What The House Forgot

Your Guest, As Well As Mine

"I'm not sure why you're laughing," Victor pointed out, approaching the two boys if only to make sure they did not forget him. As John's eyes slowly opened he continually stared into Sherlock's eyes, his pupils growing wider as his brain tried to process more and more of what it regarded as pure illumination.
"I'm laughing because I'm not very afraid of you, Victor." Sherlock readjusted himself, though he only appeared to lock his legs tighter around John's hips, the bedsheets falling around his waist and barely keeping the scene from growing intensely vile. Victor chewed upon his lower lip, refusing to remember when he was in John's position, when he was too afraid to move, lest he ruin what he considered the best moments of his life. How quickly positions changed. How quickly Sherlock Holmes changed his mind.
"You have no reason to be afraid of me," Victor assured. "The only man who's ever killed is currently the only one subdued." John's eyes continued to stare at Sherlock, now it would seem as if he had grown less infatuated, though still less embarrassed. He seemed to realize that this scene, however untimely, was not in the least surprising. Whatever secrets he had tried to hide within himself, which ever sudden shift in romantic interests...it would appear that everyone else had diagnosed it before. In that regard, perhaps he found it easier to relax. To wait it out. To pretend to be invisible, even if he was the most exposed he's ever been.
"You forget, Victor, that John Watson is still my guest," Sherlock muttered, pushing his hand across the side of John's head to move the sweaty hair which was stuck across his matted forehead. In that moment John dared to glance at Victor, those brown eyes twisting back and forth so violently within his skull that they might have dislodged should he have braved another look. His face continued to grow scarlet, but despite the apparent humiliation he still leaned his head into the cupped hand of his lover, apparently feeling safer when more of his skin was making contact with Sherlock Holmes.
"This isn't your house," Victor pointed out. "You can't have guests."
"This is my room," Sherlock corrected abruptly, pulling his hand away from John's face only to give his cheek a slight slap. Such violence seemed to be in finality, as with a determined little snarl the boy began to dislodge himself from the tangle, kicking his legs out from under the blankets and peeling John's limbs from his body. "The house had made that ever apparent. This house may be yours, Victor, and it may have been inherited by generations of Watsons..." the boy slid off of the bed, his naked body so ghostly pale that even the darkness could not hide the curves of his bone structure. The slightest shadows collected from the indents of his body only seemed to define the sculpted appearance, and when standing perfectly still the contrast of shadow to skin appeared almost skeletal, as if some portions of the boy's body had been absorbed by the darkness, as if some parts of him had become perfectly hallow. "...But this was never your room." Sherlock finished his sentence in a deep, almost seductive snarl, taking a step towards Victor, who correctly took a step back in a stark counter offense.
Something was not right in those eyes, for Victor had seen that very same look before. It was the same look which he had been approached with on the day of their first shared night. The look before their first kiss. The look that seemed to precede everything that escalated their relationship...though that relationship had ended. Hadn't it? Victor blinked in confusion, though Sherlock appeared to have been possessed by an entirely different entity. Perhaps this was his version of channeling his past self, absorbing the energy from the walls, from the sheets, from the drops of sweat mingled upon his skin of various owners. Perhaps he channeled more power the more he was loved, and at the moment he felt entitled to something more...something continuous.
"Guests in my room are treated to the best of standards; surely you remember that from before?" Sherlock pushed forward again, and yet this time Victor's feet refused to move. His heart, now awake from its seemingly eternal sleep, was leaping out the back of his ribs, attempting to escape what it knew to be a hopeless situation. And yet his heart, once thought to be the most unreasonable organ in the human body, seemed to be the only one complaining. Even Victor's brain, as rational as he wanted it to be, was urging him to step forward. Every nerve in his body was tingling; no matter how aggressively his heart leapt it was halted by every muscle, every joint, every cell which held fast to its determination.
"I remember," Victor whispered, curling his fingers upon the thick fabric which was suddenly weighing down his arms. His vision was suddenly impaired by what appeared to be the brim of a hat, a stuffy and constricting one at that, perched gently across his brow as if it had fallen there naturally.
"I don't care if you own the house, Mr. Trevor," Sherlock's voice was deeper now, artificially so. The sort of drone that comes along with years of chain smoking something harsher than weed. Even now the smell of his breath seemed to change, something sharper, something with an air of nicotine. "I care only that you allow me to stay." Victor tensed, though when Sherlock stretched out his hand he did not catch his face, nor anywhere too suggestive. Instead his fingers wrapped around a brass button, the one which was holding the two sides of Victor's dinner jacket together. It was a large coat, a heavy mess of thick fabric, and yet it fell apart so easily. As soon as the button was unclasped he felt a sudden wind of fresh air soaking through the fibers of his thin white button down, a gentle evening shirt for what he imagined to be nothing more than a normal dinner. Victor took a sharp breath, seeming to have forgotten he arrived in pajamas, and relished the feeling of the heavy fabric falling from his shoulders.
The boy closed his eyes, feeling the quick and fleeting touches of experienced fingers working their way down the buttons on his shirt, appreciating the quick sparks that flew, as if wires were brushing together with flowing electricity. Before he knew it, Victor could feel Sherlock Holmes's whole hand upon his chest, fingers splayed and palm aggressive, nails digging into his skin as if to try to get a proper grip.
"We've discussed the rent before," Sherlock pointed out. "And sir, I do think it is time to make the transaction."
"We're not alone," Victor reminded him, his eyes sagging shut as if he wished to forget the figure who still remained in the bed. John was still there, hidden under the bedsheets, too modest to get dressed, too afraid to speak any words of protest.
"We don't have to be," Sherlock whispered, his words narrowing in on Victor's neck and breathing with the stench of cigarettes. "Mr. Watson is your guest, as well as mine."
"He won't mind?" Victor clarified. Sherlock chuckled deeply, though his next move spoke more of urgency then of humor. His hands clutched around Victor's waist, grabbing upon his hips and nearly lifting him from his spot on the floor.
"Mind?" Sherlock laughed, dragging Victor towards the side of the bed in unprecedented aggression. "Mind?" the man laughed, his naked body seeming to fluctuate in and out of reality itself, blinking with the candlelight as it flickered upon the desk. "No, Mr. Watson isn't going to mind. In fact... he is going to love this." In a single move Sherlock threw Victor across the bed, subsequently forcing the poor boy to fall over top of the body of his best friend. Now, the two lying perpendicular, both were descended upon with the weight of their mutual lover. Victor was strained upon his back, his spine bent horribly across the body of John Watson, forced only more painfully as Sherlock's entire weight fell down upon him. John was crushed under the weight of the two, easing out only a sigh of protest as he tried to at least pull one of his arms free. Victor couldn't see anything except the ceiling, for his neck was bent backwards and his eyes were facing the wrong way, yet he could feel a pair of lips descend upon his neck, a familiar warmth as Sherlock Holmes dragged his tongue across a most sensitive patch of vulnerable skin.
Victor couldn't say anything in protest; in fact he dared not even move to try repositioning himself into a spot which might prove to be more comfortable. Neither of the boys had anything to say against Sherlock's seemingly mindless escapade, for neither valued their personal safety above the potential for one more kiss from his nicotine stained lips. Instead Victor shot out one hand to grab upon the bare back of his lover, his fingers wrapping around the knobs of his exposed spine, a bone abruptly shooting from the thin paper skin as his back arched and bent. With one hand he anchored himself, trying to hold Sherlock still as the boy began to rock back and forth, abandoning his kisses for something like a garbled, maniacal laugh. At first the laugh was pressed against Victor's stomach, chuckling and tearing with teeth. The thing progressed, it seemed as if the joke inside of Sherlock's head got progressively more hysterical, for before long he could not multitask. Finally he could no longer balance his kisses with his humor, for he shot his head up, bending his neck in such a contortion that it might have broken with just one added push of external pressure. And from that neck, from that bent windpipe, the boy echoed something that sounded more like a coyote's howl than anything remotely like laughter. And yet laughter it was, for the octave descended into something more audible, something more progressive. He laughed and laughed, rooting his knees around Victor's legs and his ankles within the crooks of John's joints. As he laughed he pressed, hard with his body, hard against the base of the bed. The two boys beneath began to squirm, finding it progressively more difficult to move or even to breathe. Victor's eyes widened, trying to escape the dream he seemed to have fallen into, trying to blink his eyes once and see a more familiar scene before him. This aged house seemed to have gobbled their personalities and their timelines. This was a scene from before. This was not the way they would act today.
And yet, while one hand tried to keep Sherlock from sliding off the side of the bed, Victor had managed to hook his other with a presence a bit more familiar. It was a cry for help, or perhaps a simultaneous mark of understanding. It was a gentle tangle of fingers which turned into something more desperate, a squeeze from one palm to the other, an urgent yet meaningful forgiveness. Victor recognized the shape of John's palm; likewise he recognized the strength that the boy was using to grab him. So soon after betrayal came an unlikely understanding, and before long Victor felt more relieved to feel John's grip, even more so than he was to feel Sherlock's craned and contorted body. Sherlock's behavior felt entirely unlike him, a man possessed by the house itself. And yet John Watson, as it would appear across multiple timelines, remained a consistent man. An honorable man. A comforting touch in a scene which would appear, to any other set of eyes, to be something out of a deep circle of the inferno.