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splixTitle: If You Can't Move Heaven, Raise Hell
Author: Alex
Fandom: Sherlock [BBC]
Rating: Varies
Pairing: Sherlock/John; Sherlock/Ian Adler; John Watson/Ian Adler; Jim Moriarty/Sebastian Moran
Disclaimer: A.C. Doyle, Moffat, Gatiss.
Summary: All John Watson wants is a peaceful fortnight's holiday in Cornwall. Fate has other plans, to wit:
1. An abbey in the Italian Alps
2. Murder
3. Mayhem
4. Criminals he has known and would rather forget
5. Bondage
6. Sex
7. Sherlock
Not necessarily in that order.
So much for Cornwall.
Warnings: Violence, explicit sex, dubious consent.
Notes: I don't genderswap as a rule, but I saw this marvelous gif of Tom Hiddleston and Sherlock and couldn't resist. The rest is shameless self-indulgence.
There is definitely going to be dubious consent in the story - how dubious I'm not yet sure, but I will change the warnings if need be. If this poses a difficulty with triggers, please be warned now that the warnings may change.
Plot happily magpied from everywhere, with especial apologies to Umberto Eco.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kimberlite for the sharp-eyed beta.
This fic is a gift for sithdragn, with affection.
Can also be read on AO3
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The night brought dramatically colder temperatures and a stiff breeze that set the new foliage on the trees to rustling. Sherlock huddled in his coat as he walked the empty cobblestone paths of the abbey toward the library, now dark and locked – a deeply foolish notion, to be sure, if Simon thought a simple lock would keep him out, but then Simon was a deeply foolish man. He wondered for a moment if it would be worth the time to break in, just to prove how easily the task could be accomplished, and then decided he’d simply reconnoiter a bit and have Brother Wilhelm show him and John around in the morning.
Overhead, the stars glittered with cold vitality, astonishingly bright far away from light-polluted London. He craned his neck to look at them and picked out Mars – at least he was fairly certain it was Mars. On his birthday, John had, with a badly stifled grin, given him an oversized book called Universe, filled with extravagant coloured photographs of planets and stars and other cosmic phenomena. Sherlock had pointedly ignored it for weeks, and then one night as John slept, had picked it up and read it cover to cover, from Planet Earth to Dark Matter. Halfway through the book, between IC 2944 and DR 21, there had been an inscription scrawled on a yellow sticky note:
I knew you’d read it, you silly tosser. Happy birthday. J
Pride had sealed Sherlock’s lips and he never mentioned the note at all, but he had the oddest sensation that John knew he’d read it all the same. Perhaps he’d inadvertently cracked the spine a bit. At any rate, it had been mildly, if only momentarily, diverting, and he’d filed some information away for possible further use. One never did know when it would come in handy.
He reached the library and studied the façade. Three storeys, nearly as wide as it was tall, and fairly unadorned. He ambled to the doors and frowned. There was no exterior lock, so evidently there was another point of ingress.
“Looking for something to read?”
Sherlock stepped back from the doors and made out a tall, slim figure silhouetted a few metres away. “Mr. Adler, I presume.”
“I’m flattered. You recognised my voice.”
“No. I can see your shadow. No clerical habit.”
“Oh, pity. I was hoping I’d made more of an impression.” Adler strolled into the scant light provided by a bright half-moon and stopped beside the doors. He wore dark clothes and carried a small valise in one hand.
Without appearing obvious, Sherlock assessed him quickly. It wasn’t easy, given the faint illumination, but scent and hearing compensated for what his sight lacked. A difference in gait, new wrinkles in clothing, a faint tang of sweat and other substances – gradually myriad pieces fell into place with a satisfying click. “Did you enjoy your little assignation this evening? One of the younger monks, I’d guess, judging by the lateness of the hour.”
Adler took a step back. “Dear me, Mr. Holmes. I’m not sure I want to know how you arrived at such a conclusion.”
“No, you probably don’t. Most people wouldn’t. Given how furtive most people are about sexual conduct, they’d be horrified to hear how obvious they really are to anyone who cares to indulge in more than superficial observation.”
“And is that what you were doing just now – observing me in more than superficial fashion?”
There was a light, teasing edge to Adler’s voice that put Sherlock on his guard, though – frustratingly – he couldn’t have said why. There was something underneath the smooth, polished, casually elegant surface that eluded and annoyed him, as if he knew far more than he revealed. Sherlock glanced down at the leather case in Adler’s hand. Its sleek, anonymous surface seemed to repel the application of creative deduction. He looked into Adler’s eyes, wide and shining in the moonlight. “What makes you think you merit more than superficial observation?”
Adler smiled. “Maybe I have an overdeveloped sense of self-worth.”
“Maybe so.”
“Or maybe I know a thing or two about observation myself,” Adler went on. “For example – you’re astute enough to tell a thing or two about my proclivities, but you don’t indulge yourself. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say you haven’t had sex in years.”
“Sorry?” Sherlock replied coldly.
“Oh, there’s no shame in it.”
“Yours very truly. I wasn’t implying –“
“It’s just that it becomes easy to tell…sometimes. It’s all in the eyes, you see. I’ve read the articles about you, you know. Ordinary people who look at you see hunger in your eyes and they think it’s hunger for knowledge, or for information, or clues to whatever you happen to be working on, but to other people – to those who tend to observe more than superficially, one might say – there’s another sort of hunger locked tightly behind that lovely, stony face of yours, a fire you keep banked. Surely someone close to you has seen it – Dr. Watson, perhaps?”
A strange heat blossomed in Sherlock’s chest and made its way up his neck and into his face. “I really don’t think that’s any concern of yours. Good evening.” He shouldered past Adler and started back down the cobblestone path. To hell with Adler and his absurd faux-psychology – he was a distraction, nothing more.
“Wait.”
Against his better instincts, Sherlock stopped.
“How did you know?”
“You tell me,” Sherlock retorted, “since your own powers of observation are so extraordinary.” He stayed still, facing away from Adler, planting his feet firmly to keep from swaying on the incline of the path.
“All right.” He heard Adler moving closer to him. “Odours, perhaps, if your nose is particularly sensitive. Saliva, perspiration, semen.”
“That’s a start.” He felt Adler standing beside him, close enough to touch.
“How did you know it was a young monk? It couldn’t just be the time.”
“New wool,” Sherlock said. “Distinct aroma. Could be a new habit for one of the older members of the community, but unlikely, given the worn state of most of their garments at supper. There were five monks who wore new-looking habits, and three of them were quite young. Statistically, that puts the odds of your little rendezvous firmly in favour of one of the three.”
“Good. And do you know what we did together, this young monk and I?” Adler’s lips were close to his ear, as if imparting a secret.
“Going by the bag you’re carrying, the faint tang of leather and metal and the red marks on the inside of one of your hands, I’d say it had something to do with bondage and domination of some sort. I’m sure you’d prefer I didn’t go into detail.”
“You do have keen eyes, Mr. Holmes.”
“Hungry,” Sherlock replied. “So I’ve been told.”
“Would you like to look at some of my toys?”
“Not particularly.”
“Are you sure? You might learn a thing or two.” The faint metallic tearing sound of a zipper drifted upward. “And I won’t charge you a penny.”
Sherlock turned to face Adler. “You’re a…professional, Mr. Adler?”
“Please call me Ian. I’ll call you Sherlock, if I may. And yes, I’m a professional – thanks for putting it so delicately. I put myself through university allowing myself to be bound and beaten and intimately explored by far wealthier people than I. Now, however, I prefer to have the upper hand.”
“It’s lonely at the bottom.” Sherlock couldn’t resist a little mockery.
Adler…Ian…laughed quietly, almost drowning out a soft, slithering noise from the vicinity of the bag. “Yes. Not at the top, though. And fortunately, the top is vastly more remunerative.”
“If that’s the case, then how does a monk afford your services?”
“How unimaginative you are. Not all transactions are conducted for cash. Everybody pays one way or another. Brother Marcelo’s case required a bit of creative accounting, that’s all.”
Sherlock let out a small, disdainful exhalation of breath. “Wonder what that means.”
“It doesn’t matter right now. Have you ever been tied up, Sherlock?”
“Probably more often than you have.”
“Oh? Is that a challenge?”
“No, just a statistical likelihood.” Sherlock had, in fact, spent a fair amount of his early adolescence studying escapology and had, as practice, tied or chained himself up so many times he’d lost count. It had never given him the slightest hint of sexual pleasure, though he’d received more than one peculiar look from his mother in the odd moments that she’d found him tied up in his room or the cellar, and despite his assurances that it was merely research. He’d asked her to tie him to a chair, and she’d refused with startling vehemence. He hadn’t understood her discomfort until much later, when his reading had led him to some of the more prurient aspects of restraint.
It had taken him a long while to become proficient, too, to learn to slip knots and pick locks; on one memorable occasion, when Sherlock was fourteen, Mycroft had found him bound and blindfolded at the bottom of his wardrobe, weeping silent tears of rage and frustration after three hours of fruitless struggling and a steadfast refusal to shout for help. Mycroft had simply hauled him out of the wardrobe, found a pair of scissors, and cut him free. Sherlock, too mortified and full of wounded pride to thank him, had limped to the bathroom and locked himself inside for hours. Neither brother had ever mentioned the incident again.
Still, his efforts had paid off. More than once, Sherlock had managed to escape restraints, much to the dismay of the criminals who’d thought they could contain him. He’d never been able to connect restraint with anything but discomfort, inconvenience, and danger, and the notion of bondage in sex or the application of pain baffled him.
“I see. You’ve made a study of technique without enjoying any of the side benefits.”
“There aren’t any side benefits, as far as I can determine.”
“Then you haven’t explored them very thoroughly,” Ian said. He turned and walked back up the path toward the library.
Let him go. There’s nothing duller than someone nattering archly about sex. He watched Ian moving slowly up the path. Something long and thin, some sort of restraint, dangled from one hand. He didn’t look behind him to see if Sherlock followed.
“It’s perfectly obvious why some people go in for that sort of thing,” Sherlock snapped. Ian stopped walking and stood still. “Endorphin rush,” Sherlock went on. “The sensation of helplessness, the loss of control. Some want the intensity of pain, some merely enjoy the feeling of restraint.”
“You’ve done your preliminary reading, I see. Certainly that’s part of it.” Ian moved toward the library again and sat on a low stone bench beside the door, setting his bag at his feet but holding on to the rope. Almost against his will, Sherlock followed. “I’m not so reductive myself. In my line of work one comes to discover that there are almost as many reasons for enjoying it as there are people who do so. And frankly, it doesn’t really matter to me. My customers are bright enough to explain exactly what they want – I insist upon it.”
“Mustn’t have unhappy clients.” Sherlock drew close to the stone bench.
“Precisely.” Ian looked up. “Sit,” he said, patting the empty space beside him.
Sherlock remained standing. “So you’re a sex worker who moonlights as a Latin scholar. Or is it the other way round?”
“Whatever you like. It isn’t the Latin translation that pays the bills, though.”
“Shocking.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Ian chuckled. “Supply and demand and all that.”
“So what are you doing here – the former or the latter?”
“I wondered when you’d ask.” Ian looked out at nothing, a reflective and abstracted expression on his face. Sherlock discerned a faint tang of leather and sweat as Ian drew the fingers of one hand through his curling hair. “Both, obviously. I’m translating from a codex written by Irish monks in the eleventh century, a pilgrim’s guide to Rome, at the behest of the bishop of the Dublin archdiocese. A very prestigious client, not much money, but enormous purity of intention, no doubt. The other is none of your business, I’m afraid.”
“It might be.”
“Oh?”
“That little encounter you had this evening with your young monk. Bit of a busman’s holiday for you, wasn’t it?”
“Au contraire. I mix business and pleasure all the time. And sometimes it’s quite nice to be with a novice. So to speak.”
“Yes, but you said everybody pays, didn’t you? That’s hardly the attitude of someone who mixes business with pleasure. And he didn’t pay you in cash, so it had to be for something else – not the finer points of Catholic doctrine or hints on deciphering eleventh-century Latin texts, I’m certain. So – what were you after tonight, Ian, besides an altruistic urge to gift a monk with sexual favours?”
“What a suspicious mind you have,” Ian said. “Is that a blessing or a curse? Never mind. What do you say we make this interesting. If you can slip a knot I tie, then I’ll tell you why I went to see lovely, pliant Brother Marcelo.”
Sherlock frowned. “And if I can’t?”
“Then your curiosity remains unsatisfied.”
“I’ll find out one way or the other.”
“Yes, but why be dull? Dull doesn’t interest you. The ordinary doesn’t interest you. Anyone who reads the newspaper and net accounts of you can tell that.” Ian got to his feet and moved close to Sherlock, an intimate distance that Sherlock didn’t protest. “What does Sherlock Holmes care about battered babies in Peckham, or a murdered junkie in a Brixton doorway, or some little Russian girl used by a dozen men a night in Nine Elms? That’s not the sort of evil you pursue, is it? I can’t really picture any of that capturing your attention.”
“Any more than the notion of you accepting the sort of customer who’d ask you for a twenty-quid shag, I’d imagine,” Sherlock replied tartly. “We each have our areas of interest and expertise.”
“Touché,” Ian said. “But it only proves my point. Come on. Are you willing to gamble a little for information, Mr. Holmes?”
“Escape one of your knots?” Sherlock let his voice drip with hauteur. “Mr. Adler, I’ve managed to escape from people who’ve been quite serious about wanting to keep me captive, in dire scenarios. I very much doubt your little bondage-game restraints would be much of a challenge.”
“Is that a yes, then?”
Sherlock studied Ian’s face in the moonlight. He was smiling serenely; something about that smile made Sherlock want to take him down a peg or two. Or more. “Yes. I work my way free and you tell me what you really wanted from Brother Marcelo.”
“Marvellous. Turn around, please.”
Sherlock hesitated. “Here?”
“Oh – did you want to go back to your room? Or mine, perhaps?”
“No,” Sherlock snapped, and spun on his heel, turning his back to Ian. He removed his gloves, stuffed them in his pockets, and thrust out both hands, curling them into hard fists. One of the basic tenets of escapology lay in the escapist’s tension of the muscles – the trick was to expand the muscle whilst being bound and then gradually relax, gaining slack in the rope. Escape from chains or cuffs was a different matter entirely, of course, but irrelevant, as Ian had specified knots. “I expect you’ll want a time limit.”
“That would be fair. Ten minutes?”
“Five.”
“My, you live dangerously.” Ian stepped closer and took Sherlock’s hands in his. “A little tense, are we? And you still want five minutes. Very well.” He brought Sherlock’s hands together until they touched, then wrapped the cord – tightly braided leather, from what Sherlock was able to perceive – around one wrist, then the other.
Sherlock counted three passes around each wrist and smirked. It wasn’t the coils encircling his wrists that mattered – it was the knot. “I do hope you’re planning to be quite truthful.”
“Oh, yes. Certainly.” Suddenly and without the least warning, Ian grasped Sherlock’s bunched fists and dug his thumbs into the pressure points on the inside of his wrists. Sherlock let out a startled gasp and stumbled backward a little, and Ian steadied him, then pulled the cord tightly, to the threshold of pain. “It’s not quite cricket to cheat, Sherlock. Did you think I wasn’t familiar with that little trick?” As he spoke, he tied the cord so quickly that Sherlock couldn’t determine what sort of knot he was tying. “Play fair, now.”
All right, Mr. Adler. Point to you for duplicity and dexterity. Sherlock held his tongue and his temper, for the moment. No sense in wasting energy on verbal excoriation when he only had five minutes and the disadvantage of inadvertently relaxed muscles. He held perfectly still as Ian finished tying the knots – three, from what Sherlock could tell – and then took him by the shoulders, gently turning him round. He cocked a brow at Ian’s grinning face and began to move his wrists in small inward circles, all the while searching for the knot that held the cord secure.
Ian looked at his watch. “Any time.” He sat on the stone bench once more, leaning back against the wall. Nonchalant, he crossed one leg over the other and took a pack of Silk Cuts from the pocket of his motorbike jacket. He lit one and drew deeply, then exhaled, never taking his eyes from Sherlock.
Sherlock had located the outermost knot by dint of a great deal of straining and exploring fingertips, but the cord round his wrists was too tight to twist them into a position convenient to begin unpicking it. He plied the rope harder, still moving his hands in tight circles, clenching and unclenching them in an effort to expand the cord. He gritted his teeth, pulling harder, and tried to ignore his internal clock that told him a minute and a half had already slipped by. Not all that difficult. You’ve slipped complicated bonds before. He’d been prepared before, though, not blindsided by Ian’s little pressure-point manoeuvre, and when he hadn’t – well, John or Mycroft had usually shown up. Admittedly, he wasn’t now at his absolute best.
“Would you be more comfortable if you sat?”
Sweat had begun to emerge on Sherlock’s upper lip. It itched, a distraction. Sullenly, he backed up to the bench and thumped down on it, ignoring Ian’s gently triumphant smile. Closing his eyes, he called up the image of a bomb planted at his feet. Right, now there was incentive – an increased sense of urgency, as if his life depended on his freedom. He pulled his arms from either side and gained the faintest slackening in the cord, enough to twist one of his hands round. He explored the knot with his fingertips, but couldn’t find its end, as if Ian had tucked it beyond reach. It was like trying to find the end of a Mobius strip. The tantalizing perfume of smoke from Ian’s cigarette tickled his nose, tempting him to move closer, to try to breathe a bit in. It would calm him, relax him –
“Here.” Ian held the cigarette to Sherlock’s lips. “You’re dying for a drag, I can tell. I’ll give you a ten-second handicap.”
Sherlock inhaled and held the smoke in for a few heartbeats before exhaling. The sensation was momentarily dizzying; he hadn’t smoked in months, hadn’t even used a patch for weeks now. Oh, he’d forgot how glorious it was. He exhaled slowly, serene, soothed by the precious nicotine. John would be disappointed if he knew. “Don’t need it,” he said hoarsely. Three minutes. Sweat greased the palms of his hands and the insides of his wrists as he fingered the knots again, trying to undo them with his fingernails. No good; they were too bloody tight, and the rotating movements he’d made had only made them tighter. Absolute focus was needed now, and a choice: unpick the knot, or try to slip free. Neither option was proving easier, but he couldn’t do both. He closed his eyes for a moment, let his rapidly numbing fingertips graze the tied end of the cord, and decided to keep at the efforts to loosen the braided rope. Two and a half minutes. Halfway through, and no closer to freedom. God damn it.
“I wonder what a friar would think if he were to walk by and see us? Though it all looks perfectly innocent, doesn’t it? Further investigation might prove rather interesting, though.”
“Shut up.”
“Am I distracting you? Sorry.” Ian leant back against the wall and exhaled a jet of smoke. “Lovely night,” he murmured softly.
A bead of sweat rolled down Sherlock’s temple. The bindings had loosened incrementally, but not much more, certainly not enough to slip free. He began to twist his wrists harder, cognitively aware that it wouldn’t help. Panicking wouldn’t help. A ragged breath escaped him as he struggled, and he clamped his lips tightly together. Why the hell was he panicking, anyhow? It was just a stupid bet, he didn’t need to prove a bloody thing to –
“Thirty seconds.”
God damn it, God damn it! He jerked and tugged at the bonds, conscious of twin bracelets of aching rawness now encircling his wrists and a strange pain in his abdominal muscles as well as tightness in his jaw. Too much tension. Should have relaxed more. Desperate, he fumbled for the knots again, clawing at them haphazardly and failing to gain purchase. A hissing breath issued from his nose, and his arms trembled with exertion. Just a little more, another centimetre or two –
“Time.” Ian pinched his cigarette out with his fingernails and deposited the end in a bare stone planter. “I win.”
Sherlock leant against the wall, breathing hard. Sweat plastered his shirt to his back and trickled down his temples. “Congratulations.”
“It was a valiant effort.”
“Thanks,” Sherlock retorted. He glanced at Ian; he was staring intently at Sherlock, his gaze slowly travelling the length of Sherlock’s body. A flush rose to his cheeks, and he swivelled on the stone bench, impatiently thrusting his hands out. After a moment of silence, he looked over his shoulder and glared at Ian. “Well?”
“Indulge my curiosity,” Ian said. “You felt no arousal at all?”
Sherlock turned back to Ian, regarding him incredulously. “You must be joking.”
“Not in the least.”
“No, I didn’t feel any arousal at all. I was concentrating on freeing myself.”
“Well. That’s a pity, Sherlock, because watching you try to free yourself made me very aroused indeed.” Ian got to his feet, moved directly in front of Sherlock, and pushed him back against the wall with one hand.
Stunned, Sherlock said nothing, merely staring at Ian’s face. But then Ian leant down, put his hands on Sherlock’s thighs, and pushed them together, and then knelt on the bench, straddling Sherlock’s legs. He lowered his body until Sherlock discovered that Ian had been telling the truth. He struggled, but Ian, though slim, was strong. He pinned Sherlock to the bench and gently, voluptuously ground himself against Sherlock’s thighs. To his utter horror, Sherlock felt his cock getting hard. Another wave of panic struck him, and he writhed against the rope tying his wrists together, but it did no good at all. “What the hell do you think you’re –“
Ian silenced Sherlock with a kiss – if one could call auguring a tongue down one’s throat a kiss. Sherlock reared back in surprise, but he had nowhere else to go. He let out a muffled, angry protest, but Ian ignored him, twining his tongue lazily round Sherlock’s and threading one hand into the damp curls at the nape of Sherlock’s neck. At last Ian pulled away and wiped the back of his free hand across his mouth. “Not really a busman’s holiday at all, Mr. Holmes.”
“Let me go.”
“Not quite yet.”
Sherlock tried to buck Ian off, but Ian had the advantage of balance and gravity and two free hands. He braced himself against the library wall and held Sherlock trapped on the bench. Sherlock snarled in frustration and anger and the discomfiting knowledge that Ian’s prick was now rubbing against his, and his arousal was distressingly evident. “Whatever you think you’re trying to accomplish with this sad little display is entirely fruitless, I assure you. Perhaps you ought to try another monk tomorrow, since you obviously don’t –“
“Do you know who my clients are? What sort of people they are, I mean?”
“I don’t really care who your clients are.” Sherlock held himself perfectly still, which seemed to be an invitation for Ian to grind himself harder against Sherlock’s erection. He gritted his teeth. It was maddening, sublime, horrifying. He wanted it to stop. His body arched up slightly, aching for rougher contact. “Get off me.”
Ian brought his hand to Sherlock’s cheek and stroked it. “They’re powerful, by and large. People who are in control of themselves and their environments almost every waking moment of their lives. People who make order out of chaos. And almost invariably, when they first come to me, they’re terrified – of what they want and need, of having to ask for it, of what I can make them feel.” His hand drifted down; his fingers spanned Sherlock’s throat, caressing it lightly. “You’re breathing so hard, Mr. Holmes. Are you frightened?”
“Of you?” Sherlock snorted. “Please.” He gasped as Ian’s other hand slipped between his legs and fondled him. “Stop it –“
“Or what?”
“Is this how you get what you want? You just take it?” Sherlock couldn’t prevent a soft groan as Ian’s hand rubbed against him slowly, with just enough pressure to make his body crave more, to make him squirm with longing.
“You’re no weakling. You could throw me off, if you really wanted to.” Ian loosened Sherlock’s scarf and laid the ends aside. His fingers were cool against Sherlock’s skin as they drifted downward, outlining the curved hollow of his throat. “You want to yield, don’t you? You’re dying to succumb, but oh, that pride.” His other hand tightened incrementally, enough to elicit another faint groan issued between clenched teeth. Ian smiled and dipped his head to kiss Sherlock’s neck. Then he climbed off Sherlock and stood over him, his face concealed by night and shadows. “I’m not going to take what I want, Sherlock. Not my style. You’ll come to me, and you’ll beg for it.”
Sherlock fought to get his breathing under control. His skin was hot from where Ian had kissed it; the sensation burned into him, down his spine and into his hard cock, along his thighs, pressed tightly together. “I hope you’re prepared for an eternal wait.” He was grateful that his voice was steady and contemptuous.
“I do pride myself on my patience. Come on. Up you get.” He grasped Sherlock’s upper arm and heaved him to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Sherlock gaped in outrage before he got his feet moving, and stumbled a bit as Ian propelled him toward the guest quarters. His cock was painfully hard, his body thrumming with tension and damp with sweat. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Taking you to your room.” Ian sounded mildly surprised. He pulled his phone from his pocket and began fiddling with it, tugging Sherlock along. “Keep your feet.”
The paths of the abbey stretched out like long, searching black fingers in the moonlight. Ian veered right, pulling Sherlock between two long buildings tall enough to blot out most of the light, so that the only illumination came from Ian’s phone. Sherlock stayed silent. He’d wither and die before asking Ian to untie him, much less beg for anything else. He’d bide his time. There was more to Ian Adler than what he’d told, and Sherlock meant to find out what that was.
Not part of your investigation.
Frustration clenched tight in Sherlock’s throat.
“Will you be at the funeral tomorrow?” The question was offhand, tinged with casual expectation as if he’d met Sherlock on the street and asked him for a light. It startled Sherlock into honesty.
“I expect so, yes.”
“I think I’ll sleep in myself. Tired.” No missing the slight mischief in his tone. “Here we are.” He stopped at an arched wooden door, banded in iron, set into a thick stone doorway. With a peculiar tenderness, he pushed Sherlock forward, at last pressing him against the wall. “Hold still now.”
Sherlock tensed as Ian’s fingers closed around his wrists and pressed against his icy hands, numb from lack of circulation. Deftly, Ian plucked at the leather cord, and it fell away as if by magic. Nice trick, Sherlock wanted to say, but the sudden rush of pain as his hands were freed stopped him, and then Ian was massaging his palms and fingers, kneading blood back into the starved pathways of muscles and veins and bones. He held still, allowing it. His treacherous cock, which had gone quiescent as they’d walked, began to stir to life again.
Ian’s mouth brushed against his ear. “Better?”
“Stop touching me.” Sherlock put ice and steel into his voice.
Ian stepped away and moved to the door, opening it and gesturing for Sherlock to precede him. When Sherlock didn’t budge, he shrugged. A flickering light from a clear filament bulb illuminated his face, deepening its shadows and dappling his skin to gold. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Do give my regards to Dr. Watson.” He crossed the threshold and let the door swing shut.
Sherlock’s shoulders ached as he brought his hands together and rubbed them, coaxing life back into the half-frozen digits. He leant against the stone for a long time, staring up at the vast clear sky. Anyone passing would have thought his countenance blank and serene and would have been utterly ignorant of the chaos that teemed inside his head.
He wheeled abruptly and strode down the hall to his room, fishing the key, on a plain wooden tag inscribed with its Roman numeral – VII – from the depths of his coat pocket. He fitted the key into the lock and went inside, closing the door firmly behind him, and flicked on the woefully dim electric light on a bedside table.
His phone chirped. He extracted it and glanced at the message:
Picture Message [Unknown Caller]
He brought up the message. It was a green-tinted photograph – low-light camera – depicting a young man, quite naked and very much aroused, bound to a bed. Sherlock brought the phone close to his nose. It was difficult to make out features, but it looked like the young monk who’d been upset by Simon’s announcement at dinner.
The phone chirped again.
Text Message [Unknown Caller]
He opened it.
I possess many qualities, Mr. Holmes, but altruism is not among them. Nil magis amat cupiditas, quam quod non licet.
Sherlock silenced his mobile and set it on the bedside table. He took off his coat and tossed it over the little wooden chair in the corner of the room, then went into the tiny but adequate bathroom between John’s room and his. He paused for a moment at John’s door, his hand hovering above the knob. He caught a glimpse of his wrist – reddened, raw in spots – and pulled his hand away.
Silently, he tore off a generous length of bog roll and undid his trousers. He took his cock in his hand and gave himself a languid stroke, then another. Biting his lip, he stroked harder and faster, his body rigid with tension, until he came, shuddering, noiseless. He sagged against the wall, his breath shivering from him in ragged gasps.
After a moment he flushed the bog roll, fastened his trousers, and washed his hands and face.
“Sherlock? That you?” John’s voice, thick with sleep.
“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?” Sherlock lowered his voice. “Go back to sleep, John.”
“Okay,” John replied agreeably. He probably wasn’t even awake.
Sherlock went into his room, got into his t-shirt and pajama bottoms, and crawled into bed. He lay awake for a long time, his feverishly active brain whirring round the day’s events and deftly avoiding the sly nudge of Ian Adler’s text. Ian Adler, who tied people up and toyed with their bodies for a living and translated Latin on the side.
A likely story.
It followed him into sleep, though, and if he dreamed of a particular face, a particular body, of acts unspoken and unacknowledged in his conscious mind, he’d never own it, not even to himself.
Lust wants whatever it can’t have.
*
Author: Alex
Fandom: Sherlock [BBC]
Rating: Varies
Pairing: Sherlock/John; Sherlock/Ian Adler; John Watson/Ian Adler; Jim Moriarty/Sebastian Moran
Disclaimer: A.C. Doyle, Moffat, Gatiss.
Summary: All John Watson wants is a peaceful fortnight's holiday in Cornwall. Fate has other plans, to wit:
1. An abbey in the Italian Alps
2. Murder
3. Mayhem
4. Criminals he has known and would rather forget
5. Bondage
6. Sex
7. Sherlock
Not necessarily in that order.
So much for Cornwall.
Warnings: Violence, explicit sex, dubious consent.
Notes: I don't genderswap as a rule, but I saw this marvelous gif of Tom Hiddleston and Sherlock and couldn't resist. The rest is shameless self-indulgence.
There is definitely going to be dubious consent in the story - how dubious I'm not yet sure, but I will change the warnings if need be. If this poses a difficulty with triggers, please be warned now that the warnings may change.
Plot happily magpied from everywhere, with especial apologies to Umberto Eco.
Thanks to
kimberlite for the sharp-eyed beta.This fic is a gift for sithdragn, with affection.
Can also be read on AO3
*
*
The night brought dramatically colder temperatures and a stiff breeze that set the new foliage on the trees to rustling. Sherlock huddled in his coat as he walked the empty cobblestone paths of the abbey toward the library, now dark and locked – a deeply foolish notion, to be sure, if Simon thought a simple lock would keep him out, but then Simon was a deeply foolish man. He wondered for a moment if it would be worth the time to break in, just to prove how easily the task could be accomplished, and then decided he’d simply reconnoiter a bit and have Brother Wilhelm show him and John around in the morning.
Overhead, the stars glittered with cold vitality, astonishingly bright far away from light-polluted London. He craned his neck to look at them and picked out Mars – at least he was fairly certain it was Mars. On his birthday, John had, with a badly stifled grin, given him an oversized book called Universe, filled with extravagant coloured photographs of planets and stars and other cosmic phenomena. Sherlock had pointedly ignored it for weeks, and then one night as John slept, had picked it up and read it cover to cover, from Planet Earth to Dark Matter. Halfway through the book, between IC 2944 and DR 21, there had been an inscription scrawled on a yellow sticky note:
I knew you’d read it, you silly tosser. Happy birthday. J
Pride had sealed Sherlock’s lips and he never mentioned the note at all, but he had the oddest sensation that John knew he’d read it all the same. Perhaps he’d inadvertently cracked the spine a bit. At any rate, it had been mildly, if only momentarily, diverting, and he’d filed some information away for possible further use. One never did know when it would come in handy.
He reached the library and studied the façade. Three storeys, nearly as wide as it was tall, and fairly unadorned. He ambled to the doors and frowned. There was no exterior lock, so evidently there was another point of ingress.
“Looking for something to read?”
Sherlock stepped back from the doors and made out a tall, slim figure silhouetted a few metres away. “Mr. Adler, I presume.”
“I’m flattered. You recognised my voice.”
“No. I can see your shadow. No clerical habit.”
“Oh, pity. I was hoping I’d made more of an impression.” Adler strolled into the scant light provided by a bright half-moon and stopped beside the doors. He wore dark clothes and carried a small valise in one hand.
Without appearing obvious, Sherlock assessed him quickly. It wasn’t easy, given the faint illumination, but scent and hearing compensated for what his sight lacked. A difference in gait, new wrinkles in clothing, a faint tang of sweat and other substances – gradually myriad pieces fell into place with a satisfying click. “Did you enjoy your little assignation this evening? One of the younger monks, I’d guess, judging by the lateness of the hour.”
Adler took a step back. “Dear me, Mr. Holmes. I’m not sure I want to know how you arrived at such a conclusion.”
“No, you probably don’t. Most people wouldn’t. Given how furtive most people are about sexual conduct, they’d be horrified to hear how obvious they really are to anyone who cares to indulge in more than superficial observation.”
“And is that what you were doing just now – observing me in more than superficial fashion?”
There was a light, teasing edge to Adler’s voice that put Sherlock on his guard, though – frustratingly – he couldn’t have said why. There was something underneath the smooth, polished, casually elegant surface that eluded and annoyed him, as if he knew far more than he revealed. Sherlock glanced down at the leather case in Adler’s hand. Its sleek, anonymous surface seemed to repel the application of creative deduction. He looked into Adler’s eyes, wide and shining in the moonlight. “What makes you think you merit more than superficial observation?”
Adler smiled. “Maybe I have an overdeveloped sense of self-worth.”
“Maybe so.”
“Or maybe I know a thing or two about observation myself,” Adler went on. “For example – you’re astute enough to tell a thing or two about my proclivities, but you don’t indulge yourself. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say you haven’t had sex in years.”
“Sorry?” Sherlock replied coldly.
“Oh, there’s no shame in it.”
“Yours very truly. I wasn’t implying –“
“It’s just that it becomes easy to tell…sometimes. It’s all in the eyes, you see. I’ve read the articles about you, you know. Ordinary people who look at you see hunger in your eyes and they think it’s hunger for knowledge, or for information, or clues to whatever you happen to be working on, but to other people – to those who tend to observe more than superficially, one might say – there’s another sort of hunger locked tightly behind that lovely, stony face of yours, a fire you keep banked. Surely someone close to you has seen it – Dr. Watson, perhaps?”
A strange heat blossomed in Sherlock’s chest and made its way up his neck and into his face. “I really don’t think that’s any concern of yours. Good evening.” He shouldered past Adler and started back down the cobblestone path. To hell with Adler and his absurd faux-psychology – he was a distraction, nothing more.
“Wait.”
Against his better instincts, Sherlock stopped.
“How did you know?”
“You tell me,” Sherlock retorted, “since your own powers of observation are so extraordinary.” He stayed still, facing away from Adler, planting his feet firmly to keep from swaying on the incline of the path.
“All right.” He heard Adler moving closer to him. “Odours, perhaps, if your nose is particularly sensitive. Saliva, perspiration, semen.”
“That’s a start.” He felt Adler standing beside him, close enough to touch.
“How did you know it was a young monk? It couldn’t just be the time.”
“New wool,” Sherlock said. “Distinct aroma. Could be a new habit for one of the older members of the community, but unlikely, given the worn state of most of their garments at supper. There were five monks who wore new-looking habits, and three of them were quite young. Statistically, that puts the odds of your little rendezvous firmly in favour of one of the three.”
“Good. And do you know what we did together, this young monk and I?” Adler’s lips were close to his ear, as if imparting a secret.
“Going by the bag you’re carrying, the faint tang of leather and metal and the red marks on the inside of one of your hands, I’d say it had something to do with bondage and domination of some sort. I’m sure you’d prefer I didn’t go into detail.”
“You do have keen eyes, Mr. Holmes.”
“Hungry,” Sherlock replied. “So I’ve been told.”
“Would you like to look at some of my toys?”
“Not particularly.”
“Are you sure? You might learn a thing or two.” The faint metallic tearing sound of a zipper drifted upward. “And I won’t charge you a penny.”
Sherlock turned to face Adler. “You’re a…professional, Mr. Adler?”
“Please call me Ian. I’ll call you Sherlock, if I may. And yes, I’m a professional – thanks for putting it so delicately. I put myself through university allowing myself to be bound and beaten and intimately explored by far wealthier people than I. Now, however, I prefer to have the upper hand.”
“It’s lonely at the bottom.” Sherlock couldn’t resist a little mockery.
Adler…Ian…laughed quietly, almost drowning out a soft, slithering noise from the vicinity of the bag. “Yes. Not at the top, though. And fortunately, the top is vastly more remunerative.”
“If that’s the case, then how does a monk afford your services?”
“How unimaginative you are. Not all transactions are conducted for cash. Everybody pays one way or another. Brother Marcelo’s case required a bit of creative accounting, that’s all.”
Sherlock let out a small, disdainful exhalation of breath. “Wonder what that means.”
“It doesn’t matter right now. Have you ever been tied up, Sherlock?”
“Probably more often than you have.”
“Oh? Is that a challenge?”
“No, just a statistical likelihood.” Sherlock had, in fact, spent a fair amount of his early adolescence studying escapology and had, as practice, tied or chained himself up so many times he’d lost count. It had never given him the slightest hint of sexual pleasure, though he’d received more than one peculiar look from his mother in the odd moments that she’d found him tied up in his room or the cellar, and despite his assurances that it was merely research. He’d asked her to tie him to a chair, and she’d refused with startling vehemence. He hadn’t understood her discomfort until much later, when his reading had led him to some of the more prurient aspects of restraint.
It had taken him a long while to become proficient, too, to learn to slip knots and pick locks; on one memorable occasion, when Sherlock was fourteen, Mycroft had found him bound and blindfolded at the bottom of his wardrobe, weeping silent tears of rage and frustration after three hours of fruitless struggling and a steadfast refusal to shout for help. Mycroft had simply hauled him out of the wardrobe, found a pair of scissors, and cut him free. Sherlock, too mortified and full of wounded pride to thank him, had limped to the bathroom and locked himself inside for hours. Neither brother had ever mentioned the incident again.
Still, his efforts had paid off. More than once, Sherlock had managed to escape restraints, much to the dismay of the criminals who’d thought they could contain him. He’d never been able to connect restraint with anything but discomfort, inconvenience, and danger, and the notion of bondage in sex or the application of pain baffled him.
“I see. You’ve made a study of technique without enjoying any of the side benefits.”
“There aren’t any side benefits, as far as I can determine.”
“Then you haven’t explored them very thoroughly,” Ian said. He turned and walked back up the path toward the library.
Let him go. There’s nothing duller than someone nattering archly about sex. He watched Ian moving slowly up the path. Something long and thin, some sort of restraint, dangled from one hand. He didn’t look behind him to see if Sherlock followed.
“It’s perfectly obvious why some people go in for that sort of thing,” Sherlock snapped. Ian stopped walking and stood still. “Endorphin rush,” Sherlock went on. “The sensation of helplessness, the loss of control. Some want the intensity of pain, some merely enjoy the feeling of restraint.”
“You’ve done your preliminary reading, I see. Certainly that’s part of it.” Ian moved toward the library again and sat on a low stone bench beside the door, setting his bag at his feet but holding on to the rope. Almost against his will, Sherlock followed. “I’m not so reductive myself. In my line of work one comes to discover that there are almost as many reasons for enjoying it as there are people who do so. And frankly, it doesn’t really matter to me. My customers are bright enough to explain exactly what they want – I insist upon it.”
“Mustn’t have unhappy clients.” Sherlock drew close to the stone bench.
“Precisely.” Ian looked up. “Sit,” he said, patting the empty space beside him.
Sherlock remained standing. “So you’re a sex worker who moonlights as a Latin scholar. Or is it the other way round?”
“Whatever you like. It isn’t the Latin translation that pays the bills, though.”
“Shocking.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Ian chuckled. “Supply and demand and all that.”
“So what are you doing here – the former or the latter?”
“I wondered when you’d ask.” Ian looked out at nothing, a reflective and abstracted expression on his face. Sherlock discerned a faint tang of leather and sweat as Ian drew the fingers of one hand through his curling hair. “Both, obviously. I’m translating from a codex written by Irish monks in the eleventh century, a pilgrim’s guide to Rome, at the behest of the bishop of the Dublin archdiocese. A very prestigious client, not much money, but enormous purity of intention, no doubt. The other is none of your business, I’m afraid.”
“It might be.”
“Oh?”
“That little encounter you had this evening with your young monk. Bit of a busman’s holiday for you, wasn’t it?”
“Au contraire. I mix business and pleasure all the time. And sometimes it’s quite nice to be with a novice. So to speak.”
“Yes, but you said everybody pays, didn’t you? That’s hardly the attitude of someone who mixes business with pleasure. And he didn’t pay you in cash, so it had to be for something else – not the finer points of Catholic doctrine or hints on deciphering eleventh-century Latin texts, I’m certain. So – what were you after tonight, Ian, besides an altruistic urge to gift a monk with sexual favours?”
“What a suspicious mind you have,” Ian said. “Is that a blessing or a curse? Never mind. What do you say we make this interesting. If you can slip a knot I tie, then I’ll tell you why I went to see lovely, pliant Brother Marcelo.”
Sherlock frowned. “And if I can’t?”
“Then your curiosity remains unsatisfied.”
“I’ll find out one way or the other.”
“Yes, but why be dull? Dull doesn’t interest you. The ordinary doesn’t interest you. Anyone who reads the newspaper and net accounts of you can tell that.” Ian got to his feet and moved close to Sherlock, an intimate distance that Sherlock didn’t protest. “What does Sherlock Holmes care about battered babies in Peckham, or a murdered junkie in a Brixton doorway, or some little Russian girl used by a dozen men a night in Nine Elms? That’s not the sort of evil you pursue, is it? I can’t really picture any of that capturing your attention.”
“Any more than the notion of you accepting the sort of customer who’d ask you for a twenty-quid shag, I’d imagine,” Sherlock replied tartly. “We each have our areas of interest and expertise.”
“Touché,” Ian said. “But it only proves my point. Come on. Are you willing to gamble a little for information, Mr. Holmes?”
“Escape one of your knots?” Sherlock let his voice drip with hauteur. “Mr. Adler, I’ve managed to escape from people who’ve been quite serious about wanting to keep me captive, in dire scenarios. I very much doubt your little bondage-game restraints would be much of a challenge.”
“Is that a yes, then?”
Sherlock studied Ian’s face in the moonlight. He was smiling serenely; something about that smile made Sherlock want to take him down a peg or two. Or more. “Yes. I work my way free and you tell me what you really wanted from Brother Marcelo.”
“Marvellous. Turn around, please.”
Sherlock hesitated. “Here?”
“Oh – did you want to go back to your room? Or mine, perhaps?”
“No,” Sherlock snapped, and spun on his heel, turning his back to Ian. He removed his gloves, stuffed them in his pockets, and thrust out both hands, curling them into hard fists. One of the basic tenets of escapology lay in the escapist’s tension of the muscles – the trick was to expand the muscle whilst being bound and then gradually relax, gaining slack in the rope. Escape from chains or cuffs was a different matter entirely, of course, but irrelevant, as Ian had specified knots. “I expect you’ll want a time limit.”
“That would be fair. Ten minutes?”
“Five.”
“My, you live dangerously.” Ian stepped closer and took Sherlock’s hands in his. “A little tense, are we? And you still want five minutes. Very well.” He brought Sherlock’s hands together until they touched, then wrapped the cord – tightly braided leather, from what Sherlock was able to perceive – around one wrist, then the other.
Sherlock counted three passes around each wrist and smirked. It wasn’t the coils encircling his wrists that mattered – it was the knot. “I do hope you’re planning to be quite truthful.”
“Oh, yes. Certainly.” Suddenly and without the least warning, Ian grasped Sherlock’s bunched fists and dug his thumbs into the pressure points on the inside of his wrists. Sherlock let out a startled gasp and stumbled backward a little, and Ian steadied him, then pulled the cord tightly, to the threshold of pain. “It’s not quite cricket to cheat, Sherlock. Did you think I wasn’t familiar with that little trick?” As he spoke, he tied the cord so quickly that Sherlock couldn’t determine what sort of knot he was tying. “Play fair, now.”
All right, Mr. Adler. Point to you for duplicity and dexterity. Sherlock held his tongue and his temper, for the moment. No sense in wasting energy on verbal excoriation when he only had five minutes and the disadvantage of inadvertently relaxed muscles. He held perfectly still as Ian finished tying the knots – three, from what Sherlock could tell – and then took him by the shoulders, gently turning him round. He cocked a brow at Ian’s grinning face and began to move his wrists in small inward circles, all the while searching for the knot that held the cord secure.
Ian looked at his watch. “Any time.” He sat on the stone bench once more, leaning back against the wall. Nonchalant, he crossed one leg over the other and took a pack of Silk Cuts from the pocket of his motorbike jacket. He lit one and drew deeply, then exhaled, never taking his eyes from Sherlock.
Sherlock had located the outermost knot by dint of a great deal of straining and exploring fingertips, but the cord round his wrists was too tight to twist them into a position convenient to begin unpicking it. He plied the rope harder, still moving his hands in tight circles, clenching and unclenching them in an effort to expand the cord. He gritted his teeth, pulling harder, and tried to ignore his internal clock that told him a minute and a half had already slipped by. Not all that difficult. You’ve slipped complicated bonds before. He’d been prepared before, though, not blindsided by Ian’s little pressure-point manoeuvre, and when he hadn’t – well, John or Mycroft had usually shown up. Admittedly, he wasn’t now at his absolute best.
“Would you be more comfortable if you sat?”
Sweat had begun to emerge on Sherlock’s upper lip. It itched, a distraction. Sullenly, he backed up to the bench and thumped down on it, ignoring Ian’s gently triumphant smile. Closing his eyes, he called up the image of a bomb planted at his feet. Right, now there was incentive – an increased sense of urgency, as if his life depended on his freedom. He pulled his arms from either side and gained the faintest slackening in the cord, enough to twist one of his hands round. He explored the knot with his fingertips, but couldn’t find its end, as if Ian had tucked it beyond reach. It was like trying to find the end of a Mobius strip. The tantalizing perfume of smoke from Ian’s cigarette tickled his nose, tempting him to move closer, to try to breathe a bit in. It would calm him, relax him –
“Here.” Ian held the cigarette to Sherlock’s lips. “You’re dying for a drag, I can tell. I’ll give you a ten-second handicap.”
Sherlock inhaled and held the smoke in for a few heartbeats before exhaling. The sensation was momentarily dizzying; he hadn’t smoked in months, hadn’t even used a patch for weeks now. Oh, he’d forgot how glorious it was. He exhaled slowly, serene, soothed by the precious nicotine. John would be disappointed if he knew. “Don’t need it,” he said hoarsely. Three minutes. Sweat greased the palms of his hands and the insides of his wrists as he fingered the knots again, trying to undo them with his fingernails. No good; they were too bloody tight, and the rotating movements he’d made had only made them tighter. Absolute focus was needed now, and a choice: unpick the knot, or try to slip free. Neither option was proving easier, but he couldn’t do both. He closed his eyes for a moment, let his rapidly numbing fingertips graze the tied end of the cord, and decided to keep at the efforts to loosen the braided rope. Two and a half minutes. Halfway through, and no closer to freedom. God damn it.
“I wonder what a friar would think if he were to walk by and see us? Though it all looks perfectly innocent, doesn’t it? Further investigation might prove rather interesting, though.”
“Shut up.”
“Am I distracting you? Sorry.” Ian leant back against the wall and exhaled a jet of smoke. “Lovely night,” he murmured softly.
A bead of sweat rolled down Sherlock’s temple. The bindings had loosened incrementally, but not much more, certainly not enough to slip free. He began to twist his wrists harder, cognitively aware that it wouldn’t help. Panicking wouldn’t help. A ragged breath escaped him as he struggled, and he clamped his lips tightly together. Why the hell was he panicking, anyhow? It was just a stupid bet, he didn’t need to prove a bloody thing to –
“Thirty seconds.”
God damn it, God damn it! He jerked and tugged at the bonds, conscious of twin bracelets of aching rawness now encircling his wrists and a strange pain in his abdominal muscles as well as tightness in his jaw. Too much tension. Should have relaxed more. Desperate, he fumbled for the knots again, clawing at them haphazardly and failing to gain purchase. A hissing breath issued from his nose, and his arms trembled with exertion. Just a little more, another centimetre or two –
“Time.” Ian pinched his cigarette out with his fingernails and deposited the end in a bare stone planter. “I win.”
Sherlock leant against the wall, breathing hard. Sweat plastered his shirt to his back and trickled down his temples. “Congratulations.”
“It was a valiant effort.”
“Thanks,” Sherlock retorted. He glanced at Ian; he was staring intently at Sherlock, his gaze slowly travelling the length of Sherlock’s body. A flush rose to his cheeks, and he swivelled on the stone bench, impatiently thrusting his hands out. After a moment of silence, he looked over his shoulder and glared at Ian. “Well?”
“Indulge my curiosity,” Ian said. “You felt no arousal at all?”
Sherlock turned back to Ian, regarding him incredulously. “You must be joking.”
“Not in the least.”
“No, I didn’t feel any arousal at all. I was concentrating on freeing myself.”
“Well. That’s a pity, Sherlock, because watching you try to free yourself made me very aroused indeed.” Ian got to his feet, moved directly in front of Sherlock, and pushed him back against the wall with one hand.
Stunned, Sherlock said nothing, merely staring at Ian’s face. But then Ian leant down, put his hands on Sherlock’s thighs, and pushed them together, and then knelt on the bench, straddling Sherlock’s legs. He lowered his body until Sherlock discovered that Ian had been telling the truth. He struggled, but Ian, though slim, was strong. He pinned Sherlock to the bench and gently, voluptuously ground himself against Sherlock’s thighs. To his utter horror, Sherlock felt his cock getting hard. Another wave of panic struck him, and he writhed against the rope tying his wrists together, but it did no good at all. “What the hell do you think you’re –“
Ian silenced Sherlock with a kiss – if one could call auguring a tongue down one’s throat a kiss. Sherlock reared back in surprise, but he had nowhere else to go. He let out a muffled, angry protest, but Ian ignored him, twining his tongue lazily round Sherlock’s and threading one hand into the damp curls at the nape of Sherlock’s neck. At last Ian pulled away and wiped the back of his free hand across his mouth. “Not really a busman’s holiday at all, Mr. Holmes.”
“Let me go.”
“Not quite yet.”
Sherlock tried to buck Ian off, but Ian had the advantage of balance and gravity and two free hands. He braced himself against the library wall and held Sherlock trapped on the bench. Sherlock snarled in frustration and anger and the discomfiting knowledge that Ian’s prick was now rubbing against his, and his arousal was distressingly evident. “Whatever you think you’re trying to accomplish with this sad little display is entirely fruitless, I assure you. Perhaps you ought to try another monk tomorrow, since you obviously don’t –“
“Do you know who my clients are? What sort of people they are, I mean?”
“I don’t really care who your clients are.” Sherlock held himself perfectly still, which seemed to be an invitation for Ian to grind himself harder against Sherlock’s erection. He gritted his teeth. It was maddening, sublime, horrifying. He wanted it to stop. His body arched up slightly, aching for rougher contact. “Get off me.”
Ian brought his hand to Sherlock’s cheek and stroked it. “They’re powerful, by and large. People who are in control of themselves and their environments almost every waking moment of their lives. People who make order out of chaos. And almost invariably, when they first come to me, they’re terrified – of what they want and need, of having to ask for it, of what I can make them feel.” His hand drifted down; his fingers spanned Sherlock’s throat, caressing it lightly. “You’re breathing so hard, Mr. Holmes. Are you frightened?”
“Of you?” Sherlock snorted. “Please.” He gasped as Ian’s other hand slipped between his legs and fondled him. “Stop it –“
“Or what?”
“Is this how you get what you want? You just take it?” Sherlock couldn’t prevent a soft groan as Ian’s hand rubbed against him slowly, with just enough pressure to make his body crave more, to make him squirm with longing.
“You’re no weakling. You could throw me off, if you really wanted to.” Ian loosened Sherlock’s scarf and laid the ends aside. His fingers were cool against Sherlock’s skin as they drifted downward, outlining the curved hollow of his throat. “You want to yield, don’t you? You’re dying to succumb, but oh, that pride.” His other hand tightened incrementally, enough to elicit another faint groan issued between clenched teeth. Ian smiled and dipped his head to kiss Sherlock’s neck. Then he climbed off Sherlock and stood over him, his face concealed by night and shadows. “I’m not going to take what I want, Sherlock. Not my style. You’ll come to me, and you’ll beg for it.”
Sherlock fought to get his breathing under control. His skin was hot from where Ian had kissed it; the sensation burned into him, down his spine and into his hard cock, along his thighs, pressed tightly together. “I hope you’re prepared for an eternal wait.” He was grateful that his voice was steady and contemptuous.
“I do pride myself on my patience. Come on. Up you get.” He grasped Sherlock’s upper arm and heaved him to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Sherlock gaped in outrage before he got his feet moving, and stumbled a bit as Ian propelled him toward the guest quarters. His cock was painfully hard, his body thrumming with tension and damp with sweat. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Taking you to your room.” Ian sounded mildly surprised. He pulled his phone from his pocket and began fiddling with it, tugging Sherlock along. “Keep your feet.”
The paths of the abbey stretched out like long, searching black fingers in the moonlight. Ian veered right, pulling Sherlock between two long buildings tall enough to blot out most of the light, so that the only illumination came from Ian’s phone. Sherlock stayed silent. He’d wither and die before asking Ian to untie him, much less beg for anything else. He’d bide his time. There was more to Ian Adler than what he’d told, and Sherlock meant to find out what that was.
Not part of your investigation.
Frustration clenched tight in Sherlock’s throat.
“Will you be at the funeral tomorrow?” The question was offhand, tinged with casual expectation as if he’d met Sherlock on the street and asked him for a light. It startled Sherlock into honesty.
“I expect so, yes.”
“I think I’ll sleep in myself. Tired.” No missing the slight mischief in his tone. “Here we are.” He stopped at an arched wooden door, banded in iron, set into a thick stone doorway. With a peculiar tenderness, he pushed Sherlock forward, at last pressing him against the wall. “Hold still now.”
Sherlock tensed as Ian’s fingers closed around his wrists and pressed against his icy hands, numb from lack of circulation. Deftly, Ian plucked at the leather cord, and it fell away as if by magic. Nice trick, Sherlock wanted to say, but the sudden rush of pain as his hands were freed stopped him, and then Ian was massaging his palms and fingers, kneading blood back into the starved pathways of muscles and veins and bones. He held still, allowing it. His treacherous cock, which had gone quiescent as they’d walked, began to stir to life again.
Ian’s mouth brushed against his ear. “Better?”
“Stop touching me.” Sherlock put ice and steel into his voice.
Ian stepped away and moved to the door, opening it and gesturing for Sherlock to precede him. When Sherlock didn’t budge, he shrugged. A flickering light from a clear filament bulb illuminated his face, deepening its shadows and dappling his skin to gold. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Do give my regards to Dr. Watson.” He crossed the threshold and let the door swing shut.
Sherlock’s shoulders ached as he brought his hands together and rubbed them, coaxing life back into the half-frozen digits. He leant against the stone for a long time, staring up at the vast clear sky. Anyone passing would have thought his countenance blank and serene and would have been utterly ignorant of the chaos that teemed inside his head.
He wheeled abruptly and strode down the hall to his room, fishing the key, on a plain wooden tag inscribed with its Roman numeral – VII – from the depths of his coat pocket. He fitted the key into the lock and went inside, closing the door firmly behind him, and flicked on the woefully dim electric light on a bedside table.
His phone chirped. He extracted it and glanced at the message:
Picture Message [Unknown Caller]
He brought up the message. It was a green-tinted photograph – low-light camera – depicting a young man, quite naked and very much aroused, bound to a bed. Sherlock brought the phone close to his nose. It was difficult to make out features, but it looked like the young monk who’d been upset by Simon’s announcement at dinner.
The phone chirped again.
Text Message [Unknown Caller]
He opened it.
I possess many qualities, Mr. Holmes, but altruism is not among them. Nil magis amat cupiditas, quam quod non licet.
Sherlock silenced his mobile and set it on the bedside table. He took off his coat and tossed it over the little wooden chair in the corner of the room, then went into the tiny but adequate bathroom between John’s room and his. He paused for a moment at John’s door, his hand hovering above the knob. He caught a glimpse of his wrist – reddened, raw in spots – and pulled his hand away.
Silently, he tore off a generous length of bog roll and undid his trousers. He took his cock in his hand and gave himself a languid stroke, then another. Biting his lip, he stroked harder and faster, his body rigid with tension, until he came, shuddering, noiseless. He sagged against the wall, his breath shivering from him in ragged gasps.
After a moment he flushed the bog roll, fastened his trousers, and washed his hands and face.
“Sherlock? That you?” John’s voice, thick with sleep.
“Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?” Sherlock lowered his voice. “Go back to sleep, John.”
“Okay,” John replied agreeably. He probably wasn’t even awake.
Sherlock went into his room, got into his t-shirt and pajama bottoms, and crawled into bed. He lay awake for a long time, his feverishly active brain whirring round the day’s events and deftly avoiding the sly nudge of Ian Adler’s text. Ian Adler, who tied people up and toyed with their bodies for a living and translated Latin on the side.
A likely story.
It followed him into sleep, though, and if he dreamed of a particular face, a particular body, of acts unspoken and unacknowledged in his conscious mind, he’d never own it, not even to himself.
Lust wants whatever it can’t have.
*
