Chapter Text
It starts like this:
“Why aren't you angry at me?” Sherlock asks about a week after they’ve returned from Dartmoor, turning around so he can see John's face in the pale light of a winter afternoon.
John shrugs. “Would me being angry at you convince you not to use me as lab rat without my consent in the future?“ He asks, but his voice isn't angry. More....amused. Huh.
Sherlock narrows his eyes. “You like it,” he declares.
John's breathing stops for a moment and then resumes in a rhythm that is so even it must be forced. “I like what?” He asks, his eyes stubbornly fixed on the newspaper he’s reading in his favourite armchair.
“That I consider you mine to experiment on,” Sherlock says with confidence, watching in fascination as John's ears turn red at the tips.
“Um,” John says and finally looks up at Sherlock, who is standing in front of him.
Sherlock can't help but roll his eyes. “Oh, please,” he says with exasperation, “the first week we met, I asked you to come from across the city and send a text for me and you did.”
If possible, John flushes an even deeper red. He is stubbornly looking at an edge of the fireplace now but then he nods and says hoarsely, “Yeah, I did.”
“Hm,” Sherlock says and flops in his own armchair to flip through an autopsy report.
It takes John a bit to realise it but in the days after this exchange, subtle changes begin to creep in between them. There’s a lot less politeness – not that there ever was very much in the first place – to the way Sherlock asks, no, orders John to do things for him. Them. Himself, even. The change is very gradual and John doesn't think anyone but him even notices, which says something about how they’ve been functioning so far. Jesus. Apparently he is the most transparent sub in the history of asexual male/male D/s relationships. (Yes, he has started to do research. Yes, it has turned him on, even though this isn't a sexual thing for Sherlock. Of that he is fairly certain.)
He is still unprepared for the casual way in which Sherlock suddenly drops a collar in his lap one evening as he walks past, completely out of the blue. It is broad, made of supple brown leather and has a buckle that looks for all the world like it's genuine silver. He stares at it as if it might bite and by the time Sherlock has returned from the kitchen to fix him with an intense stare that’s turning his changeable eyes ice-gray, John has only progressed as far as carefully touching the tip of his index finger to it.
As Sherlock attempts to open the front door on a freezing winter afternoon, the collar keeps banging against his wrist, heavy in its small bag. It is, of course, custom made. Of course it is, it has to be. Unique, just like John. The front door finally opens with a protesting squeak, the hinges still adapting to the plummeting temperature. As Sherlock ascends the stairs he is surprised to realise that his breathing is faster and his heartbeat more irregular than this simple exertion warrants.
It seems he is nervous, after all. Ridiculous. This is a symbol, a token, nothing more.
And yet - “Symbols are important, Sherlock,” he can hear Mycroft's mocking tone from across the years, can still see him standing under the Christmas tree in his ridiculous knitted slipover, “they carry emotional weight and they are signifiers for invisible relationships. Do you understand?” Sherlock snorts at the memory, at the ridiculous uproar his six-year old self had caused at the time because he had dared to use one of Mummy's silver rings in an attempt to make silver nitrate. But he has to admit that his meddlesome older brother has a point. Why else would his hands be sweating? He is asking nothing more of John than to make formal the arrangement they are already living by and yet..... and yet.
When he enters the flat, John is sitting on the couch, watching football. He gives Sherlock a brief nod of acknowledgement and then returns his attention to the screen. Sherlock, however, stops in the doorway for a moment to marvel at the fact that John can look so ordinary. As he sits there in his cardigan and slippers, a bottle of cider in his hand, he could be any one of a thousand British blokes watching the telly of an evening. An everyman, that's what he looks like.
Which is, as Sherlock well knows, a blatant lie. He has never met anyone as fascinating as John Watson and few as deadly. John is an entrancing combination of kindness and lethal precision, of danger and domesticity. Most of all, however, John is HIS. John has given himself to Sherlock as freely and easily as one hands over a pound coin in exchange for a packet of sweets.
The thought makes something dark and intense well up inside him, a savage desire to own. To have all that efficient violence, that uncompromising morality and baffling warmth at his fingertips to use as he sees fit.
But then, that is what the collar is all about.
Sherlock takes it out of the bag and then casually walks to the kitchen, dropping the collar into John's lap as he passes him by. He draws himself a glass of water from the tap and then turns around.
John is staring at the collar in fascination – the football game entirely forgotten, Sherlock notices with satisfaction – and, as Sherlock watches, he cautiously brushes the tip of his finger against the leather and looks up.
Sherlock sets aside the water glass that has suddenly become a useless prop and walks back into the room, something hot and dangerous coiling in his belly.
“Sherlock – ” John says, interrupting himself and then seemingly unable to finish whatever he was about to say. He starts again, his wide blue eyes fixed on Sherlock's face in a gratifying manner. “Sherlock, what the fuck are you playing at?”
Sherlock grins in a way, he knows, that aspiring novelists like to call wolfish. It is all incisors and intimidation. All provocation and assertion of dominance.
At the same time, there is a nervous little voice at the back of his head that tells him this could all go South. It is entirely possible that John's compliance was based on them never verbalising the strange arrangement they have created between themselves.
Which is precisely why this is necessary. Sherlock needs to know, needs to hear it from John's own lips that John is his, unequivocally and unconditionally. That it is he who gets to own and shape and use that powerful, dangerous weapon that is John Watson.
“Don't be coy, John, it's tedious,” he says, carefully measuring out the ratio of annoyance to disinterest and scorn in his voice.
John takes a deep breath and wets his lips and for a moment Sherlock cannot help but follow the glistening, pink tip of his tongue.
“Sherlock....are you – ” John interrupts himself once more but resumes more quickly this time. “Are you asking to collar me?”
Oh, really. Sherlock rolls his eyes in annoyance. “No, John, I am merely asking you to admire the craftsmanship of this collar which I am intending to use on an entirely different sub who I have kept hidden form you all these months. Of course I am asking to collar you.” The anger feels good, reassuring even and so he lets it bubble away inside himself.
John nods, his eyes flitting away for a moment. When he finally looks Sherlock in the eye again, his face shows the steely resolve Sherlock so loves.
“Yes,” he says.
“Yes?” Sherlock asks, breathlessly.
“Yes,” John confirms, “yes, I will let you collar me.”
And Sherlock simply has to step forward, has to grip John forcefully by the hair and pull back his head so he can kiss him, deep and savage. His left hand comes to rest on John's throat, gently, his fingertips brushing the pulse point he can feel fluttering underneath the smooth skin. John sighs deeply and opens his mouth, content to let Sherlock devour him for a moment.
Soon, however, he pushes Sherlock away so they can lock gazes again, both now panting a little.
“I want a contract,” John says and Sherlock must have looked a little surprised because John elaborates, while still holding Sherlock's face in both hands: “I've read up on this sort of thing and there are contracts. Which we both sign. With safewords and limits. And....rules for punishments.” John goes a little breathless on the last bit and Sherlock makes a mental note of the fact that this is an aspect of their relationship he should definitely explore.
If they were at all conventional about any of this, John thinks, this is where they would have had intense and deliciously painful sex but he has long accepted the fact that there is nothing conventional about being with Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock, he knows, wants to possess and command a lot more than he wants to come and while their play is nearly always sexual for John, Sherlock rarely pays any attention to this component of their scenes. It's a good thing John gets off on being denied.
What does happen, in the end, is that they make out like this for a while, John reclining on the couch and Sherlock bending down over him, nipping and biting at his lips while his left hand slowly and gently pushes down on John's windpipe with an inexorable heaviness that has him hard and leaking despite his best intentions.
Only for a moment, though. Then, John sits up, dislodging Sherlock in the process and digs out his laptop from the avalanche of old newspapers beside the sofa.
“Right,” Sherlock says, “contracts.”
They spend about an hour poring over the sample ones John has saved on his hard drive. John has a pretty clear idea of what he wants – an open end to the contract but a trial period of a month at first, the right to stay in contact and visit whomever he pleases, the certainty that Sherlock will be responsible for his health, his physical and mental well-being.
“I don't like this part,” Sherlock says, his brows drawn together and his lips thin.
John takes a deep breath and leans back against his arm of the couch, trying to make his whole body say Well, you can fuck off then. “Yeah, I don't care,” he says, desperately trying to sound as if he means it. “My family is not up for negotiation. And neither are my friends.”
Sherlock is still glaring daggers at him. “You hardly have any friends,” he snaps. “And I would, of course, let you visit your family at appropriate times.”
This is Sherlock expressing love, John knows. But it's also Sherlock being insecure as fuck and John will be damned if he is going to let him get away with that. “This is not negotiable, Sherlock. Full stop.” He makes sure that his voice carries both his annoyance and his absolute resolve. He might be signing a contract to be Sherlock's 24/7 sub but he isn't some kind of empty-headed doormat.
They stare at each other for a bit and then Sherlock finally shrugs and says, with a nonchalance that is fooling nobody, “fine. No contact clause.” And then, to John's surprise: “I want a safeword.”
“We already have a safeword,” John points out. It's “Baskerville” and neither of them has used it yet.
“Not that,” Sherlock says, with a sweeping gesture of his right hand. “A relationship safeword.”
“Oh,” John says. He hadn't thought about that but now that he does it makes a lot of sense. Neither of them has ever done this before, after all, and it is always good to have additional safety measures.
“Pink?” He suggests, thinking of beginnings and following Sherlock into danger, and Sherlock grins at him delightedly, his eyes suddenly blue again rather than gray.
When he wakes up the next morning, John is surprised to realise that he feels different. And yes, one reason for this might be the fact that he is actually curled up at the foot of Sherlock's bed.
Sherlock hadn't insisted after making the suggestion, had simply looked at him keenly, obviously excited to see how John would react to this first break in the routine of their previous life together. In the end, John had bowed his head and crawled in between the ends of the covers. It should have felt strange, humiliating even, but all he did feel was a sense of rightness and belonging, a fact he chooses not to analyse.
As he steps into the kitchen now, he can hear noises from the bathroom which is why he yells in his best commanding officer voice when he sees something blue bubble in his favourite army mug.
“Sherlock! What the hell are you doing to my mug? We had a strict agreement that my stuff is off limits for experiments!”
Custom addition: The submissive retains the right to yell at, badger and otherwise browbeat the Dominant about matters such as cleanliness, respect for tedious social conventions and other topics, as long as it is in keeping with the tradition of this relationship.