Chapter Text
John was not offended that Sherlock gave him the "let's be friends" speech about three hours into their acquaintance. Hell, the man was bloody gorgeous, he was probably fending off admirers with a stick, and John wasn't such a prize if it came to that. So he and Sherlock were just flatmates, and then they were friends, and that was plenty dangerous and brilliant and exhilarating enough, thanks.
But at the start of April there were the five pips, and the swimming pool, and Moriarty sneering Burn the heart out of you, and Sherlock frantically ripping the Semtex off of John and gasping "Are you all right?" like he wouldn't have enough air to breathe if John didn't put it there. And then there was the way Sherlock kissed him, after the explosion, after John found him buried under a pile of wrecked changing stalls and heaved them off with mainly adrenaline-fueled strength, after he leaned down with his ear next to Sherlock's mouth to see if he was still breathing. That was fairly suggestive.
There was no courting as such. But there were Significant Looks, and then there was more kissing, and there were Pointed Remarks, and then there was more kissing, and eventually after several eternities that were probably technically only days, John was stretched out on the sitting room sofa with Sherlock draped all over him. John was fairly certain that this time they would advance beyond the impassioned groping phase to the groping naked phase. In fact, from the way that Sherlock was sucking on his neck and nudging his thigh against John's hardening erection, John was even hopeful that they might end the night at the getting off phase.
"Want you," Sherlock murmured against John's throat, and John hummed assent and stroked his hands up Sherlock's sides. Oh yes.
But then Sherlock shivered, drew a deep breath, and suddenly pulled away from John. His eyes were wide, not hooded with arousal, and he looked almost frightened. "I can't," he said simply. He stood up and backed several steps away.
John sat up, frowning. "Can't what?" He tried to struggle out of his arousal to review the last few minutes; what had he done to spook Sherlock? He couldn't find anything immediately obvious.
"I-" Sherlock carded his hands through his hair. "I need to think." He strode back through the kitchen and John heard the door to his room slam.
John lay on the sofa a long time before he went up to bed, letting his erection fully subside and thinking about all the possible reasons that could have gone wrong. Sherlock was scared of commitment. He was afraid of ruining their friendship. He had been conducting some kind of experiment on John and didn't want to admit it. He'd had a traumatic sexual experience before. He just didn't like sex. John finally managed to fall asleep sometime after 1 am, without having figured it out.
When he woke up in the morning, he forced himself to go down and face Sherlock before he could wake up enough to chicken out, but Sherlock wasn't in the flat. He didn't come home all day, which wasn't unusual, but given what had happened the previous night John felt compelled to text asking if he was okay. He got an immediate one-word reply: "Thinking." But that was all he heard or saw of Sherlock until nine pm, when he looked up from the journal he was trying to read and saw Sherlock perched on the back of the green armchair.
"Jesus Christ!" John yelped. "Could you make some noise when you walk?"
"I'm sorry about last night," Sherlock said, and John immediately forgot his annoyance.
"You don't have to be sorry," John said.
"Only what we were about to- that's not what I wanted," Sherlock said.
John sucked in a breath of air. He knew it. Damn it. "That's...fine," he said. "We don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with. I still- care about you. That doesn't change, right?"
Sherlock looked startled, then confused. "I-" He stopped.
"What do you want, Sherlock?" John said, trying to sound gentle and nonthreatening. "Just tell me."
"I want your blood," Sherlock blurted, and then put one hand over his mouth, as if he was shocked by his own words.
John blinked. He had been expecting Sherlock to say that he was asexual, or that he didn't want a relationship with John at all. The "married to my work" speech again, maybe, if John had really botched things badly enough last night. But this was just...bizarre. "Okay," he said, almost automatically. He counted to ten, slowly, in his head. Then he counted back down to one. "Okay," he said again. Blood. Right. He could work with that...somehow. "You have a kink," he asked cautiously. "You like bloodplay?"
Sherlock was shaking his head. "I don't know how to explain it," he muttered. "Usually by the time I try, I've already bitten the person, and-" Sherlock stopped and looked closer at John, probably noticing the way his brow was drawing into worried creases. "I didn't!" he said, almost frantically. "I didn't bite you before I tried to explain, John, I didn't! I knew you would be angry if I did."
"Well spotted," John said. "Yes, if you had suddenly bitten me while we were snogging, I am certain that I would have been very, very angry."
Sherlock looked vindicated at this. "But it's harder to make you understand this way," he said, as if that made this whole scene any more sensible or less fucking weird. He suddenly slid down onto the seat of the armchair and flicked on the desk lamp next to him. He tilted it so that the light hit his face. "I want to show you something." He beckoned John over.
"All right." John set down his journal and walked over to Sherlock, standing just in front of his knees. Sherlock's head came up to John's chest, and his face looked oddly sallow in the light of the desk lamp. He opened his mouth and tilted his head back so that John could see inside. "You want me to look at your mouth?" John said, confused.
"I want you to observe my mouth," Sherlock said. He gaped said body part open again and used one finger to push his upper lip back, and then John saw what Sherlock was talking about.
John had seen inside a lot of mouths in his career, and he knew that in between the narrow-edged incisors and the blunt premolars were the canines, whose edges met in a sharp triangle just below the line of the incisors. Sherlock's canines extended well below the incisors, slightly overlapping the bottom row of teeth, and they ended not in triangles but in perfect points. In fact- John looked closer, and he saw that all Sherlock's teeth were sharper than normal, although they were shaped approximately the way they should be. John stepped back, frowning, as Sherlock released his lip and raised an eyebrow.
"Vampire fetishism?" John said. This was fairly mind-blowing, as revelations went. Sherlock was- well, not sensible, God no. But logical, even if he lacked for common sense. He was not at all someone John would have predicted indulging in body modification, especially not something this extreme. Sherlock would likely greet the notion of even a tattoo or piercing with honest puzzlement, not seeing the purpose unless it was for some disguise. But here was the evidence. "You had your teeth filed."
Sherlock made a huffy noise, as if John was being deliberately obtuse. "I did not," he said.
John's frown intensified. This was the first time he'd ever known Sherlock to persist in a deception beyond the point when it had been recognized. "Human teeth don't develop that way, Sherlock. Except in some forms of ectodermal dysplasia, and you don't have any other symptoms."
"I'm not human, John," Sherlock said. "I'm something else entirely. I'm Ina."
John wanted to go back to a minute ago, when he thought this was about a weird sexual kink. Apparently that was too normal for John's life, so instead what he got was Sherlock suffering from some kind of massive delusion. "Ina," he said questioningly, stalling and fishing for information at the same time.
"We're another species," Sherlock said quite calmly and matter-of-factly. "Some people say an alien species, but the evidence suggests that we evolved alongside homo sapiens, from a separate branch of the primates. Humanity's vampire legends are mostly inaccurate, but they developed over time as a result of limited interaction with Ina individuals. We do in fact drink blood, although we don't have to kill to get it. We are stronger and faster than humans, and live longer, but we're not omnipotent or immortal." Sherlock's face was absolutely straight while he gave his little speech, and John was so overcome with dismay and anxiety that he had to take a step back and momentarily cover his eyes with one hand to hide it.
"John, please, I'm not going to hurt you," Sherlock said urgently.
Oh Christ, it was definitely a grandiose delusion. Not a new one, he must have had the dental work done some time ago, so maybe Mycroft knew about this? John would have to ask. Maybe there was medication or something Sherlock was supposed to be taking. John tried to calm himself. It didn't have to mean schizophrenia, there were other delusional disorders. Sherlock was perfectly functional- well, mostly functional. But what was he going to do when told he needed treatment? Would he need to be sectioned? John didn't think he could handle that. He took a few more steps back, unconsciously putting distance between himself and his friend, struggling to get his expression under control.
"Damn it, John!" Sherlock said with frustration. "I am serious." The sudden anger made John move his hand and look up, just as Sherlock put the point of the pocket knife into his palm below the middle finger, and dragged it down to the wrist.
John's anxiety was absorbed by a new terror as he dove for Sherlock, snarling, "You stupid, stupid bastard!" He ripped the knife from Sherlock and flung it away, then grabbed Sherlock's hand and looked at the cut. It was straight and neat at least, the knife must have been sharp; not deep enough to hit the bone, but deep enough for sutures, the blood already welling up. With luck he won't have hit the tendons or severed any nerves, but they'll have to go to hospital just the same, and there'd be risk of infection because that was the knife Sherlock used to nail his post to the mantle and God knew where else it had been. John let go of the hand and lunged for the kitchen, where he kept a backup first aid kit under the sink, but he was stopped by Sherlock's good hand, locked around his wrist.
Stopped, absolutely. He jerked hard, but Sherlock's hand didn't move at all. "John," Sherlock said quietly. "Forget the kit, John. Look at my hand again." Sherlock turned the injured hand palm down for a moment and wiped a wide smear of blood onto the knee of his trousers, then flipped the hand back over for John's inspection.
The wound had narrowed. The edges were no longer gaping quite so far apart, and blood was not welling up so fast. He was mistaken, John told himself. He had panicked and looked too fast and thought the cut was worse than it was. But as he watched for five seconds, ten, fifteen, he could see that the wound was actually healing in front of him. Slowly, fractionally, the tissues were knitting back together and the cut was growing thinner and shorter. At forty seconds after John had started watching, Sherlock wiped his palm again, this time on his thigh, and at one minute thirty seconds the cut had resolved itself into a slender, upraised line of scar tissue. Sherlock flexed his fingers and then closed them into a fist, showing John that his range of movement was completely unhindered.
"Oh my god," John finally said, his voice raspy with shock. "You're not human." Sherlock finally released his arm, and John staggered back to the sofa and dropped onto it. Sherlock flicked the desk lamp off, not renewing his eye contact with John, who thought back over the past few minutes and tried to reevaluate everything Sherlock said with the understanding that it may actually have all been true.
"Okay," John said after some moments. "So, um, I think I'm caught up now." He cleared his throat. "You, uh. You want my blood."
Sherlock pulled his legs up onto the chair and wrapped his arms around them. "I want a- relationship with you. It can be sexual, too, if you like. But we can't try that without- this. I don't think I could control myself, not if we were that close."
John ran a hand through his hair; this was still not making a great deal of sense. "What do you do for- for food? When you're not in a relationship."
"Strangers," Sherlock said flatly. "I bite them, and afterward I tell them to forget me. I secrete a chemical that makes those I bite highly suggestible, and they forget if I tell them to forget."
John swallowed. "Is that how it would be, for me?" he asked.
"No," Sherlock said. "No, no- I would never- I don't want you to forget me, John, that's the whole point."
"Okay then," John said. "Okay." They sat in silence for a moment. John breathed very slowly and deliberately.
"You smell amazing," Sherlock said in a low voice, cutting into his attempt to think. "God- I- your scent is so- receptive. You're lonely, you want me, I can tell. You smell right for me." Sherlock's babbled confession was oddly endearing, John decided. It was nice to be told you were wanted, and Sherlock definitely wasn't wrong about John wanting him. Even now, God help him.
"What happens," John said slowly, "If I agree. If I let you- If I let you."
"If it's only once or twice, nothing," Sherlock said, speaking too fast. "If we keep on after that-" Sherlock's voice died off.
"What, Sherlock. What are you not telling me," John said, flat. He recognized the signs of evasion by now.
"I was getting there," Sherlock snapped, then he paused and took a deep breath, renewing eye contact. "My venom is psychoactive. After several exposures, it instills physical dependency."
"It's addictive," John translated. "Christ."
"There are benefits," Sherlock said, his tones neutral. "Long-term exposure would increase your life span and boost your immune system substantially, helping you resist most disease and heal faster from injuries. Your memory would improve. The addiction- you can walk away at any time. But the withdrawal is...quite painful. Very occasionally fatal." Sherlock looked away. "If you don't want- things can go on as before. We'll never discuss it again. I promise you that I can control myself. I swear." Sherlock was almost pleading, and John realized that he was ready to be rejected; not just as a lover, but as a person. He expected that if John turned him down, he would move out and abandon Sherlock entirely.
"Stop a second," John said. "I just need to think, all right?" So he sat back on the sofa and thought. "You know, a sane person probably would move out after hearing that he lives with an actual vampire," John said finally. "But the thought of moving out and never seeing you again does not appeal. Frankly, it bloody horrifies. What does that mean, do you think?" Sherlock fractionally raises one shoulder, then drops it again. "I think it means that I'm already addicted to you." Sherlock looked up at him, startled. "Come here, you daft bugger," he said.
Sherlock seemed to take less than an instant to cross the room to John and drop to his knees between John's feet. He leaned forward and rested his forehead on John's stomach, and John wrapped his arms around Sherlock's shoulders and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. Yes. There wasn't the same urgency that John had felt last night when he and Sherlock had been headed- or so he thought- to sex. But there was the same sense of presence, of being in the moment, as if John was exactly where he needed to be, doing exactly what he should be doing. Maybe this was a decision that should be given more thought, but John was generally speaking a man who didn't waffle when he had figured out what he wanted. And he definitely knew what he wanted now.
John pushed Sherlock away with a hand on his shoulder, so he could shove his right arm in front of Sherlock, wrist up. "Do it," he challenged.
Sherlock shuddered and closed his eyes, turning his face away. "Don't, John," he said in a low voice. "Don't tempt me, not unless you're sure. I just told you, my self-control-"
"Bite me, I want you to," John said, and Sherlock moved so Goddamn fast that he didn't even see it happen. Sherlock just suddenly had John's wrist in both hands and then in his mouth, oh fuck that stung when his teeth broke the skin. But then John gasped, because it felt incredible; like the tail end of an orgasm, the low, pulsing waves of pleasure ringing outward from the initial crisis. His cock hardened almost instantly in the wash of euphoria and desire, and he unconsciously jerked his hips. His wrist jerked too, not away from Sherlock's mouth but up into it, as if his body was trying to thrust more blood down Sherlock's throat. Somehow the image of Sherlock bowed over his wrist, cheeks hollowing as he sucked, was unbearably intimate. Beautiful. He could hear himself whimpering and moaning, "Yes, yes, Christ Sherlock, yes."
He had no idea how long Sherlock was actually attached to his wrist, but finally he released John and fumbled his belt buckle open. John felt far too euphoric to either help or protest, and Sherlock simply thrust his hand into John's trousers and pants. It only took three firm strokes of Sherlock's hand for John to come, gasping. The orgasm left him shaking and dripping sweat and added a strange, harsh edge to the afterglow caused by Sherlock's bite. "Oh Christ," he said again, as Sherlock removed his hand but made no move to get up. He bent his head and licked off the come that had ended up on his hand, and fuck that was hot enough to make John groan helplessly. He leaned forward and rested his forehead on top of Sherlock's head; one of Sherlock's hands came up to cup the back of his neck, while the other lifted John's wrist to eye level for inspection. John felt Sherlock's tongue begin to gently lave the bite. When he was done with that, Sherlock released him.
"Okay?" Sherlock asked, almost tentative.
"Oh my God," John said breathlessly. "Why didn't you tell me that was going to feel so fucking fantastic?"
"It seemed unfairly suggestive," Sherlock said. "I wanted you to make an unbiased assessment."
John just started laughing, because vampire or not, that was so incredibly Sherlock. "My God I love you," he said.
"And I want you," Sherlock said fiercely, possessively.
"Bit not good," John said lightly, bringing up his hand to play with Sherlock's hair. He would have to sit up in a minute, his shoulder was going to cramp from hunching over like this. But just now, it was nice to be sated and content and be pressed this close together.
"I mean I want you with me," Sherlock clarified. "Forever, if I can manage it."
John hummed his assent, and decided that was close enough to "I love you, too" to be going on with.