’s cock clean.
“You’re fucking amazing,” John said, stroking his sweaty hair and feeling his racing pulse with only a little worry.
“Sure you have those words in the right order?” Sherlock said with a weary smirk as he wiped between John’s thighs with the sleeve of his shirt.
“That too,” John said. “C’mere.”
Sherlock crawled back up into John’s arms and settled with a slight oof sound, his full weight on John’s chest. They didn’t speak for a long time, just drifted in the rush of the rain and the feel of each other’s breath and pulse. John flailed around a little in the clutter at his side until he managed to produce a ratty blanket and pillow. Sherlock’s eyelids sagged as he rested his head on John’s shoulder.
“Not going anywhere for a while,” John murmured, glancing up at the water-shrouded windshield. “Tell you what, though, why don’t you just lie down here and take a nap while I drive us the rest of the way home. You need your rest.”
“Don’t need a nap,” Sherlock pouted as his eyes started to drift shut.
“Do too,” John said, stroking Sherlock’s wet hair as he maneuvered Sherlock’s head onto the pillow. There were some signs he knew how to read too, and he was pretty sure Sherlock would be asleep before he could even get to the driver’s seat. John looked down on him with overwhelming fondness as he shimmied his jeans back on in the narrow space, only wincing a little at the slipperiness and slight ache. It was worth a wince and a little wetness to know the depth of Sherlock’s endurance and lust.
But no sooner had he started to crawl away than Sherlock reached out with his good hand, quick as a snake’s strike, eyes going wide. “Sshh!” he whispered. “Hold still. Keep your head down but see what you can see.”
Along the wall of crumbling coke ovens overgrown with young trees, John saw a hunkering shape in the shivering rain-fog. It crept down the cracked and broken road warily - it seemed hunched as if trying to keep low and possibly imitate an animal, but John had seen too many field tricks to be fooled by that.
“This is old Easton-Bolan land,” Sherlock murmured.
John scrambled his sex-slowed mind to find the relevance. “Wait - our first case. When we first met. The coal company that…?”
“Yes,” Sherlock said. He seemed to allow himself to drift toward drowsiness again, so he didn’t seem to think a threat was imminent.
Well, if John had thought to drift off for a little while next to Sherlock in that sweet after-sex doze, that put an end to that. He kissed Sherlock’s sleeping forehead and crawled into the driver’s seat, unstashing his revolver from the glove compartment just in case.
The windshield wipers kept up a steady beat. John Fogerty wasn’t reassuring.
I went down Virginia,
Seeking shelter from the storm
Caught up in the fable,
I watched the tower grow…
Who’ll stop the rain, indeed. John barely saw another car on the wet road all the way back to Stanger - except for one coal truck swerving across both lanes on a sharp bend like it owned the place. Which its owner likely did. Nothing necessarily sinister, they all did that. But he wasn’t at ease, not until he made the turn up the little gravel spur of Route 221 that was home.
The hearse crackled gravel heavily as John turned up the switchback past his own pretty-much-abandoned trailer, headed around the little bend past Mrs. Hudson’s cottage.
And he stopped at the sight of the figure who walked right out into the road and stood firm. The rain was slowing, but it hadn’t stopped by a long shot. In the gray haze, in her hat and coat with her swaying umbrella, Mrs. Hudson looked like an avenging-angel version of Mary Poppins.
John stopped and gestured in a way that meant something he’d never say to her face. She waved imperiously, flagging them into her driveway. John sighed and complied, because there was no other reply to that expression.
As he pulled in, he rolled down his window to hear her shouting above the rain. “Where is he? Where is that dead boy?”
“In the back, where a dead boy belongs,” John said, popping the hatch open.
Sherlock sat up suddenly and hit his head on the ceiling. John remembered he hadn’t really bothered to help get him fully decent, and Sherlock scrambled to bunch the blanket over his lap as she let him have it both barrels. “You’re like a son to me, Sherlock Holmes,” she snarled, finger in his face. “You too, John. I thank God every day you’ve got a good man to look out for you, and you still act like your life is your all own to throw away if you just feel like it. You’re like a son to me, I say. You better not ever make me bury you. You better not, y’hear?”
John was awestruck. Sherlock was tugging at his hair and wincing under the onslaught. “John told me you gave us, um, that thing…” he muttered, half-asleep and all sheepish.
“That’s right, and I also made you a tea. And I’ll tell you this, Sherlock, it tastes plumb awful. It’s gonna put hair on your chest and then make it all fall off again. You gonna curse me and you gonna curse your mama and I swear to God it’s gonna be the worst thing you ever put in your mouth - don’t start, I don’t even wanna know what all else’s been in there - and I’m gonna watch you drink it all, you hear me?”
“That’s what the old folks always said,” John drawled, getting out of the driver’s seat and sauntering around to watch the fun. “The worse it tastes, the better it works.”
“Okay,” Sherlock said, sighing. That very submissiveness alone convinced John he still needed some work done on him. “Can I just, well?” He was struggling with his fly. Mrs. Hudson huffed and turned around, stomping toward the house. “I did solve the case,” Sherlock murmured pathetically. “I saved Helen.”
“You sure did,” John said, savoring the sensation of his lingering anger melting away now that someone else had given Sherlock the talking-to he really deserved. “And she’s gonna be so proud of you when she gets done bein’ furious. You know that. She always is.”
Sherlock nodded. “And you saved me. Don’t ever think I don’t know that.”
“I sure did,” John said, helping Sherlock arrange himself into a semblance of dignity, fixing his scarf into a sling for his still-stiff arm. “Glad to do it too. Don’t ever think I won’t do it gladly every time you let me. But you better always let me.”
Sherlock leaned on John willingly, his hand on John’s ass unnecessarily, but he avoided John’s eyes for a moment before accepting and returning a stolen kiss.