Title: Teeth Marks
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: Explicit
Length: 5000
Content Warnings: Omegaverse; Alpha!Sherlock/Omega!John; heat sex; knotting; bonding; fisting; references to assault; references to psychological trauma; references to suicide. Hurt/comfort.
Summary: John doesn’t want a bond-bite.
Sherlock hated being an Alpha.
It was easy enough to deduce the decrease in John’s army pension from the parade of expressions that crossed his face as he opened the official-looking envelope (curiosity); read the contents of the letter thrice (disbelief); returned the letter to its envelope and dropped it on the kitchen table (disgust); and stood, staring at the wall whilst his hand hovered unconsciously over the wallet-shaped bulge in his trouser pocket (anger, fear).
Sherlock’s eyes made all the necessary observations. His mind made all the necessary connections. He did not need to sense a distressed Omega through the ether. It was such a weak, subjective form of knowledge, not based on data or anything remotely empirical. Just a feeling.
Even more, Sherlock did not want to acknowledge in himself the involuntary Alpha response to John’s distress. He’d already dismissed two possibilities. Any overt offer of money would be be refused. Any covert act—say, hacking into and altering a military database—with the same aim would be viewed with suspicion and, if truth discovered, might be considered worse insult.
So he would continue to peruse the Journal of Forensic Sciences and if John asked for his assistance, he would give it.
As a friend. Colleague. Whatever.
Sherlock’s wait was short. In less than twenty minutes, John was leaning forward and asking a most unanticipated question,
“Sherlock, have you ever shared a heat with an Omega?”
John hated being an Omega and no more so than today. The army was eliminating the free provision of heat supplements to Omegas not in active service. From a bureaucratic viewpoint, it probably made sense: an easy way to trim costs as supplements were expensive and there were so few Omegas in the army due to the requirement of sterility. But it meant disaster for John. He would have to purchase the supplements himself or find an Alpha to share his heats.
The latter option meant a heat centre.
No!
He pushed foul memories to the dark recesses of his mind.
He would just have to find extra work, a lot of extra work, in fact. He sighed.
He was in the middle of some crude wage calculations when his eyes finally lit upon Sherlock, lounging in his armchair, idly flipping the pages of a journal.
Sherlock was an Alpha.
They had known each other for such a brief period of time, it was difficult to say if, apart from the massive intellect and myriad of eccentricities, Sherlock was like any other Alpha or if he was unconventional in all aspects of his person.
John considered his alternatives. Then he sat down in his armchair and leaned forward.
“I don’t want a bond-bite. In fact, I insist on no bond-bite, and if you think that you might not be capable of restraining yourself, then this conversation is over. The question of pregnancy is moot. The army made sure I was sterile before they allowed me to serve.”
Sherlock relaxed. It seemed that in a few statements, John had slain his initial concerns.
“My knowledge of Omega heat is theoretical, John, but we pass day after day living and working together, surely that must speak to my restraint.”
John’s smile was tense. “Heat is different.”
“I am different or hadn’t you noticed?” Sherlock instantly wondered why he was insisting. Did he want to share John’s heat? No, he merely wanted to help a friend.
Colleague. Whatever.
But whatever might be threatened by this new development. “We could travel elsewhere, somewhere outside London, to pass the heat,” Sherlock suggested.
“Good idea. It’s only once every three months. My last heat was forty-eight hours, though up to a week is possible. A hotel room?”
“There’s a cottage in Sussex that I’ve been eyeing as a retirement investment. Secluded. Private.”
Fear. Sherlock read it in John’s widening eyes and his stiffening posture, but it was the Alpha in him that responded in a low voice. “Or if you’d feel more comfortable, here.”
“No, no.” John spoke as if to himself. “Your suggestion makes more sense. Let’s keep our day-to-day life separate. So, we have a deal?”
“Deal.”
They shook hands.
John buried his face in the bedding. All thought was reduced to three words.
Don’t bite me. Don’t bite me. Don’t bite me.
“I presented very late in life. For my first heat, I engaged an Alpha from a heat centre,” said John, keeping his eyes fixed on the changing landscape beyond the train window. “He signed the routine contract, which included a no bond-biting provision, but during the heat he became overwhelmed by pheromones. Resisting him was unpleasant. I joined the army soon after.”
Sherlock nodded. He deduced as much when he first spotted a scar on John’s back, one that pre-dated the vestiges of his war injuries.
Teeth marks.
They were near, but not on, John’s bond site.
At the time, Sherlock had quickly quashed his flare of irrational Alpha anger and made a note to investigate if John ever mentioned the centre by name. Then he had returned to the task at hand.
He had been gentle, well as gentle as a dozen or so knottings in rapid sequence could be, but upon realising that his attempts at soothing John were having absolutely no effect on the thick miasma of fear that enveloped them, had shifted his focus to making the experience as brief as possible.
In that, he’d had some measure of success, for in thirty-six hours after their arrival in Sussex, they were on their return journey to London.
“Thank you,” said John. “I appreciate your patience and…”
“Restraint?”
John smiled and nodded.
“Would you like to repeat the experience?” Sherlock held his breath.
“Yes, if you’re amenable. I can’t imagine if was very enjoyable for you.”
Sherlock shrugged. “I am amenable.” He was carefully to maintain a cool façade, but inside, the Alpha preened and guarded the moment like hoarded treasure.
It would challenging to help John overcome his fear, just as Sherlock had helped him overcome his phantom war injuries. It would be interesting from a psychological point of view. It might even be beneficial—greater understanding, greater trust—in terms of the Work. He was helping a friend. Colleague. Whatever.
All very logical. Reasonable. Rationale.
“Massage?! Now?!” John looked down at Sherlock’s leaking cock and felt his own secretions dripping down his inner thighs.
“It hardly matters at other times, does it? If you were more familiar with my touch, then perhaps your anxiety would be lessened during the actual coupling.”
Sherlock’s voice sounded clinical and oddly reassuring. John crawled onto the bed.
“On your back.”
Sherlock’s hands moved slowly, methodically, up John’s legs, kneading and rubbing from toes to thighs. He worked silently. And he never, not once, took his eyes off John’s. Not when he hooked John’s legs over his shoulders, not when he sank his cock in John, not when he pumped until the knot formed, not when he ejaculated in John, not when the knot loosened and he pulled out of John.
When the first round was over, Sherlock collapsed on the bed beside John, leaving a space between their parallel bodies.
John rolled on his side and smiled.
Every coupling had followed the same sequence, including the same position of John on his back, beneath Sherlock. It was not the most comfortable arrangement physically, especially with the knot, but it afforded John the best view of Sherlock. Sherlock’s theory was that if John could see, and anticipate, Sherlock’s movements then he would be less afraid.
And it had been effective.
John’s fears were fading. The Alpha sensed—there was that hideous word again!—it, just as he sensed that the heat was coming to an end.
As Sherlock entered John for the last time, John did something extraordinary.
He closed his eyes.
He closed his eyes and lifted his hips and squeezed tightly around Sherlock’s cock. And not just one squeeze, a rhythm of tightening and releasing.
John was milking Sherlock’s cock.
Sherlock’s mouth fell open as his pleasure intensified exponentially. The knot formed, and his pleasure continued until he had shot stream after stream of hot seed into John.
When John finally opened his eyes, there was a mischievous light in his eyes and his lips were curled in a teasing smirk.
Sherlock huffed in mock indignation and wiped the sweat from his brow.
John had done the impossible.
No, John had done what, until today, he’d though impossible, but was, in reality, only highly improbable.
He’d surprised Sherlock Holmes. And he’d given an Alpha his first true taste of an Omega.
He tried not to smirk, and failed.
He and Sherlock had been exchanging silent, surreptitious glances since the train had left the station.
Finally, John said, “Thank you. I appreciate your patience and…”
“Restraint?”
John nodded.
“Would you like to repeat the experience?” Sherlock was holding John’s gaze just as he had for the duration of the heat. Gently. Firmly.
“Yes, if you’re amenable.”
“I am amenable,” said Sherlock.
John watched Sherlock’s mouth as he pronounced the words—that perfect Cupid’s bow, that plump bottom lip—and thought how nice it was to not once think of the teeth that lay behind them.
Three months passed, full of clients and crime scenes; cups of tea and bits of toast. There were sibling crises, of a case of so-called national security and a return trip to rehab. And rows, the fiercest being about the toaster oven, which had to be replaced twice.
To the casual observer, nothing had changed at 221B, but Sherlock Holmes was the very opposite of a casual observer.
He had noted, for example, that John’s eyes lingered on him for 1.5 second longer than average when he wore the aubergine shirt—the one he was wearing at this very moment as the train pulled out of the state—and as a result he increased the frequency of the garment’s rotation in his wardrobe. Nothing dramatic, of course, nothing that would catch John’s notice, a mere one additional wear a fortnight.
The Alpha, of course, had secretly rejoiced in the extra three seconds of attention a month received.
On one rare occasion when Sherlock had anticipated climbing about in dank shipping containers, he had worn jeans. Later, much later actually as he and John had been trapped in one of said containers for a few hours, Sherlock had noted that John spent an extra eight minutes in the shower. A true scientist, Sherlock was loathe to conflate correlation with causation.
The Alpha, however, revelled in the thought of John masturbating to his denim-clad arse.
Was this heat going to be different? Perhaps. The Alpha certainly sensed it. And perhaps the Omega had, too, as John had arranged for a large hamper of provisions to be delivered to the cottage. That was novel and suggested more than the single day experience that they had shared thus far.
Sherlock was considering what amendments to make to his original heat strategy when John’s words cut through his thoughts.
“Thank goodness the pheromones sort of wipe the memory banks clean at the end, heat makes one speak and act so curiously.”
It was a lie, or to be more precise a myth, one much favoured by betas.
John was staring out the window when Sherlock replied dryly, “Yes, what a wonder of biology, that!”
Yes, this heat was going to be different.
The Alpha howled.
John wanted Sherlock. And if he could wait long enough for the suitcases to hit the floor and the curtains to flutter closed, he would have him.
John looked at Sherlock. No, John’s eyes travelled up and down Sherlock, devouring him.
Sherlock quickly found the lubricant that he had packed. Then it seemed the most natural thing in the world to open his trousers and take his own cock in hand and show John just how much he wanted him.
Very soon they had both settled in armchairs, which were still covered in drape. They sat opposite each other, much as they did at the Baker Street flat. Sherlock was still pumping his cock, a little more slowly and unevenly now as his attention was fixed on John, who was naked from the waist down, legs splayed, teasing his own hole with two lubed fingers.
Sherlock watched as one finger, then a second, pushed inside. Then he grunted and thrust up into his own fist. John licked his lips, and Sherlock thought how magnificent it would be to see those lips, that tongue, wrapped around—
The Alpha sensed the instant that the heat had begun.
And so did the Omega, for without preamble, John walked the three steps that separated them and climbed into Sherlock’s lap and sank down on his cock.
Sherlock spied a second set of teeth marks above John’s right nipple. He deleted them. Anger would not serve him now.
He thrust up into John, jostling him.
Oh, the milking had already begun, that sweet caress hidden between them. It was the stuff of lurid fantasy, if Sherlock ever allowed himself such indulgence, which he hadn’t, for three months.
The knot formed, and Sherlock came.
As the knot slacked, however, the milking resumed. Sherlock raised an eyebrow at John’s smile. Then John’s lips parted.
“Sherlock.”
It was the first word that either had uttered during a heat, and it dripped with lust, with want.
The Alpha would not be denied.
Sherlock lifted John even as his knotted cock was still spitting seed deep inside him, and they moved as one, with John’s legs wrapped tight around Sherlock waist, to the bed.
Sherlock lay John gently on his back. Then he began to thrust and chant the only word that mattered.
“John. John. John.”
John closed his eyes.
They were side by side, facing each other, when John sensed the second round approaching.
The Omega would not be denied.
He rolled away from Sherlock and wiggled backwards until his damp arse brushed against Sherlock’s hardening cock.
Then Sherlock’s hand was under John’s thigh, raising it, and then the head of Sherlock’s cock was teasing John’s hole, merely tracing his rim.
Suddenly John pushed back, impaling himself on the cock until it was fully sheathed. He heard Sherlock exhale.
“Fuck!”
Well, that was novel. And hilarious. John giggled.
The knot formed.
Sherlock took John’s hand in his and brought it to his mouth, and for the remainder of the second knotting, he sucked John’s fingers.
To show me that he won’t bite.
John blinked back tears and called Sherlock’s name, hoping that the word conveyed even half of the tenderness that he felt in that moment for the most unconventional Alpha he had ever known.
John blinked back tears.
Sherlock quickly brought John’s hands to the base of his cock. The warm, wet heat of John’s mouth was too inviting, especially when it had been prefaced by John kneeling between Sherlock’s legs and greedily suckling each of Sherlock’s sacs in turn.
Sherlock might be an unconventional Alpha, but the dimensions of his cock were not, and they far exceeded those of John’s oral cavity.
But even half his cock in John’s mouth, with the remainder being squeezed and stroked by John’s hands, was exquisite.
Without the knot, Sherlock’s load was comparatively small, but John drank it down like a honeyed elixir. Then he began to lick Sherlock’s testicles anew.
How did John know of his preference? How did he know that on the rare occasion when Sherlock masturbated, one hand was always lower, fondling, while the other stroked? Had he observed something during a heat? At the flat? Or had the Omega simple sensed it?
Sherlock had no time to ponder further questions as his cock was rising again, and this time, John’s mouth would not suffice.
After the fourth coupling, John led Sherlock back to the sitting room. They fed each other fruit and bits of cheese and bread. John pressed a bottle of water to Sherlock’s lips over and over and only when Sherlock had drained it, did he offer him sips of wine.
After a single glass, Sherlock was dozing on the sofa.
So uncommon was the experience of being near Sherlock as he slept that John, despite his own fatigue, had curled on the floor against an armchair opposite him and simply watched.
Sherlock was beautiful. His skin, his lanky limbs and long fingers. Sinewy muscles attached to gangly bones. Dark eyelashes, sharp cheekbones, dusky nipples, wiry pubic hair.
And, of course, the behemoth cock.
Which also, miraculously, appeared to be sleeping.
Then John realised that he did not want the cock to be sleeping. He wanted it inside him, filling him. Now.
No! Sherlock needed to rest. John turned away and averted his gaze from Sherlock’s nude form. The Omega could wait.
Now! The Omega would not wait. He would rouse the Alpha cock with his mouth and hands and pleasure himself while the Alpha slept.
Ridiculous! No! John’s fingers went to his own hole. These would have to suffice.
They would not suffice!
John gritted his teeth.
“John.”
John looked over his shoulder and a wave of relief washed over him.
Sherlock was gesturing to his hard cock. “Come.”
John flew to the sofa.
Then he was riding Sherlock, letting those long-fingered hands on his hips guide his rocking and bouncing.
John’s pleasure was near perfect, and he was thoroughly enjoying the last of the hot streaks painting the inside of his body when Sherlock whispered,
“Bend closer.”
John brought his upper body towards Sherlock’s and Sherlock lifted his head until he could take John’s nipple in his mouth and suck.
John bucked hard into Sherlock, calling his name.
Sherlock must have deduced it, probably the night after the shipping container case. Something must’ve told Sherlock that John had been teasing his own nipples as he wanked furiously to the image of Sherlock in jeans. What exactly, John didn’t know and would probably never know, but right now, he didn’t care.
Sherlock was bathing his right nipple with a soft, warm tongue. The left was already soaked and pebbled from Sherlock’s attentions.
John reached for his own cock. Sherlock batted his hand away.
“Sherlock!”
John’s cock was delicious. And the noises—of both surprise and pleasure—that Sherlock’s bobbing and sucking elicited were equally delicious.
Two of Sherlock’s fingers were pumping in and out of John’s cunt as he lavished John’s cock.
“More,” John pleaded, holding Sherlock’s wrist.
John was loose, of course, how could he not be, so Sherlock added a third.
The pleading continued. And continued.
“John?”
Sherlock had pulled off John’s cock to look into his eyes.
“Please,” John insisted. “More.”
Sherlock found the lubricant where it had untouched since their first coupling.
Then after careful preparation, he pushed his whole hand inside John. When only he was satisfied that John was only stretched and not torn, did his bend his head and suck John’s cock to climax.
John woke to his name. Without opening his eyes, he spread his legs and welcomed Sherlock’s cock inside him and was rocked back to sleep by Sherlock’s thrusting.
John woke again to his name. He spread his legs, but this time it was not a hungry Alpha cock that entered him.
Something smaller, wetter, softer.
An Alpha tongue.
John’s eyes fluttered open. He was on laying prone on the bed, with his arse raised.
The Omega immediately sensed the shift and pulled away from Sherlock’s mouth.
John sat up and turned and rolled onto his back. Then he met Sherlock’s eyes and smiled.
After the final knotting, John had made to rise from the bed, but Sherlock laid a hand on his.
Sherlock had the lubricant in hand. He watched John watch him coat one of his own fingers. And tease his own hole.
Then he pressed the bottle of lubricant into John’s hand.
John’s eyes widened.
Sherlock nodded. “For comparison’s sake, John. Research.” He tried for a casual shrug, but knew that the strain in his voice had given him away.
Then he laid down on his stomach and gave himself over to John.
It took a long time to fuck Sherlock. Compared to the heat, it was a painstakingly slow process with lots of pauses to rub hands lightly up and down Sherlock’s back and pepper kisses along his spine. But John persisted and by the time he had mounted Sherlock and spent his own seed inside him, he’d made a discovery.
John waited until they were both showered and dressed and had set the cottage to rights before he confessed, “I don’t hate being an Omega anymore.”
Sherlock stared and blinked and swallowed. Then he leaned down and kissed John’s lips.
And they stood like that, in the doorway of the cottage, kissing, holding each other, until they were forced to take a later train to London.
It was dark beyond the train window when John said, “Thank you. I appreciate your patience and…”
“Restraint?”
Their eyes met, and then they turned their heads and burst into laughter.
John nodded, wiping his eyes with his jumper sleeve. Sherlock offered him a handkerchief, which he took. “Remarkable, that restraint of yours,” he added, chuckling.
“Would you like to repeat the experience?” asked Sherlock with a snort.
“Oh, God, yes. If you’re amenable.”
“I’m amenable.”
John shifted in his seat and winced. He was already sore and might be for days.
He glanced over at Sherlock and caught a fleeting twitch of lips.
“Don’t start behaving like an ordinary Alpha brute now!” he teased.
“Nonsense” was Sherlock’s reply.
Sherlock remembered that reply two months later. After the words “If you had killed John, you would not have got out of this room alive!” had left his lips.
A brutish, ordinary Alpha thing to say, but at the time, Sherlock had meant every word. It had been a counterfeiting case, and a somewhat ludicrous one at that, but it had taken all of Sherlock’s restraint to resist filleting Evans and roasting him on coals for the ‘mere scratch’ his weapon had inflicted on John.
John had healed.
Sherlock had not.
His rationale Self and his Alpha were at war constantly, even as the train travelled from London to Sussex.
If John and he were bonded…but John didn’t want to bond. That was more than nine months ago. A lot had changed.
Sherlock shook his head. The Alpha continued to seethe.
Why didn’t John want to bond with him? Did he think Sherlock couldn’t protect him? Did he think that Sherlock couldn’t provide for him?
Nonsense. John was a friend. Colleague. Whatever. He didn’t need Sherlock’s protection, and he certainly didn’t need his provision.
Of course he did. John was his Omega.
No! Not his Omega.
Yes! John was Sherlock’s Omega just as Sherlock was John’s Alpha.
The battle raged on.
John hoped that the heat would help to mend the rift between him and Sherlock. It had nothing to do with John’s superficial injury, which had healed quickly and without scarring, and everything to do with the conflict he saw playing out inside Sherlock.
Sherlock would erupt in sudden outbursts of over-protectiveness and jealousy. Then his face would fall and he would recoil from John, brooding silently. John could not reach him during these dark moods, which sometimes lasted for days.
The first coupling had been as their last, with John on his back, beneath Sherlock. Then John had turned and wriggled his bottom against Sherlock’s cock.
Instantly, John sensed the shift.
Sherlock gripped him by the neck and pushed him face-first into the mattress. He had mounted John and began thrusting roughly. Then he had jerked John up by the hair until their bodies met.
Then he had licked John’s neck. The left side of his neck.
John tensed, but Sherlock continued, thrusting, licking.
When John felt the pinching pressure of teeth, he screamed.
“NO!”
Sherlock opened his eyes.
John was trembling. He wrenched away from Sherlock and scurried to the far side of the room.
“DON’T BITE ME!” he snarled.
Sherlock stared. He opened his mouth and then closed it. Twice.
Then he ran out of the cottage and into the autumn night.
The tall, thick hedge blocked Sherlock’s view of the ocean, but he could still hear the waves.
He would throw himself in the waters. The only way to kill the parasite was to kill the host. He’d violated John’s trust, the trust they’d built moment by moment for months. He’d broken his own code and done what until now he’d always considered impossible, but now realised, much too late, was only highly improbable: he abandoned all rational, logical thought and had behaved like an ordinary, brutish Alpha.
Blinded by heat pheromones. Consumed with jealousy at the sight of another Alpha’s teeth marks on his Omega. Fuelled by pride and a feral desire to claim his Omega, once and for all.
Sherlock listened. The tide was receding. It would wash his body out to sea. One thought stopped his descent to the shore: if he died, here, now, John would be left in heat, alone.And as ordinary and brutish as Sherlock was, he would not compound one violation with another.
Sherlock stomped back into the cottage and, upon finding a sheet, ripped it into strips. Then he took a straight chair and sat it in the middle of the sitting room. He called John’s name, then gagged himself and bound his feet by the ankles to the chair. The bonds on his wrists were not as tight as he would’ve wished, but soon John appeared in the doorway.
“Sherlock?”
Then Sherlock closed his eyes and offered himself, a cock for use. The Alpha chained, if only symbolically.
The heat lasted six hours.
John removed Sherlock’s gag. Then he wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s neck and whispered into his ear,
“When I refused to bond with him, the Alpha tied me up and bit me, everywhere but the bond site. I was a grown man. I should have fought him. I did fight him, but not hard enough. The heat, and the fear, made me weak. Afterwards, I pushed the memories to the back of my mind and ignored the signals from my body. Two of the bites became infected, and that infection, left untreated, resulted in my sterility. The army seemed like the ideal fit for more than one reason.”
“There are hundreds of strains of bacteria in the human mouth, John.”
John smiled. The response was so very Sherlock and so very un-Alpha. He freed Sherlock’s wrists, saying
“And that’s why I don’t want to bond-bite, Sherlock.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Sherlock was an idiot. How had he not heard the inflection in John’s voice?
And that’s why I don’t want to bond-bite, Sherlock.
It was a puzzle. He needed to think.
“Are you willing to return to Baker Street with me?” asked Sherlock.
John nodded.
Sherlock relaxed. “Good. Shower first.”
Sherlock thought. And thought. And as always, thinking kept his self-loathing and most self-destructive impulses at bay.
When they were finally on the train, with their return journey well underway, he posed the question.
“John, what about bonding without biting?”
John frowned. “You can’t re-wire my biology, Sherlock. Or yours, for that matter. The Alpha bond-bite isn’t as necessary as the Omega, but the mechanics are the same. A tiny gland, below the skin,” John’s hand went to his left shoulder ridge, “punctured during a knotting.”
“Mechanics aside, do you want to bond with me, John?”
Sherlock—and the Alpha—held their collective breath.
Did John want to bond with Sherlock? Did he want to tie himself irrevocably to this man for the rest of his life?
John thought and thought. He thought of Sherlock’s arrogance and his petulance; of his experiments and his indoor pistol practice and his complete disregard for domestic safety. John thought of his brilliance; of the cases and the deductions; of the chases and the show-downs. He thought of his heats and the patience and tenderness Sherlock had shown in the face of his fears.
Then he thought of the moment when Sherlock had fled the bedroom and how he, John, had followed him, knowing that he would spend his very life to ensure that Sherlock did not take his own.
And finally, finally, John agreed with the Omega.
“Yes.”
“Bite, John.”
“What?”
John woke and bit and mumbled “That bread is rancid, Sherlock” and went back to sleep.
When John padded downstairs some hours later, Sherlock was sitting, humming, fidgeting in his armchair.
“I figured it out, John.”
“What?”
“How to simulate a bond-bite.”
“In a month? How?”
“Tattoo, well, the same mechanism, same tools. Saliva instead of ink, but the same marks, gland punctured, and voila!”
John blinked. “You want to tattoo me, during a heat, with your saliva?!”
Sherlock shook his head. “First, I want you to tattoo me during a heat with your saliva and, when it works, then…” Sherlock gave a flourish of his hand.
“I don’t know the first thing about tattoos, Sherlock.”
“Consider it a medical procedure, one you have two months to study. Here, I made a mould of your teeth. That’s the pattern I’d like you to use.”
“You’re mad.”
“But?”
John grinned. “I’m in.”
A few weeks later, John returned home one evening to find Sherlock in his dressing gown, lounging on the sofa, with tattoo apparatus and test tubes and notebooks all about him.
Not a very unusual scene of late, but it became unusual when Sherlock drew one side of the dressing gown aside to reveal his nude form. Then he looked up with bedroom eyes and asked in a low rumble,
“Dress rehearsal?”
John smiled and replied, “Or to be more precise, un-dress rehearsal.”
Sherlock snorted. “Quite.”
The cottage was dark.
“Oh, wonderful,” said John. “Three months’ preparation for nothing. Winter storm’s knocked out the electricity.”
Sherlock lit a match. “The reason for driving, John, rather than taking the train.”
“The equipment?”
“And a generator.”
The match went out.
“Well, I’ve three boxes of candles. Might actually be romantic.”
The knot formed.
“This is it, Sherlock.”
“Do it.”
They were on the floor.
Their bodies were a tangled mass of limbs, their skin plastered to each other’s with sweat, their joined forms awash in candlelight.
John wiped the spot on Sherlock’s neck for the third time and pressed the needle to his skin.
JOHN!
“Oh, God, Sherlock! I can hear you. Inside me. I’m here.”
It worked! I’m your Alpha!
“Yes, yes, you are, my love. My Alpha.”
Sherlock felt John’s lips brush his temple as the last dribbles of seed left his cock. But then John's milking continued. And grew stronger.
Perhaps…
“Come, my beautiful, brilliant, wholly unconventional Alpha,” said John. “Make me your Omega.”
The Alpha roared.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: Explicit
Length: 5000
Content Warnings: Omegaverse; Alpha!Sherlock/Omega!John; heat sex; knotting; bonding; fisting; references to assault; references to psychological trauma; references to suicide. Hurt/comfort.
Summary: John doesn’t want a bond-bite.
Sherlock hated being an Alpha.
It was easy enough to deduce the decrease in John’s army pension from the parade of expressions that crossed his face as he opened the official-looking envelope (curiosity); read the contents of the letter thrice (disbelief); returned the letter to its envelope and dropped it on the kitchen table (disgust); and stood, staring at the wall whilst his hand hovered unconsciously over the wallet-shaped bulge in his trouser pocket (anger, fear).
Sherlock’s eyes made all the necessary observations. His mind made all the necessary connections. He did not need to sense a distressed Omega through the ether. It was such a weak, subjective form of knowledge, not based on data or anything remotely empirical. Just a feeling.
Even more, Sherlock did not want to acknowledge in himself the involuntary Alpha response to John’s distress. He’d already dismissed two possibilities. Any overt offer of money would be be refused. Any covert act—say, hacking into and altering a military database—with the same aim would be viewed with suspicion and, if truth discovered, might be considered worse insult.
So he would continue to peruse the Journal of Forensic Sciences and if John asked for his assistance, he would give it.
As a friend. Colleague. Whatever.
Sherlock’s wait was short. In less than twenty minutes, John was leaning forward and asking a most unanticipated question,
“Sherlock, have you ever shared a heat with an Omega?”
John hated being an Omega and no more so than today. The army was eliminating the free provision of heat supplements to Omegas not in active service. From a bureaucratic viewpoint, it probably made sense: an easy way to trim costs as supplements were expensive and there were so few Omegas in the army due to the requirement of sterility. But it meant disaster for John. He would have to purchase the supplements himself or find an Alpha to share his heats.
The latter option meant a heat centre.
No!
He pushed foul memories to the dark recesses of his mind.
He would just have to find extra work, a lot of extra work, in fact. He sighed.
He was in the middle of some crude wage calculations when his eyes finally lit upon Sherlock, lounging in his armchair, idly flipping the pages of a journal.
Sherlock was an Alpha.
They had known each other for such a brief period of time, it was difficult to say if, apart from the massive intellect and myriad of eccentricities, Sherlock was like any other Alpha or if he was unconventional in all aspects of his person.
John considered his alternatives. Then he sat down in his armchair and leaned forward.
“I don’t want a bond-bite. In fact, I insist on no bond-bite, and if you think that you might not be capable of restraining yourself, then this conversation is over. The question of pregnancy is moot. The army made sure I was sterile before they allowed me to serve.”
Sherlock relaxed. It seemed that in a few statements, John had slain his initial concerns.
“My knowledge of Omega heat is theoretical, John, but we pass day after day living and working together, surely that must speak to my restraint.”
John’s smile was tense. “Heat is different.”
“I am different or hadn’t you noticed?” Sherlock instantly wondered why he was insisting. Did he want to share John’s heat? No, he merely wanted to help a friend.
Colleague. Whatever.
But whatever might be threatened by this new development. “We could travel elsewhere, somewhere outside London, to pass the heat,” Sherlock suggested.
“Good idea. It’s only once every three months. My last heat was forty-eight hours, though up to a week is possible. A hotel room?”
“There’s a cottage in Sussex that I’ve been eyeing as a retirement investment. Secluded. Private.”
Fear. Sherlock read it in John’s widening eyes and his stiffening posture, but it was the Alpha in him that responded in a low voice. “Or if you’d feel more comfortable, here.”
“No, no.” John spoke as if to himself. “Your suggestion makes more sense. Let’s keep our day-to-day life separate. So, we have a deal?”
“Deal.”
They shook hands.
John buried his face in the bedding. All thought was reduced to three words.
Don’t bite me. Don’t bite me. Don’t bite me.
“I presented very late in life. For my first heat, I engaged an Alpha from a heat centre,” said John, keeping his eyes fixed on the changing landscape beyond the train window. “He signed the routine contract, which included a no bond-biting provision, but during the heat he became overwhelmed by pheromones. Resisting him was unpleasant. I joined the army soon after.”
Sherlock nodded. He deduced as much when he first spotted a scar on John’s back, one that pre-dated the vestiges of his war injuries.
Teeth marks.
They were near, but not on, John’s bond site.
At the time, Sherlock had quickly quashed his flare of irrational Alpha anger and made a note to investigate if John ever mentioned the centre by name. Then he had returned to the task at hand.
He had been gentle, well as gentle as a dozen or so knottings in rapid sequence could be, but upon realising that his attempts at soothing John were having absolutely no effect on the thick miasma of fear that enveloped them, had shifted his focus to making the experience as brief as possible.
In that, he’d had some measure of success, for in thirty-six hours after their arrival in Sussex, they were on their return journey to London.
“Thank you,” said John. “I appreciate your patience and…”
“Restraint?”
John smiled and nodded.
“Would you like to repeat the experience?” Sherlock held his breath.
“Yes, if you’re amenable. I can’t imagine if was very enjoyable for you.”
Sherlock shrugged. “I am amenable.” He was carefully to maintain a cool façade, but inside, the Alpha preened and guarded the moment like hoarded treasure.
It would challenging to help John overcome his fear, just as Sherlock had helped him overcome his phantom war injuries. It would be interesting from a psychological point of view. It might even be beneficial—greater understanding, greater trust—in terms of the Work. He was helping a friend. Colleague. Whatever.
All very logical. Reasonable. Rationale.
“Massage?! Now?!” John looked down at Sherlock’s leaking cock and felt his own secretions dripping down his inner thighs.
“It hardly matters at other times, does it? If you were more familiar with my touch, then perhaps your anxiety would be lessened during the actual coupling.”
Sherlock’s voice sounded clinical and oddly reassuring. John crawled onto the bed.
“On your back.”
Sherlock’s hands moved slowly, methodically, up John’s legs, kneading and rubbing from toes to thighs. He worked silently. And he never, not once, took his eyes off John’s. Not when he hooked John’s legs over his shoulders, not when he sank his cock in John, not when he pumped until the knot formed, not when he ejaculated in John, not when the knot loosened and he pulled out of John.
When the first round was over, Sherlock collapsed on the bed beside John, leaving a space between their parallel bodies.
John rolled on his side and smiled.
Every coupling had followed the same sequence, including the same position of John on his back, beneath Sherlock. It was not the most comfortable arrangement physically, especially with the knot, but it afforded John the best view of Sherlock. Sherlock’s theory was that if John could see, and anticipate, Sherlock’s movements then he would be less afraid.
And it had been effective.
John’s fears were fading. The Alpha sensed—there was that hideous word again!—it, just as he sensed that the heat was coming to an end.
As Sherlock entered John for the last time, John did something extraordinary.
He closed his eyes.
He closed his eyes and lifted his hips and squeezed tightly around Sherlock’s cock. And not just one squeeze, a rhythm of tightening and releasing.
John was milking Sherlock’s cock.
Sherlock’s mouth fell open as his pleasure intensified exponentially. The knot formed, and his pleasure continued until he had shot stream after stream of hot seed into John.
When John finally opened his eyes, there was a mischievous light in his eyes and his lips were curled in a teasing smirk.
Sherlock huffed in mock indignation and wiped the sweat from his brow.
John had done the impossible.
No, John had done what, until today, he’d though impossible, but was, in reality, only highly improbable.
He’d surprised Sherlock Holmes. And he’d given an Alpha his first true taste of an Omega.
He tried not to smirk, and failed.
He and Sherlock had been exchanging silent, surreptitious glances since the train had left the station.
Finally, John said, “Thank you. I appreciate your patience and…”
“Restraint?”
John nodded.
“Would you like to repeat the experience?” Sherlock was holding John’s gaze just as he had for the duration of the heat. Gently. Firmly.
“Yes, if you’re amenable.”
“I am amenable,” said Sherlock.
John watched Sherlock’s mouth as he pronounced the words—that perfect Cupid’s bow, that plump bottom lip—and thought how nice it was to not once think of the teeth that lay behind them.
Three months passed, full of clients and crime scenes; cups of tea and bits of toast. There were sibling crises, of a case of so-called national security and a return trip to rehab. And rows, the fiercest being about the toaster oven, which had to be replaced twice.
To the casual observer, nothing had changed at 221B, but Sherlock Holmes was the very opposite of a casual observer.
He had noted, for example, that John’s eyes lingered on him for 1.5 second longer than average when he wore the aubergine shirt—the one he was wearing at this very moment as the train pulled out of the state—and as a result he increased the frequency of the garment’s rotation in his wardrobe. Nothing dramatic, of course, nothing that would catch John’s notice, a mere one additional wear a fortnight.
The Alpha, of course, had secretly rejoiced in the extra three seconds of attention a month received.
On one rare occasion when Sherlock had anticipated climbing about in dank shipping containers, he had worn jeans. Later, much later actually as he and John had been trapped in one of said containers for a few hours, Sherlock had noted that John spent an extra eight minutes in the shower. A true scientist, Sherlock was loathe to conflate correlation with causation.
The Alpha, however, revelled in the thought of John masturbating to his denim-clad arse.
Was this heat going to be different? Perhaps. The Alpha certainly sensed it. And perhaps the Omega had, too, as John had arranged for a large hamper of provisions to be delivered to the cottage. That was novel and suggested more than the single day experience that they had shared thus far.
Sherlock was considering what amendments to make to his original heat strategy when John’s words cut through his thoughts.
“Thank goodness the pheromones sort of wipe the memory banks clean at the end, heat makes one speak and act so curiously.”
It was a lie, or to be more precise a myth, one much favoured by betas.
John was staring out the window when Sherlock replied dryly, “Yes, what a wonder of biology, that!”
Yes, this heat was going to be different.
The Alpha howled.
John wanted Sherlock. And if he could wait long enough for the suitcases to hit the floor and the curtains to flutter closed, he would have him.
John looked at Sherlock. No, John’s eyes travelled up and down Sherlock, devouring him.
Sherlock quickly found the lubricant that he had packed. Then it seemed the most natural thing in the world to open his trousers and take his own cock in hand and show John just how much he wanted him.
Very soon they had both settled in armchairs, which were still covered in drape. They sat opposite each other, much as they did at the Baker Street flat. Sherlock was still pumping his cock, a little more slowly and unevenly now as his attention was fixed on John, who was naked from the waist down, legs splayed, teasing his own hole with two lubed fingers.
Sherlock watched as one finger, then a second, pushed inside. Then he grunted and thrust up into his own fist. John licked his lips, and Sherlock thought how magnificent it would be to see those lips, that tongue, wrapped around—
The Alpha sensed the instant that the heat had begun.
And so did the Omega, for without preamble, John walked the three steps that separated them and climbed into Sherlock’s lap and sank down on his cock.
Sherlock spied a second set of teeth marks above John’s right nipple. He deleted them. Anger would not serve him now.
He thrust up into John, jostling him.
Oh, the milking had already begun, that sweet caress hidden between them. It was the stuff of lurid fantasy, if Sherlock ever allowed himself such indulgence, which he hadn’t, for three months.
The knot formed, and Sherlock came.
As the knot slacked, however, the milking resumed. Sherlock raised an eyebrow at John’s smile. Then John’s lips parted.
“Sherlock.”
It was the first word that either had uttered during a heat, and it dripped with lust, with want.
The Alpha would not be denied.
Sherlock lifted John even as his knotted cock was still spitting seed deep inside him, and they moved as one, with John’s legs wrapped tight around Sherlock waist, to the bed.
Sherlock lay John gently on his back. Then he began to thrust and chant the only word that mattered.
“John. John. John.”
John closed his eyes.
They were side by side, facing each other, when John sensed the second round approaching.
The Omega would not be denied.
He rolled away from Sherlock and wiggled backwards until his damp arse brushed against Sherlock’s hardening cock.
Then Sherlock’s hand was under John’s thigh, raising it, and then the head of Sherlock’s cock was teasing John’s hole, merely tracing his rim.
Suddenly John pushed back, impaling himself on the cock until it was fully sheathed. He heard Sherlock exhale.
“Fuck!”
Well, that was novel. And hilarious. John giggled.
The knot formed.
Sherlock took John’s hand in his and brought it to his mouth, and for the remainder of the second knotting, he sucked John’s fingers.
To show me that he won’t bite.
John blinked back tears and called Sherlock’s name, hoping that the word conveyed even half of the tenderness that he felt in that moment for the most unconventional Alpha he had ever known.
John blinked back tears.
Sherlock quickly brought John’s hands to the base of his cock. The warm, wet heat of John’s mouth was too inviting, especially when it had been prefaced by John kneeling between Sherlock’s legs and greedily suckling each of Sherlock’s sacs in turn.
Sherlock might be an unconventional Alpha, but the dimensions of his cock were not, and they far exceeded those of John’s oral cavity.
But even half his cock in John’s mouth, with the remainder being squeezed and stroked by John’s hands, was exquisite.
Without the knot, Sherlock’s load was comparatively small, but John drank it down like a honeyed elixir. Then he began to lick Sherlock’s testicles anew.
How did John know of his preference? How did he know that on the rare occasion when Sherlock masturbated, one hand was always lower, fondling, while the other stroked? Had he observed something during a heat? At the flat? Or had the Omega simple sensed it?
Sherlock had no time to ponder further questions as his cock was rising again, and this time, John’s mouth would not suffice.
After the fourth coupling, John led Sherlock back to the sitting room. They fed each other fruit and bits of cheese and bread. John pressed a bottle of water to Sherlock’s lips over and over and only when Sherlock had drained it, did he offer him sips of wine.
After a single glass, Sherlock was dozing on the sofa.
So uncommon was the experience of being near Sherlock as he slept that John, despite his own fatigue, had curled on the floor against an armchair opposite him and simply watched.
Sherlock was beautiful. His skin, his lanky limbs and long fingers. Sinewy muscles attached to gangly bones. Dark eyelashes, sharp cheekbones, dusky nipples, wiry pubic hair.
And, of course, the behemoth cock.
Which also, miraculously, appeared to be sleeping.
Then John realised that he did not want the cock to be sleeping. He wanted it inside him, filling him. Now.
No! Sherlock needed to rest. John turned away and averted his gaze from Sherlock’s nude form. The Omega could wait.
Now! The Omega would not wait. He would rouse the Alpha cock with his mouth and hands and pleasure himself while the Alpha slept.
Ridiculous! No! John’s fingers went to his own hole. These would have to suffice.
They would not suffice!
John gritted his teeth.
“John.”
John looked over his shoulder and a wave of relief washed over him.
Sherlock was gesturing to his hard cock. “Come.”
John flew to the sofa.
Then he was riding Sherlock, letting those long-fingered hands on his hips guide his rocking and bouncing.
John’s pleasure was near perfect, and he was thoroughly enjoying the last of the hot streaks painting the inside of his body when Sherlock whispered,
“Bend closer.”
John brought his upper body towards Sherlock’s and Sherlock lifted his head until he could take John’s nipple in his mouth and suck.
John bucked hard into Sherlock, calling his name.
Sherlock must have deduced it, probably the night after the shipping container case. Something must’ve told Sherlock that John had been teasing his own nipples as he wanked furiously to the image of Sherlock in jeans. What exactly, John didn’t know and would probably never know, but right now, he didn’t care.
Sherlock was bathing his right nipple with a soft, warm tongue. The left was already soaked and pebbled from Sherlock’s attentions.
John reached for his own cock. Sherlock batted his hand away.
“Sherlock!”
John’s cock was delicious. And the noises—of both surprise and pleasure—that Sherlock’s bobbing and sucking elicited were equally delicious.
Two of Sherlock’s fingers were pumping in and out of John’s cunt as he lavished John’s cock.
“More,” John pleaded, holding Sherlock’s wrist.
John was loose, of course, how could he not be, so Sherlock added a third.
The pleading continued. And continued.
“John?”
Sherlock had pulled off John’s cock to look into his eyes.
“Please,” John insisted. “More.”
Sherlock found the lubricant where it had untouched since their first coupling.
Then after careful preparation, he pushed his whole hand inside John. When only he was satisfied that John was only stretched and not torn, did his bend his head and suck John’s cock to climax.
John woke to his name. Without opening his eyes, he spread his legs and welcomed Sherlock’s cock inside him and was rocked back to sleep by Sherlock’s thrusting.
John woke again to his name. He spread his legs, but this time it was not a hungry Alpha cock that entered him.
Something smaller, wetter, softer.
An Alpha tongue.
John’s eyes fluttered open. He was on laying prone on the bed, with his arse raised.
The Omega immediately sensed the shift and pulled away from Sherlock’s mouth.
John sat up and turned and rolled onto his back. Then he met Sherlock’s eyes and smiled.
After the final knotting, John had made to rise from the bed, but Sherlock laid a hand on his.
Sherlock had the lubricant in hand. He watched John watch him coat one of his own fingers. And tease his own hole.
Then he pressed the bottle of lubricant into John’s hand.
John’s eyes widened.
Sherlock nodded. “For comparison’s sake, John. Research.” He tried for a casual shrug, but knew that the strain in his voice had given him away.
Then he laid down on his stomach and gave himself over to John.
It took a long time to fuck Sherlock. Compared to the heat, it was a painstakingly slow process with lots of pauses to rub hands lightly up and down Sherlock’s back and pepper kisses along his spine. But John persisted and by the time he had mounted Sherlock and spent his own seed inside him, he’d made a discovery.
John waited until they were both showered and dressed and had set the cottage to rights before he confessed, “I don’t hate being an Omega anymore.”
Sherlock stared and blinked and swallowed. Then he leaned down and kissed John’s lips.
And they stood like that, in the doorway of the cottage, kissing, holding each other, until they were forced to take a later train to London.
It was dark beyond the train window when John said, “Thank you. I appreciate your patience and…”
“Restraint?”
Their eyes met, and then they turned their heads and burst into laughter.
John nodded, wiping his eyes with his jumper sleeve. Sherlock offered him a handkerchief, which he took. “Remarkable, that restraint of yours,” he added, chuckling.
“Would you like to repeat the experience?” asked Sherlock with a snort.
“Oh, God, yes. If you’re amenable.”
“I’m amenable.”
John shifted in his seat and winced. He was already sore and might be for days.
He glanced over at Sherlock and caught a fleeting twitch of lips.
“Don’t start behaving like an ordinary Alpha brute now!” he teased.
“Nonsense” was Sherlock’s reply.
Sherlock remembered that reply two months later. After the words “If you had killed John, you would not have got out of this room alive!” had left his lips.
A brutish, ordinary Alpha thing to say, but at the time, Sherlock had meant every word. It had been a counterfeiting case, and a somewhat ludicrous one at that, but it had taken all of Sherlock’s restraint to resist filleting Evans and roasting him on coals for the ‘mere scratch’ his weapon had inflicted on John.
John had healed.
Sherlock had not.
His rationale Self and his Alpha were at war constantly, even as the train travelled from London to Sussex.
If John and he were bonded…but John didn’t want to bond. That was more than nine months ago. A lot had changed.
Sherlock shook his head. The Alpha continued to seethe.
Why didn’t John want to bond with him? Did he think Sherlock couldn’t protect him? Did he think that Sherlock couldn’t provide for him?
Nonsense. John was a friend. Colleague. Whatever. He didn’t need Sherlock’s protection, and he certainly didn’t need his provision.
Of course he did. John was his Omega.
No! Not his Omega.
Yes! John was Sherlock’s Omega just as Sherlock was John’s Alpha.
The battle raged on.
John hoped that the heat would help to mend the rift between him and Sherlock. It had nothing to do with John’s superficial injury, which had healed quickly and without scarring, and everything to do with the conflict he saw playing out inside Sherlock.
Sherlock would erupt in sudden outbursts of over-protectiveness and jealousy. Then his face would fall and he would recoil from John, brooding silently. John could not reach him during these dark moods, which sometimes lasted for days.
The first coupling had been as their last, with John on his back, beneath Sherlock. Then John had turned and wriggled his bottom against Sherlock’s cock.
Instantly, John sensed the shift.
Sherlock gripped him by the neck and pushed him face-first into the mattress. He had mounted John and began thrusting roughly. Then he had jerked John up by the hair until their bodies met.
Then he had licked John’s neck. The left side of his neck.
John tensed, but Sherlock continued, thrusting, licking.
When John felt the pinching pressure of teeth, he screamed.
“NO!”
Sherlock opened his eyes.
John was trembling. He wrenched away from Sherlock and scurried to the far side of the room.
“DON’T BITE ME!” he snarled.
Sherlock stared. He opened his mouth and then closed it. Twice.
Then he ran out of the cottage and into the autumn night.
The tall, thick hedge blocked Sherlock’s view of the ocean, but he could still hear the waves.
He would throw himself in the waters. The only way to kill the parasite was to kill the host. He’d violated John’s trust, the trust they’d built moment by moment for months. He’d broken his own code and done what until now he’d always considered impossible, but now realised, much too late, was only highly improbable: he abandoned all rational, logical thought and had behaved like an ordinary, brutish Alpha.
Blinded by heat pheromones. Consumed with jealousy at the sight of another Alpha’s teeth marks on his Omega. Fuelled by pride and a feral desire to claim his Omega, once and for all.
Sherlock listened. The tide was receding. It would wash his body out to sea. One thought stopped his descent to the shore: if he died, here, now, John would be left in heat, alone.And as ordinary and brutish as Sherlock was, he would not compound one violation with another.
Sherlock stomped back into the cottage and, upon finding a sheet, ripped it into strips. Then he took a straight chair and sat it in the middle of the sitting room. He called John’s name, then gagged himself and bound his feet by the ankles to the chair. The bonds on his wrists were not as tight as he would’ve wished, but soon John appeared in the doorway.
“Sherlock?”
Then Sherlock closed his eyes and offered himself, a cock for use. The Alpha chained, if only symbolically.
The heat lasted six hours.
John removed Sherlock’s gag. Then he wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s neck and whispered into his ear,
“When I refused to bond with him, the Alpha tied me up and bit me, everywhere but the bond site. I was a grown man. I should have fought him. I did fight him, but not hard enough. The heat, and the fear, made me weak. Afterwards, I pushed the memories to the back of my mind and ignored the signals from my body. Two of the bites became infected, and that infection, left untreated, resulted in my sterility. The army seemed like the ideal fit for more than one reason.”
“There are hundreds of strains of bacteria in the human mouth, John.”
John smiled. The response was so very Sherlock and so very un-Alpha. He freed Sherlock’s wrists, saying
“And that’s why I don’t want to bond-bite, Sherlock.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Sherlock was an idiot. How had he not heard the inflection in John’s voice?
And that’s why I don’t want to bond-bite, Sherlock.
It was a puzzle. He needed to think.
“Are you willing to return to Baker Street with me?” asked Sherlock.
John nodded.
Sherlock relaxed. “Good. Shower first.”
Sherlock thought. And thought. And as always, thinking kept his self-loathing and most self-destructive impulses at bay.
When they were finally on the train, with their return journey well underway, he posed the question.
“John, what about bonding without biting?”
John frowned. “You can’t re-wire my biology, Sherlock. Or yours, for that matter. The Alpha bond-bite isn’t as necessary as the Omega, but the mechanics are the same. A tiny gland, below the skin,” John’s hand went to his left shoulder ridge, “punctured during a knotting.”
“Mechanics aside, do you want to bond with me, John?”
Sherlock—and the Alpha—held their collective breath.
Did John want to bond with Sherlock? Did he want to tie himself irrevocably to this man for the rest of his life?
John thought and thought. He thought of Sherlock’s arrogance and his petulance; of his experiments and his indoor pistol practice and his complete disregard for domestic safety. John thought of his brilliance; of the cases and the deductions; of the chases and the show-downs. He thought of his heats and the patience and tenderness Sherlock had shown in the face of his fears.
Then he thought of the moment when Sherlock had fled the bedroom and how he, John, had followed him, knowing that he would spend his very life to ensure that Sherlock did not take his own.
And finally, finally, John agreed with the Omega.
“Yes.”
“Bite, John.”
“What?”
John woke and bit and mumbled “That bread is rancid, Sherlock” and went back to sleep.
When John padded downstairs some hours later, Sherlock was sitting, humming, fidgeting in his armchair.
“I figured it out, John.”
“What?”
“How to simulate a bond-bite.”
“In a month? How?”
“Tattoo, well, the same mechanism, same tools. Saliva instead of ink, but the same marks, gland punctured, and voila!”
John blinked. “You want to tattoo me, during a heat, with your saliva?!”
Sherlock shook his head. “First, I want you to tattoo me during a heat with your saliva and, when it works, then…” Sherlock gave a flourish of his hand.
“I don’t know the first thing about tattoos, Sherlock.”
“Consider it a medical procedure, one you have two months to study. Here, I made a mould of your teeth. That’s the pattern I’d like you to use.”
“You’re mad.”
“But?”
John grinned. “I’m in.”
A few weeks later, John returned home one evening to find Sherlock in his dressing gown, lounging on the sofa, with tattoo apparatus and test tubes and notebooks all about him.
Not a very unusual scene of late, but it became unusual when Sherlock drew one side of the dressing gown aside to reveal his nude form. Then he looked up with bedroom eyes and asked in a low rumble,
“Dress rehearsal?”
John smiled and replied, “Or to be more precise, un-dress rehearsal.”
Sherlock snorted. “Quite.”
The cottage was dark.
“Oh, wonderful,” said John. “Three months’ preparation for nothing. Winter storm’s knocked out the electricity.”
Sherlock lit a match. “The reason for driving, John, rather than taking the train.”
“The equipment?”
“And a generator.”
The match went out.
“Well, I’ve three boxes of candles. Might actually be romantic.”
The knot formed.
“This is it, Sherlock.”
“Do it.”
They were on the floor.
Their bodies were a tangled mass of limbs, their skin plastered to each other’s with sweat, their joined forms awash in candlelight.
John wiped the spot on Sherlock’s neck for the third time and pressed the needle to his skin.
JOHN!
“Oh, God, Sherlock! I can hear you. Inside me. I’m here.”
It worked! I’m your Alpha!
“Yes, yes, you are, my love. My Alpha.”
Sherlock felt John’s lips brush his temple as the last dribbles of seed left his cock. But then John's milking continued. And grew stronger.
Perhaps…
“Come, my beautiful, brilliant, wholly unconventional Alpha,” said John. “Make me your Omega.”
The Alpha roared.
About
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fan_flashworks is an all-fandoms multi-media flashworks community. We post a themed challenge every ten days or so; you make any kind of fanwork in response to the challenge and post it here. More detailed guidelines are here.The community on Livejournal:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
fan_flashworks Designed by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chasethestars
chasethestars