Sherlock’s skin was as cold as the steel around John’s neck.
I wanted to write Archia a thing for this picture, so I did.
John watches the candle flickering on the nightstand a few feet from the bed. ”For you,” Sherlock had said with a little smile when he’d lit it, and John had wondered: why a candle? Why not a lamp or a night light? Something with less risk of mess or burning the place down.
He still doesn’t know, but he’s grateful all the same. The little flame dances like it’s keeping him company, a fluttering reminder that life and warmth still exist in the world beyond the cold circle of metal around his neck and the weight of Sherlock’s body draped over John’s.
Somewhere outside, the sun is traveling across the sky, pouring its light over London’s gleaming buildings and grimy pavements. John might never see it again. “I’m going to keep you,” Sherlock had told him, when he’d bound John tight and chained him into his bed. But a vampire’s thralls tend not to last for long.
Everyone is fascinated by the bite. Though it’s well known that a vampire’s attentions inevitably end in death or slavery, that doesn’t stop people from writing books and movies and journal articles about it. When proud men and strong women will crawl for a vampire’s favour, do anything to persuade their master to continue devouring them piece by piece, who could help but wonder about it?
Now John knows. Sherlock consumed him, literally ate him alive, and it felt so good, hideous and transcendent—so intense and intimate, sizzling along the pathways of every nerve in his body. “You taste different in different places,” Sherlock had told him, and then bit John over and over again. He’d pierced John at his throat, chest, inner elbow, lower back, inner thigh, the soft place on his lower belly, going slowly each time in order to savour the sensations of texture and thickness as his sharp teeth dented and then penetrated John’s skin. It had been hot blood tides of pleasure that built and built until all he’d been able to do was moan and twist needily in the bed, desperate for Sherlock to take more, to keep going, to bite him again, deeper, harder, everywhere. Every contact, from soft curls brushing his throat to the bruising bite of strong, sharp fingertips; it had all blurred together into an impossible red and black-laced tapestry of rapture.
He begged, he thinks. He can’t remember what came out of his mouth, but in his head he’d been begging for Sherlock to not stop. He hadn’t even cared that he was begging for his own death. The thought had seemed blissful, the perfect consummation to die locked in that ecstasy.
Sherlock had shaken with it too. Even in the depths of that ecstasy, John had noticed how beautiful he was, mad and predatory and alight with his own pleasure. Or maybe that enchantment was part of the bite too.
Sherlock is heavy on him now, asleep so far as John can tell. Do vampires sleep? Maybe he’s hibernating. Or dead. He lies like a blanket thrown half-over John’s body. John’s arms, bound behind him, force his back into an arch that would be horribly uncomfortable if it weren’t for Sherlock’s arm under his neck and shoulders. Everything hurts, from muscle and bone to the inner lining of his veins, and being swaddled in Sherlock feels better than it should. The stolen warmth of his skin, slowly cooling to room temperature but still flush with John’s blood, is meltingly comforting on the deep ache of John’s body.
Would John crawl for him if he crooked his finger? He doesn’t feel like he would. But the thought of Sherlock’s hands, Sherlock’s mouth, Sherlock’s teeth on him, inside him… The desire of it sparkles under his skin already, luring him with the sweet promise of feeling that again.
Sherlock will teach him to want it. More and more, each time Sherlock takes him, until John doesn’t want to leave, even if he could. And then maybe Sherlock will unchain him, and John will crawl into bed to get fucked and bitten and snuggled of his own free will.