Fic: "Complexity" (R, 1/1)
Aug. 4th, 2011 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
argyle4eva posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sherlockbbcTitle: "Complexity"
Rating: R
Characters/pairing: John/Sherlock
Series: One-shot
Beta: Me, myself and I.
Warnings: Tentacles. Drug and alcohol use. Mild consent issues. Gratuitous fluff. In the same fic.
Word count: ~ 3,700
Summary: Written for this kinkmeme prompt: "Alien!Sherlock/John. Tentacle porn. Filler's choice on how consensual it is (but Op will love you forever if an aphrodisiac is involved).”
Author's Notes: So I was looking at getting back into fic, went to the kinkmeme for some limbering-up exercises (*wink*wink*) . . . and ended up writing 3.7K or what was supposed to be nice, straightforward tentacle porn but somehow ended up being as much schmoop as porn. IDEK, but people over there seemed to like it, so here it is: cleaned up for company (and with one major continuity error corrected) and presented for your enjoyment. Now back to something nice and normal, like werewolves and vampires . . . ;)
John stumbled through the door to the flat, giggling madly. Life was good. Life was brilliant. Life was bloody amazing. Because he and Sherlock Holmes were finally going to get down to the business of shagging each other.
They'd been dancing around it for a week, now – well, seriously dancing, not in that subliminal we-can-deny-it-if-we-try way that'd been going on since they first met, but overt things: glances and touches and hints and John had never been this horny in his life, not on three continents and in the Army to boot.
The trip to the corner pub had been the last step, the chance to work up a little ethanolic courage and get to the point where . . .
“Steady,” Sherlock said, catching his flatmate's arm as John's teetering balance threatened to tip him over. Sherlock wasn't feeling the pints he'd had anywhere near as much as John was -- typical! Even so, John wasn't too far gone to notice that Sherlock's hand was maintaining its grip long past its needed purpose, and that gave John a little ping of glee.
“C'mere, you!” he told Sherlock, turning and pinning the taller man to the wall. Sherlock wasn't so tall John couldn't reach his mouth for a kiss – and what a kiss! Those lush, pink lips were as soft and delectable as John had imagined; he took his time exploring, and before he was halfway done, Sherlock's hands had drifted south to cup John's arse in a very emphatic way.
John's calves finally started cramping up and he had to detach and drop his weight back down on his heels. “God,” he panted, reaching up to start on Sherlock's shirt buttons, “why'd we wait so long?” Before Sherlock could answer, he rambled on, “Yeah, yeah, I know married to your work 'n' all, but Christ, Sherlock, I was starting to think you weren't even human . . .”
One of Sherlock's long, elegant hands came up and caught both of John's wrists at once, stilling him with ridiculously little effort. Sherlock was a great deal stronger than he looked.
“Actually, John, that's the crux of it right there. I'm not human.”
John gaped, staring up into his flatmate's pale, slanted eyes . . . and then began giggling uncontrollably.
“Finally!” he squeaked, “you admit it! Thas' . . . thas' brilliant! Thas' goin' on my blog!”
“No, John,” Sherlock said, his voice low and urgent. “I mean it, I'm really not human . . . John! Oh, for . . . John!”
Sherlock sounded so serious that John managed to get his giggles under control. It helped somewhat that Sherlock was still holding his wrists pinioned, and didn't seem inclined to release them anytime soon. John blinked owlishly at his flatmate, trying to make sense of the situation.
“I slipped a little something in your last drink,” Sherlock was continuing. “Something to . . . make it all easier for you. But I think,” he added, looking annoyed, “I overestimated the correct dosage for your body size . . .”
“Hey! No short jokes!” John warned him. “I'm not that short, you're just that bleedin' tall!”
“John! Listen to me! I'm sorry, I shouldn't have given you so much, but I was worried about how you'd take it when you saw me as I really am . . .”
“What, naked? Naked sounds great right now, let go of my hands 'n' I'll show you how I take it!” John said, back to cheerful randiness.
Sherlock looked at his flatmate's happy, lustful face for a long moment, then released his grip on John's wrists.
“Finally!” John said, and went back to the buttons, which were being unaccountably slippery -- either that or his fingers were unusually clumsy.
Sherlock's hands began wandering: up and down John's back, fondling his arse, reaching up to caress his neck and comb through his hair, and Sherlock's head tilted back with unabashed sensual pleasure, exposing a gorgeous, lickable expanse of throat. “I warn you, things are about to get very strange,” he murmured.
“Oh, you're kinky,” John said, nodding sagely, undoing the last of Sherlock's shirt buttons. “S' good, I like kinky.”
Sherlock laughed, a deep, joyous, incredibly sexy sound. “Then you'll love this,” he declared, pushing away from the wall and dragging John into the nearest bedroom without further delay.
***
Things were very confused, in a good way, for a while after that, with much groping and removing of clothes and bodies pressed and twined together on cool, welcoming bedsheets. John's head was spinning, which was mildly annoying, but he was still having the time of his life, writhing around in complete, hedonistic abandonment with his amazing flatmate.
Really, Sherlock was amazing: slim and pliant and with hands that seemed to be everywhere, stroking and teasing and . . . and if this kept up, things were going to be over rather quickly, John realized, at least from his side of things.
Desperately, he pulled back, gasping, “Stop!”
Sherlock went stone still, almost as if he'd been expecting the request, which surprised John. With a frown, John concentrated on his breathing, and the part of his brain that was used to making sense of things started to take stock automatically.
He and Sherlock were lying side to side, facing each other, embracing, their legs twined together: so far, so good. Sherlock had one hand wound through John's hair, not too tight but still pulling deliciously (Focus John's brain said, soldier's reflex) his other hand cupped John's buttock, his other hand pressed the small of John's back, his other hand wrapped around John's cock, another hand had been trailing up and down John's spine but was currently stopped around the fifth thoracic vertebra, and what felt very much like a soft fingertip pressed against John's, ahem, rear entrance.
All at once.
John looked into Sherlock's wide (frightened?), luminous eyes and asked, in a strangled voice, “This may be the beer talkin', but how many hands have you got Sherlock?”
Sherlock, very seriously, his deep voice a low rumble that John felt through his entire body, replied, “Those aren't all hands.”
John blinked, inhaled, and asked, “S' what are they?”
Sherlock if anything, looked even more frightened, which was ridiculous, Sherlock was never frightened. Without saying anything more he shifted, pulling back, and John, responding to the unspoken cues, released him.
“I told you I wasn't human,” Sherlock said, when he was sitting more-or-less upright on the bed, on full display for the first time. John stared and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
Fanning out behind Sherlock, like an unholy hentai halo, was an array of gently-writhing tentacles, tapering from wrist-thick to fingertip-fine, shading from bright red at their blunt tips to a pink nearly as pale as Sherlock's normal skin tone. Assuming they issued from somewhere on his back, as they seemed to, they might very well match in coloration at the point of attachment.
John swallowed, hard, and then, remembering what he thought he'd been feeling, risked a glance between Sherlock's crossed legs. A nest of shorter, darker tentacles bristled there, as well.
“Oh, God,” John groaned, closing his eyes, wishing he was sober. “I knew I shouldn't've watched that anime, even if it was really late at night and there was nothing else on . . .”
“You aren't hallucinating,” Sherlock said, quietly. “This is real. This is me.”
John opened his eyes, and, yes, the tentacles were still there, if a bit . . . droopier than they had been. But what John really saw, even reeling from the shock of finding out what his flatmate had been hiding under those tailored suits of his, was the defeated look on Sherlock's face. That was wrong, in a way the tentacles weren't. Sherlock, apparently taking John's silence to mean the worst, dropped his head and shifted his weight, preparing to leave the bed.
John's hand around his wrist stopped him.
“It's . . . it's all fine,” John said, wishing he knew what to say. He was drunk and stoned (which was probably good, since he had a dim sense he'd be far more freaked out otherwise) and this wasn't a bedroom situation he'd ever mentally rehearsed, much less experienced. “Just. It's a surprise.”
Sherlock's body contracted, scaring John, until he realized that Sherlock was laughing, a soft painful chuckle.
“That's not what people usually say,” Sherlock said.
“What do people usually say?” John asked, smiling encouragingly.
“Hard to tell. They're usually screaming in terror,” Sherlock said, looking up and meeting John's glance with a hopeful half-smile.
John, relieved beyond words by Sherlock's expression, began giggling. “I'll bet! But, their loss. That . . . what you were doing earlier . . . it was good. Really good.”
Sherlock exhaled deeply, smile turning into a grin, and his tentacle-halo flared again, weird and beautiful around him. “Would you like some more?” he asked, hopeful.
“God, yes!” John affirmed, opening his arms wide.
After that, John couldn't help feeling a bit at a disadvantage, what with his limited number of appendages, but he did his best to keep up and Sherlock seemed to appreciate it. Certainly, by the time sleep finally claimed him, John had been more thoroughly loved than he'd ever imagined, and all of his nerve endings were singing happy, oxytocin-sodden hymns in praise of the weird and wonderful glory that was Sherlock Holmes.
***
John woke when a splash of sunlight creeping through the partially closed curtains landed square on his face. The first thing he registered was his dry, gluey mouth, the second was that he wasn't in his own bedroom.
From there, memory flooded back.
God, how drunk was I? John thought. Behind him, he could hear low, steady breathing, and the air was filled with the blended scents of Sherlock and sex, so at least that much had been real . . . but the tentacles?
Well, he hadn't been plastered enough for Sherlock to kick him out of bed, so that was a plus.
Trying not to bounce the mattress too much, John rolled over to look at his sleeping flatmate. Sherlock was on his side, facing away from John. The sheet covered up to his waist, but his narrow back was bare and John drank in the sight: the bumps and hollows of muscle and bone, the lean shoulders, the careless mass of dark curls half-buried in the pillow. Just looking at Sherlock was enough to stir fresh desire in John. I hope I wasn't too disappointing last night; maybe he'll let me make it up to him . . . John was thinking when he noticed the marks.
His breath froze and he blinked, but the marks didn't go away: a series of faint, angled, raised lines on either side of Sherlock's spine, each about three inches long, looking like some sort of decorative scarification.
Only, assuming John's memories of last night weren't the result of being smashed out of his mind, that wasn't what they were.
Unable to stop himself, John placed a thumb and forefinger on either side of one the lines, and, with the gentlest pressure possible, spread the mark apart. It opened easily, bloodlessly, revealing dark mucous membrane and the tip of what could only be a sheathed tentacle.
The tentacle stirred, and slipped out just enough to feel around. When it found John's fingertips, it caressed them gently, like a small, soft, faintly-damp tongue. It might have been disgusting, if it hadn't also been so . . . helpless. Vulnerable. Trusting.
Sherlock stirred, making a low, happy noise in the back of his throat – which stopped abruptly. The tentacle pulled away from John's fingertips.
“You're awake,” Sherlock said. His tone, though pillow-muffled, was neutral – wary, even.
“Yes. Good morning,” John said. Then, because he was staring at Sherlock's lean, taut back and remembering the impressive display from last night, he couldn't help adding, “You're so thin. How does it all fit inside you?”
Sherlock went even more still, then said, with that same wary neutrality, “It's . . . complex.”
“I have a medical degree,” John said, dryly. “I can handle a little complexity.”
Sherlock took a deep breath. “Can you?” he asked.
John released the edges of the. . . opening? mouth? . . . and it sprang neatly closed, back to looking like a mere scar. Then he ran the palm of his hand down Sherlock's back, tracing the spine and the double line of marks to either side. “I handled it pretty well last night, I thought.” Before Sherlock could respond, John added with more heat, "Oh, and by the way? Drugging people and then having sex with them? Not good."
"I apologized."
"For overdosing me, as I recall, not for doing it in the first place." John said, letting his hand come to rest on Sherlock's perfectly-human-looking shoulder, trying to restrain the annoyance he was feeling at his arrogant, autocratic flatmate. Lover. Whatever.
Sherlock sighed. “We were out drinking to work ourselves up to it, or so you thought,” he pointed out. “Is it really that different?”
“I chose the alcohol,” John said, closing his eyes and resisting the urge to scrub his hand across his face in frustration.
“Can you honestly say it didn't help you accept what I am? Didn't cushion the first shock?”
John was silent, because, in a sense, Sherlock was right, but . . .
“You were still capable of giving consent,” Sherlock added.
John remembered that part vividly: not just consent, but enthusiastic consent, followed by . . . unf. John dragged his thoughts back front and center, because it was difficult to concentrate on being annoyed with Sherlock if he let himself remember too much detail about the simply amazing night just past. It had been by far the weirdest sex of John's life, but also the best – hands, or even tentacles, down.
He also remembered how scared Sherlock had looked, how certain he'd been of rejection, the remark about past partners running screaming . . . No, no, I'm not rationalizing him off the hook on this. But, all the same, John found his outrage dimming.
“Just . . .” he said, “Don't. It's not right. You didn't have to.”
It was Sherlock's turn to be silent a moment, then, “Perhaps I didn't.” Sherlock spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “Since the morning-after conversation opened with consent issues rather than 'Oh, God, you're an alien!'”
John blinked. “Are you? An alien?”
“Of course I'm an alien!” Sherlock burst out, rolling over sharply and glaring at John. “What did you think I was?”
“Christ, I dunno. Mutant? Medical experiment? I really hadn't got that far,” John said, defensive.
Sherlock, blank-faced with shock, gave John one slow blink of his pale eyes . . . and then dissolved into helpless laughter, flopping back to lie gasping on the bed. “Oh, John!” he wheezed. “Only you.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” John shot back, though his attempted huff was destroyed by the fact that his flatmate's laughter was contagious.
“Nothing,” Sherlock said, grinning, wiping his eyes with the back of one hand. “Absolutely nothing.”
John shook his head affectionately, but then a chilling realization struck him.
“You . . . came here. From somewhere else.”
“Another planet,” Sherlock agreed. “Boring place.”
“Does that mean that you'll have to, um, go back?”
Sherlock snorted and pulled an expression of extreme distaste. “Never. Not if they let me. And I don't think they would.”
“Really?” John asked, curiosity piqued, the cold knot in his stomach relaxing a bit. “What happened?”
“It was complicated.”
“Why am I not surprised? Wait – does that mean Mycroft . . .?”
“Do try to keep up. He's my brother. So, obviously, he's an alien, too.”
“You know, that's the first thing out of this whole business that's made total sense.”
Sherlock chuckled and stretched in a way that came very close to derailing John's entire train of thought.
“Can we not discuss Mycroft while we're in bed?” Sherlock asked rolling onto his side to face John. The way he was smiling was even more distracting than the stretching had been.
“What should we discuss, then?” John responded, rolling onto his side so they were separated by mere inches. John could feel the warmth of Sherlock's body, and the scent of him (perfectly human, so far as John could tell) was intoxicating in a good way, one that cleared John's head instead of fogging it.
“You expressed an interest in my anatomy,” Sherlock said, running a teasing fingertip along John's arm, raising a shiver of gooseflesh. “We could examine that.” He leaned forward and captured John's mouth in a wonderfully soft-hot kiss.
John's eyes drifted closed, and then, before he knew it, there were multiple gentle touches tracing along his skin. He pulled free of Sherlock's mouth, opening his eyes, and there they were, outlined in soft, filtered sunlight: a whole array of red-pink tentacles arching over Sherlock's body to reach John, so controlled and graceful in their movements they couldn't be anything but beautiful.
“I'm very complex,” Sherlock purred. “It could take a long time.”
Tentatively, John reached out to stroke one of the overarching coils, and Sherlock rumbled in appreciation, continuing to caress John with increasing intimacy. Emboldened, John let his hand run along the length of soft-skinned muscle until he reached its base and traced the attachment point on Sherlock's back, earning another, deeper groan.
“Dunno,” John said. “I'm a quick study.”
“We'll see about that.”
It was a highly educational session.
***
Three weeks later.
“It's just me,” John called out before he opened the door of the flat. It was amazing, he reflected as he wrestled a pair of plastic shopping bags through the doorway, how adaptable the human mind was, and how quickly the bizarre could become familiar. Domestic, even.
Sherlock made a fine Exhibit A, perched cross-legged and shirtless on his chair in front of the fireplace, pounding away at his laptop. A shirt was draped at the ready over the back of the chair, in case of unexpected visitors or Mrs. Hudson on one of her not-your-housekeeper excursions. His spread-eagled back tentacles held a random assortment of objects at the ready: Sherlock's mobile, a couple of books, a pen, and an erlenmyer flask full of something blue that was being swirled absentmindedly. It was like sharing a flat with an abnormally pale Hindu deity of technology.
Sherlock gave no greeting, or any other indication of registering John's presence. John, being used to that sort of reception, didn't take it personally. “So how was your day?” he asked as he lugged the bags into the kitchen, expecting (and receiving) no response whatsoever.
“Oh,” he added, pulling an envelope from his coat pocket. “There's a letter for you.” He'd no sooner held it up than a tentacle darted across the sitting room, quick as a bullwhip, and plucked it from his fingers.
Sherlock, still seated, examined the envelope back and front, while John put the milk away. No severed heads (or other body parts) in the fridge today, thankfully, though John noticed a couple sealed containers that were new. He wouldn't be opening those on a bet. It was safer that way; if he ever ended up in a courtroom he could plead total ignorance with a straight face.
“Boring,” Sherlock announced, glaring at the still-unopened envelope. “Follow-up on the McTavish case. Nothing I didn't already know.” He went back to typing while a tentacle pinned the letter to the mantel with his switchblade.
“I'm going to reheat some takeaway – want any?”
“Mnh. Just tea for me,” Sherlock said, his fingers hammering away in a tick-tacking blur.
Sixteen limbs and not one of them free to make tea, John thought, wryly, filling the kettle. You'd think things would have changed, what with the two of them being lovers and John knowing about Sherlock's alien-ness, but everything was still all weirdly the same. Though at least John could worry less about Sherlock's erratic eating habits – alien metabolism and all that. Turned out going days without food was normal, even healthy, for him.
The evening passed companionably, both of them working on their laptops, not talking or needing to, John occasionally ducking tentacles as they shot this way and that, picking various things from around the flat and then putting them back haphazardly. He'd always wondered how Sherlock's belongings got scattered around in such a wide radius; now he knew.
When John's blogging was done, he closed the cover on his laptop, glancing in Sherlock's direction, and knew he'd be going to bed alone. Disappointing, but not surprising. Sherlock had always worked all hours, and that, too, hadn't changed.
“Well, I'm turning in,” he told Sherlock, rising from his chair, but when he turned toward the bedroom, a firm tentacle-grip on his arm stopped him. He was pulled around to face Sherlock, who proceeded to wrap John in an affectionate, many-limbed embrace.
There was nothing quite like being cocooned by two arms and eight tentacles: it left one feeling emphatically hugged. John hugged back, and Sherlock planted a soft kiss on the side of John's neck. “Sleep well,” he rumbled.
“You can wake me up, if, you know, you'd like to, later,” John told him.
“I'll keep that in mind,” Sherlock murmured before unwrapping and releasing John.
Well, John thought, brushing his teeth, all right, things had changed.
But he wasn't about to complain. His life might have become exponentially weirder, but it was also exponentially – asymptotically – better.
It was just that simple.
Rating: R
Characters/pairing: John/Sherlock
Series: One-shot
Beta: Me, myself and I.
Warnings: Tentacles. Drug and alcohol use. Mild consent issues. Gratuitous fluff. In the same fic.
Word count: ~ 3,700
Summary: Written for this kinkmeme prompt: "Alien!Sherlock/John. Tentacle porn. Filler's choice on how consensual it is (but Op will love you forever if an aphrodisiac is involved).”
Author's Notes: So I was looking at getting back into fic, went to the kinkmeme for some limbering-up exercises (*wink*wink*) . . . and ended up writing 3.7K or what was supposed to be nice, straightforward tentacle porn but somehow ended up being as much schmoop as porn. IDEK, but people over there seemed to like it, so here it is: cleaned up for company (and with one major continuity error corrected) and presented for your enjoyment. Now back to something nice and normal, like werewolves and vampires . . . ;)
John stumbled through the door to the flat, giggling madly. Life was good. Life was brilliant. Life was bloody amazing. Because he and Sherlock Holmes were finally going to get down to the business of shagging each other.
They'd been dancing around it for a week, now – well, seriously dancing, not in that subliminal we-can-deny-it-if-we-try way that'd been going on since they first met, but overt things: glances and touches and hints and John had never been this horny in his life, not on three continents and in the Army to boot.
The trip to the corner pub had been the last step, the chance to work up a little ethanolic courage and get to the point where . . .
“Steady,” Sherlock said, catching his flatmate's arm as John's teetering balance threatened to tip him over. Sherlock wasn't feeling the pints he'd had anywhere near as much as John was -- typical! Even so, John wasn't too far gone to notice that Sherlock's hand was maintaining its grip long past its needed purpose, and that gave John a little ping of glee.
“C'mere, you!” he told Sherlock, turning and pinning the taller man to the wall. Sherlock wasn't so tall John couldn't reach his mouth for a kiss – and what a kiss! Those lush, pink lips were as soft and delectable as John had imagined; he took his time exploring, and before he was halfway done, Sherlock's hands had drifted south to cup John's arse in a very emphatic way.
John's calves finally started cramping up and he had to detach and drop his weight back down on his heels. “God,” he panted, reaching up to start on Sherlock's shirt buttons, “why'd we wait so long?” Before Sherlock could answer, he rambled on, “Yeah, yeah, I know married to your work 'n' all, but Christ, Sherlock, I was starting to think you weren't even human . . .”
One of Sherlock's long, elegant hands came up and caught both of John's wrists at once, stilling him with ridiculously little effort. Sherlock was a great deal stronger than he looked.
“Actually, John, that's the crux of it right there. I'm not human.”
John gaped, staring up into his flatmate's pale, slanted eyes . . . and then began giggling uncontrollably.
“Finally!” he squeaked, “you admit it! Thas' . . . thas' brilliant! Thas' goin' on my blog!”
“No, John,” Sherlock said, his voice low and urgent. “I mean it, I'm really not human . . . John! Oh, for . . . John!”
Sherlock sounded so serious that John managed to get his giggles under control. It helped somewhat that Sherlock was still holding his wrists pinioned, and didn't seem inclined to release them anytime soon. John blinked owlishly at his flatmate, trying to make sense of the situation.
“I slipped a little something in your last drink,” Sherlock was continuing. “Something to . . . make it all easier for you. But I think,” he added, looking annoyed, “I overestimated the correct dosage for your body size . . .”
“Hey! No short jokes!” John warned him. “I'm not that short, you're just that bleedin' tall!”
“John! Listen to me! I'm sorry, I shouldn't have given you so much, but I was worried about how you'd take it when you saw me as I really am . . .”
“What, naked? Naked sounds great right now, let go of my hands 'n' I'll show you how I take it!” John said, back to cheerful randiness.
Sherlock looked at his flatmate's happy, lustful face for a long moment, then released his grip on John's wrists.
“Finally!” John said, and went back to the buttons, which were being unaccountably slippery -- either that or his fingers were unusually clumsy.
Sherlock's hands began wandering: up and down John's back, fondling his arse, reaching up to caress his neck and comb through his hair, and Sherlock's head tilted back with unabashed sensual pleasure, exposing a gorgeous, lickable expanse of throat. “I warn you, things are about to get very strange,” he murmured.
“Oh, you're kinky,” John said, nodding sagely, undoing the last of Sherlock's shirt buttons. “S' good, I like kinky.”
Sherlock laughed, a deep, joyous, incredibly sexy sound. “Then you'll love this,” he declared, pushing away from the wall and dragging John into the nearest bedroom without further delay.
***
Things were very confused, in a good way, for a while after that, with much groping and removing of clothes and bodies pressed and twined together on cool, welcoming bedsheets. John's head was spinning, which was mildly annoying, but he was still having the time of his life, writhing around in complete, hedonistic abandonment with his amazing flatmate.
Really, Sherlock was amazing: slim and pliant and with hands that seemed to be everywhere, stroking and teasing and . . . and if this kept up, things were going to be over rather quickly, John realized, at least from his side of things.
Desperately, he pulled back, gasping, “Stop!”
Sherlock went stone still, almost as if he'd been expecting the request, which surprised John. With a frown, John concentrated on his breathing, and the part of his brain that was used to making sense of things started to take stock automatically.
He and Sherlock were lying side to side, facing each other, embracing, their legs twined together: so far, so good. Sherlock had one hand wound through John's hair, not too tight but still pulling deliciously (Focus John's brain said, soldier's reflex) his other hand cupped John's buttock, his other hand pressed the small of John's back, his other hand wrapped around John's cock, another hand had been trailing up and down John's spine but was currently stopped around the fifth thoracic vertebra, and what felt very much like a soft fingertip pressed against John's, ahem, rear entrance.
All at once.
John looked into Sherlock's wide (frightened?), luminous eyes and asked, in a strangled voice, “This may be the beer talkin', but how many hands have you got Sherlock?”
Sherlock, very seriously, his deep voice a low rumble that John felt through his entire body, replied, “Those aren't all hands.”
John blinked, inhaled, and asked, “S' what are they?”
Sherlock if anything, looked even more frightened, which was ridiculous, Sherlock was never frightened. Without saying anything more he shifted, pulling back, and John, responding to the unspoken cues, released him.
“I told you I wasn't human,” Sherlock said, when he was sitting more-or-less upright on the bed, on full display for the first time. John stared and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
Fanning out behind Sherlock, like an unholy hentai halo, was an array of gently-writhing tentacles, tapering from wrist-thick to fingertip-fine, shading from bright red at their blunt tips to a pink nearly as pale as Sherlock's normal skin tone. Assuming they issued from somewhere on his back, as they seemed to, they might very well match in coloration at the point of attachment.
John swallowed, hard, and then, remembering what he thought he'd been feeling, risked a glance between Sherlock's crossed legs. A nest of shorter, darker tentacles bristled there, as well.
“Oh, God,” John groaned, closing his eyes, wishing he was sober. “I knew I shouldn't've watched that anime, even if it was really late at night and there was nothing else on . . .”
“You aren't hallucinating,” Sherlock said, quietly. “This is real. This is me.”
John opened his eyes, and, yes, the tentacles were still there, if a bit . . . droopier than they had been. But what John really saw, even reeling from the shock of finding out what his flatmate had been hiding under those tailored suits of his, was the defeated look on Sherlock's face. That was wrong, in a way the tentacles weren't. Sherlock, apparently taking John's silence to mean the worst, dropped his head and shifted his weight, preparing to leave the bed.
John's hand around his wrist stopped him.
“It's . . . it's all fine,” John said, wishing he knew what to say. He was drunk and stoned (which was probably good, since he had a dim sense he'd be far more freaked out otherwise) and this wasn't a bedroom situation he'd ever mentally rehearsed, much less experienced. “Just. It's a surprise.”
Sherlock's body contracted, scaring John, until he realized that Sherlock was laughing, a soft painful chuckle.
“That's not what people usually say,” Sherlock said.
“What do people usually say?” John asked, smiling encouragingly.
“Hard to tell. They're usually screaming in terror,” Sherlock said, looking up and meeting John's glance with a hopeful half-smile.
John, relieved beyond words by Sherlock's expression, began giggling. “I'll bet! But, their loss. That . . . what you were doing earlier . . . it was good. Really good.”
Sherlock exhaled deeply, smile turning into a grin, and his tentacle-halo flared again, weird and beautiful around him. “Would you like some more?” he asked, hopeful.
“God, yes!” John affirmed, opening his arms wide.
After that, John couldn't help feeling a bit at a disadvantage, what with his limited number of appendages, but he did his best to keep up and Sherlock seemed to appreciate it. Certainly, by the time sleep finally claimed him, John had been more thoroughly loved than he'd ever imagined, and all of his nerve endings were singing happy, oxytocin-sodden hymns in praise of the weird and wonderful glory that was Sherlock Holmes.
***
John woke when a splash of sunlight creeping through the partially closed curtains landed square on his face. The first thing he registered was his dry, gluey mouth, the second was that he wasn't in his own bedroom.
From there, memory flooded back.
God, how drunk was I? John thought. Behind him, he could hear low, steady breathing, and the air was filled with the blended scents of Sherlock and sex, so at least that much had been real . . . but the tentacles?
Well, he hadn't been plastered enough for Sherlock to kick him out of bed, so that was a plus.
Trying not to bounce the mattress too much, John rolled over to look at his sleeping flatmate. Sherlock was on his side, facing away from John. The sheet covered up to his waist, but his narrow back was bare and John drank in the sight: the bumps and hollows of muscle and bone, the lean shoulders, the careless mass of dark curls half-buried in the pillow. Just looking at Sherlock was enough to stir fresh desire in John. I hope I wasn't too disappointing last night; maybe he'll let me make it up to him . . . John was thinking when he noticed the marks.
His breath froze and he blinked, but the marks didn't go away: a series of faint, angled, raised lines on either side of Sherlock's spine, each about three inches long, looking like some sort of decorative scarification.
Only, assuming John's memories of last night weren't the result of being smashed out of his mind, that wasn't what they were.
Unable to stop himself, John placed a thumb and forefinger on either side of one the lines, and, with the gentlest pressure possible, spread the mark apart. It opened easily, bloodlessly, revealing dark mucous membrane and the tip of what could only be a sheathed tentacle.
The tentacle stirred, and slipped out just enough to feel around. When it found John's fingertips, it caressed them gently, like a small, soft, faintly-damp tongue. It might have been disgusting, if it hadn't also been so . . . helpless. Vulnerable. Trusting.
Sherlock stirred, making a low, happy noise in the back of his throat – which stopped abruptly. The tentacle pulled away from John's fingertips.
“You're awake,” Sherlock said. His tone, though pillow-muffled, was neutral – wary, even.
“Yes. Good morning,” John said. Then, because he was staring at Sherlock's lean, taut back and remembering the impressive display from last night, he couldn't help adding, “You're so thin. How does it all fit inside you?”
Sherlock went even more still, then said, with that same wary neutrality, “It's . . . complex.”
“I have a medical degree,” John said, dryly. “I can handle a little complexity.”
Sherlock took a deep breath. “Can you?” he asked.
John released the edges of the. . . opening? mouth? . . . and it sprang neatly closed, back to looking like a mere scar. Then he ran the palm of his hand down Sherlock's back, tracing the spine and the double line of marks to either side. “I handled it pretty well last night, I thought.” Before Sherlock could respond, John added with more heat, "Oh, and by the way? Drugging people and then having sex with them? Not good."
"I apologized."
"For overdosing me, as I recall, not for doing it in the first place." John said, letting his hand come to rest on Sherlock's perfectly-human-looking shoulder, trying to restrain the annoyance he was feeling at his arrogant, autocratic flatmate. Lover. Whatever.
Sherlock sighed. “We were out drinking to work ourselves up to it, or so you thought,” he pointed out. “Is it really that different?”
“I chose the alcohol,” John said, closing his eyes and resisting the urge to scrub his hand across his face in frustration.
“Can you honestly say it didn't help you accept what I am? Didn't cushion the first shock?”
John was silent, because, in a sense, Sherlock was right, but . . .
“You were still capable of giving consent,” Sherlock added.
John remembered that part vividly: not just consent, but enthusiastic consent, followed by . . . unf. John dragged his thoughts back front and center, because it was difficult to concentrate on being annoyed with Sherlock if he let himself remember too much detail about the simply amazing night just past. It had been by far the weirdest sex of John's life, but also the best – hands, or even tentacles, down.
He also remembered how scared Sherlock had looked, how certain he'd been of rejection, the remark about past partners running screaming . . . No, no, I'm not rationalizing him off the hook on this. But, all the same, John found his outrage dimming.
“Just . . .” he said, “Don't. It's not right. You didn't have to.”
It was Sherlock's turn to be silent a moment, then, “Perhaps I didn't.” Sherlock spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “Since the morning-after conversation opened with consent issues rather than 'Oh, God, you're an alien!'”
John blinked. “Are you? An alien?”
“Of course I'm an alien!” Sherlock burst out, rolling over sharply and glaring at John. “What did you think I was?”
“Christ, I dunno. Mutant? Medical experiment? I really hadn't got that far,” John said, defensive.
Sherlock, blank-faced with shock, gave John one slow blink of his pale eyes . . . and then dissolved into helpless laughter, flopping back to lie gasping on the bed. “Oh, John!” he wheezed. “Only you.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” John shot back, though his attempted huff was destroyed by the fact that his flatmate's laughter was contagious.
“Nothing,” Sherlock said, grinning, wiping his eyes with the back of one hand. “Absolutely nothing.”
John shook his head affectionately, but then a chilling realization struck him.
“You . . . came here. From somewhere else.”
“Another planet,” Sherlock agreed. “Boring place.”
“Does that mean that you'll have to, um, go back?”
Sherlock snorted and pulled an expression of extreme distaste. “Never. Not if they let me. And I don't think they would.”
“Really?” John asked, curiosity piqued, the cold knot in his stomach relaxing a bit. “What happened?”
“It was complicated.”
“Why am I not surprised? Wait – does that mean Mycroft . . .?”
“Do try to keep up. He's my brother. So, obviously, he's an alien, too.”
“You know, that's the first thing out of this whole business that's made total sense.”
Sherlock chuckled and stretched in a way that came very close to derailing John's entire train of thought.
“Can we not discuss Mycroft while we're in bed?” Sherlock asked rolling onto his side to face John. The way he was smiling was even more distracting than the stretching had been.
“What should we discuss, then?” John responded, rolling onto his side so they were separated by mere inches. John could feel the warmth of Sherlock's body, and the scent of him (perfectly human, so far as John could tell) was intoxicating in a good way, one that cleared John's head instead of fogging it.
“You expressed an interest in my anatomy,” Sherlock said, running a teasing fingertip along John's arm, raising a shiver of gooseflesh. “We could examine that.” He leaned forward and captured John's mouth in a wonderfully soft-hot kiss.
John's eyes drifted closed, and then, before he knew it, there were multiple gentle touches tracing along his skin. He pulled free of Sherlock's mouth, opening his eyes, and there they were, outlined in soft, filtered sunlight: a whole array of red-pink tentacles arching over Sherlock's body to reach John, so controlled and graceful in their movements they couldn't be anything but beautiful.
“I'm very complex,” Sherlock purred. “It could take a long time.”
Tentatively, John reached out to stroke one of the overarching coils, and Sherlock rumbled in appreciation, continuing to caress John with increasing intimacy. Emboldened, John let his hand run along the length of soft-skinned muscle until he reached its base and traced the attachment point on Sherlock's back, earning another, deeper groan.
“Dunno,” John said. “I'm a quick study.”
“We'll see about that.”
It was a highly educational session.
***
Three weeks later.
“It's just me,” John called out before he opened the door of the flat. It was amazing, he reflected as he wrestled a pair of plastic shopping bags through the doorway, how adaptable the human mind was, and how quickly the bizarre could become familiar. Domestic, even.
Sherlock made a fine Exhibit A, perched cross-legged and shirtless on his chair in front of the fireplace, pounding away at his laptop. A shirt was draped at the ready over the back of the chair, in case of unexpected visitors or Mrs. Hudson on one of her not-your-housekeeper excursions. His spread-eagled back tentacles held a random assortment of objects at the ready: Sherlock's mobile, a couple of books, a pen, and an erlenmyer flask full of something blue that was being swirled absentmindedly. It was like sharing a flat with an abnormally pale Hindu deity of technology.
Sherlock gave no greeting, or any other indication of registering John's presence. John, being used to that sort of reception, didn't take it personally. “So how was your day?” he asked as he lugged the bags into the kitchen, expecting (and receiving) no response whatsoever.
“Oh,” he added, pulling an envelope from his coat pocket. “There's a letter for you.” He'd no sooner held it up than a tentacle darted across the sitting room, quick as a bullwhip, and plucked it from his fingers.
Sherlock, still seated, examined the envelope back and front, while John put the milk away. No severed heads (or other body parts) in the fridge today, thankfully, though John noticed a couple sealed containers that were new. He wouldn't be opening those on a bet. It was safer that way; if he ever ended up in a courtroom he could plead total ignorance with a straight face.
“Boring,” Sherlock announced, glaring at the still-unopened envelope. “Follow-up on the McTavish case. Nothing I didn't already know.” He went back to typing while a tentacle pinned the letter to the mantel with his switchblade.
“I'm going to reheat some takeaway – want any?”
“Mnh. Just tea for me,” Sherlock said, his fingers hammering away in a tick-tacking blur.
Sixteen limbs and not one of them free to make tea, John thought, wryly, filling the kettle. You'd think things would have changed, what with the two of them being lovers and John knowing about Sherlock's alien-ness, but everything was still all weirdly the same. Though at least John could worry less about Sherlock's erratic eating habits – alien metabolism and all that. Turned out going days without food was normal, even healthy, for him.
The evening passed companionably, both of them working on their laptops, not talking or needing to, John occasionally ducking tentacles as they shot this way and that, picking various things from around the flat and then putting them back haphazardly. He'd always wondered how Sherlock's belongings got scattered around in such a wide radius; now he knew.
When John's blogging was done, he closed the cover on his laptop, glancing in Sherlock's direction, and knew he'd be going to bed alone. Disappointing, but not surprising. Sherlock had always worked all hours, and that, too, hadn't changed.
“Well, I'm turning in,” he told Sherlock, rising from his chair, but when he turned toward the bedroom, a firm tentacle-grip on his arm stopped him. He was pulled around to face Sherlock, who proceeded to wrap John in an affectionate, many-limbed embrace.
There was nothing quite like being cocooned by two arms and eight tentacles: it left one feeling emphatically hugged. John hugged back, and Sherlock planted a soft kiss on the side of John's neck. “Sleep well,” he rumbled.
“You can wake me up, if, you know, you'd like to, later,” John told him.
“I'll keep that in mind,” Sherlock murmured before unwrapping and releasing John.
Well, John thought, brushing his teeth, all right, things had changed.
But he wasn't about to complain. His life might have become exponentially weirder, but it was also exponentially – asymptotically – better.
It was just that simple.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-05 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 10:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 07:42 am (UTC)Now I wonder about the complicated situation that led them to earth... Maybe Sherlock got on everyone's nerves as much as he does on earth and he was banned for being a nuisance? *g*
no subject
Date: 2011-09-29 04:16 pm (UTC)Like I *needed* another AU! :P :)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-19 10:13 pm (UTC)