The raps on the door were strangely methodical and timed, unperturbed. One would think John would be pressing his now-hot cheek into something cold and steaming madly, for all the world, but John felt spookily calm, as if the slap had deflated all of the hot air from his lungs. When no one came to open the door, he yelled, "I know you're in there, Holmes-"

The door opened. As if Sherlock had been standing there, waiting for John to rattle the doorknob, force his way inside. He didn't even look at John as he spoke, his gaze affixed on something to his right. "I'm working on a composition, you can come back later."

"No, I can't."

Sherlock's gaze drifted to him, and his previously blank expression slowly transformed into chastisement as he noted the welt on John's face. "Jesus, John, why can't you be like Switzerland and not get involved?"

"I'm a bloody Englishman," John said, pushing his way into the music room. Sherlock's violin was discarded on a red, embroidered chair with a dingy Union Jack pillow sat in it, a black leather chair juxtaposed. John picked the violin up by the neck - "Don't touch that," he immediately heard Sherlock sternly demand - and put it in the leather seat, subsequently sitting in its stead.

The fabric was rough against his finger pads, but very comfortable. He eased himself in snugly, leaning forward in the red chair while removing his overcoat and suit jacket, revealing a fitted button up underneath.

"There's a coat rack," Sherlock muttered from across the room.

"Yeah, sorry," John answered, immediately standing up to put his clothes away. "Uh, I won't talk. If you don't want to," he said to the vicinity. "Not after what happened." While he was lifting the clothes onto the pegs, he noticed the silence he was met with. He glanced back to the room; it was empty. He heard a fair amount of rummaging in the separate office as he paced back to his new couch and sat back down.

He glanced to the leather seat across from him. It must have been Sherlock's. It had a sort of cold inkiness to it, refined, but ceaselessly clinical. It was all hard lines and boxy architecture.

John wondered who his new seat had belonged to.

Almost suspiciously, Sherlock emerged from his office holding a bunched up towel in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. "That's where my students sit during private lessons. Or their parents, when I'm counseling."

John's face twisted.

"Oh. Not counseling like that. It is quite as mundane, though." Sherlock set the cup of tea down on the arm of his chair and held out the bunched up towel to John. John looked at it peculiarly. "Take it, hurry up," Sherlock urged, and John gingerly took it from him, surprised to find it to be freezing. "Apply it to your cheek," Sherlock instructed as he removed his violin and sat across from John, laying it across his lap. His fingers tapped out hollow rhythms into the wood.

"Why?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes, his sigh almost bitter. "Do you not feel the enormous hand shaped welt on your face?" He pursed his lips, taking the tea saucer from the arm of his chair. "Here," he offered, placing it on John's chair.

John stared skeptically at Sherlock for a few seconds with the hand towel full of ice still bunched up in his grip.

"It's going to melt, you daft git," Sherlock commented. Still staring, John pressed the homemade cold compress to his welted cheek, laying back into the chair.

"I suppose you're going to tell me what happened now," he said. "Lay it all out for me."

"I thought you said you wouldn't talk."

"I said I wouldn't talk if you didn't want to, and you obviously do. Come on." John smirked, only for his lip cut to reopen painfully. After a bit of a wince, he continued, "You know you want to show off. You're good at that bit - the showing off."

Sherlock's eyes flashed and he gave John a little self-satisfied smile, smugly stating: "It was your fiancée."

"Yeah?" John questioned. "How do you know?"

"There's a welt on your face shaped exactly like her hand, with the indent of a ring," he replied quickly. "Wasn't that far a leap."

"You're quite good."

"You're still talking."

"You're still responding," John shot back, putting down the melting cold compress and instead drinking his tea, his eyes purposefully drifting away to the rest of the room. Musical posters still adorned every available wall in the room, one or two viola posters superimposed on a window. Sheet music littered the concrete flooring, a few papers stained with a ring of coffee from a mug. Papers were shoved in cabinets, poking out of folders, hidden under a large carpet on the left side of the room, whereas an arrangement of cheap stacking chairs were waiting for a string ensemble on the right.

Sherlock observed him quietly, and John pretended not to see him looking with some sort of intent. Instead, he commented, "Ever thought about cleaning the place up?"

Sherlock readjusted in the corner of John's eye as John drank the rest of his tea, sitting the cup back on the arm of his chair without looking. He said nothing, and John turned almost backwards to look at the door from which they came from, then at the high beamed ceilings. Finally, John rotated his body back so he was comfortable, and saw Sherlock's violin.

It was quite elegant. Mahogany colored, maybe stained that way; but the wood was dark and rich, tinted a bit red. John looked up. Sherlock's gaze was locked unwaveringly with his, his body reposed with one hand on the neck of his violin and another atop his knee.

"I bet you know why," John murmured. He put the melting cold compress to his cheek again.

Sherlock nodded. "Of course I know why."

"Tell me why, then. Deduce away."

Sherlock held his stare for a few moments, looking pensive, then abruptly began to talk. "I've met your fiancée before."

"Really?"

"At a weapons' convention," he explained. "I extrapolated, from a few minutes of speaking with her, that she has deep family values. Practically spent the entire conversation praising her father - who is a prick, in my opinion - although it was perceptibly obvious that we were both not enjoying the conversation. And everyone knows about her mother."

"Pneumonia," John provided.

"You're married to a woman that deeply cares about how her family perceives her, but would spare no qualms slapping you across the face. So, she must not consider you family."

Something defensive flared up in John's stomach. "Hey, everybody needs to blow off a little steam, that doesn't mean-"

"You've been together four years," Sherlock interrupted, "yet she doesn't consider you a part of her family. Don't be tedious."

"One bloody slap doesn't define our entire relationship."

"Quite the contrary," Sherlock said, nodding in sarcastic assent. His voice switched from agreeable to harsh. "I'd say your stale conversation, repressed resentment, and one bloody slap defines your entire relationship. You don't fit in the image she has in her head when she imagines being accepted. You're a blemish, and the only way for her to accept you is if her father accepts you, which means children, which means..."

John's gaze was forced away with the realization. "They'll never accept me," he murmured, pressing his fingers to his lip, which was now bleeding steadily.

"Good, John. And since she wouldn't consciously acknowledge her detestation of a family member by slapping them, you've done something quite horrible. I'd say it would have to do with her mother."

John pursed his lips. "Yeah, why?"

"Because if a person insults someone's deceased mother," Sherlock answered, "they are prone to be rather sore about it."

John sat up in the chair, leaned closer, forward. He put the hand towel on the concrete, speaking each word with a rehearsed conviction; one that he had prepared in case anyone ever contested them. "She loves me."

"I don't doubt it." Sherlock began to take off his blazer, the muscles in his shoulders tensing. "I do, however... dispute the claim that you love her."

Searching Sherlock's eyes was trying to see through a puddle of ink. Everything real and true was hidden; soaked through with a thick, viscous blackness. "I love her," John said, slowly.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and got to his feet, shoving up his sleeves with more intensity than necessary. "I can see you don't love her in your engagement ring." He stepped closer. "I can see you don't love her in your inflection." He leaned down, pressing his palms against the arms of John's chair. "I can see you don't love her in the way that you're looking at me right now."

John swallowed, and he knew Sherlock heard it, because it was loud, and Sherlock was acting predatory, his pupils constricting as he neared closer. "And how am I looking at you?" John said, his voice going reedy.

A lewd smile curled Sherlock's lip, his body gracefully moving forward to touch John's.

His eyelids fluttered as Sherlock sucked his bottom lip into his mouth, sighing low in his throat. He then leaned in, and John was prepared to kiss him, anticipating the feel of Sherlock's lips on his, hot and soft.

But Sherlock had stopped, mere millimeters away, his breath mingling with John's. Their lips were agonizingly close, and John could nearly taste Sherlock. His hands trembled as John craned slightly to close the gap, but Sherlock pulled back, his eyes resting on John's. John nearly groaned at the rejection.

"Forgive me, John," Sherlock's voice thrummed. "I don't want your blood in my mouth."

Fuck.

Ignoring John's pleading eyes, Sherlock slid down onto his lap, his long legs nearly not fitting, but he somehow made it work. John could feel the entirety of Sherlock's arse right on his groin, and this time he did groan, low and drawn out. His hands immediately flew down to grip Sherlock's arse, pulling him closer, and their clothed cocks brushed. Sherlock made a surprised noise that went straight to John's dick.

Sherlock wiggled a bit to get comfortable, knowingly stimulating John's ever hardening shaft, and he dipped down to kiss away the vibrations in John's neck. Sherlock's lips moved like a cat's tongue lapping up water, and the feeling rippled through John's chest. He kneaded Sherlock's arse as he sighed against John's neck.

"Let's place a bet, John," Sherlock proposed, glancing up at him through dark lashes.

"A bet," John's breath hitched as Sherlock gently scraped his teeth against his Adam's apple. "...What kind of bet?"

"I bet I can make you come," Sherlock pushed his pelvis forward, illiciting a forceful exhale from John's mouth, "just like this."

He was too fucking hard to be making decisions like this. All the blood had flown from his head to his dick. Without thinking, he airily concluded: "You can't," not even sure why he said it. It was probably because Sherlock looked so young and cocky in those designer slacks, and he wanted to contradict him in some way, even if it meant biting off more than he could chew. Literally.

"Is that a challenge?" replied Sherlock with faux nonchalance, languidly trailing open mouthed kisses down John's neck. John felt his top buttons pop open, cold fingers brushing his bare skin, and his pulse starting to compress into an erratic rhythm.

John couldn't compose words. His head hit the back of the chair as he distinctly felt a thumb flicker across one of his hardening nipples. He was unable to choke back a groan, a response lost in the guttural noise he made in the depths of his throat.

"Is that a challenge, John?" Sherlock repeated demandingly, enthusing this by pressing his arse down onto John's cock rather harshly.

John pinched his eyes shut. "It's a statement," he gritted.

"Oh, I invite you to rethink that," Sherlock continued, starting to move his hips slowly. "What do you think?"

John mewled helplessly, unable to answer. He felt his fingers digging into Sherlock's arse, spreading his cheeks apart. The thought of that sent another twitch of interest into John's cock, the friction from Sherlock's rhythmic undulations stirring heat in his stomach.

"You're not answering me, John." Sherlock slotted so close to John's body that every rotation, John felt his hard shaft press up against the crotch of his trousers. "I'm not going to fuck you nicely if you can't answer simple questions." Sherlock dug his hand under John's half open dress shirt and pinched an erect nipple, hard. John cried out, the pain-pleasure ringing throughout his body. "Do you think I can make you come without touching your needy cock once?"

"No," John breathed in a voice that was so embarrassingly broken and wolfed out that he couldn't find himself in the noise. "Jesus, holy Christ, fuck. Fuck." He didn't know why he said it. He was most definitely going to come if this boy didn't stop fucking him with his hips like that. John kept on licking his bottom lip, and he could taste that his cut had reopened amidst all the vocal groaning.

Sherlock had grabbed his hips to stop John from thrusting. Oh, Jesus. He was being held down as Sherlock sped up, now grinding their clothed cocks together with a carnal ferocity that was making John shake. "You're going to come, soon," Sherlock's unnaturally clinical voice whispered into John's neck. "I want to watch you."

John felt a hand come away from his hip and grip his hair roughly, yanking his head back so his throat was exposed. John would be looking at the high cross beams up and behind Sherlock if his eyesight wasn't dimmed from arousal.

"Are you going to let me watch you come?"

John nodded desperately, although restricted. "Yes," he said, his breaths coming short and shallow. "Yes, yes, oh f... Christ, yes."

"Come on," Sherlock urged impatiently, abruptly changing his rhythm to firm, long thrusts. It drove John mad. His eyes were open, but he wasn't seeing anything. "Let me see that pretty 'o' face."

With one last mind-blowing thrust of the hips, John felt his entire body tense up within the span of half a second. His knuckles flushed pink and white, and then he was coming, and he didn't even care that Sherlock won the bet because he didn't care about anything.

He remained thoughtless for far too long, his entire body gone limp. Sherlock delicately slid off of John's over-sensitive crotch, and John didn't even register it besides the fact that his fingers were no longer in contact with warm, plush heat.

"You came," John heard. His eyes flickered open.

He felt so satisfied he didn't even know how to answer. His eyes fluttered to Sherlock's obvious erection. "Want me to take care of that for you?" he asked, his eyes lazy.

"I actually have a class in five minutes," Sherlock said. He didn't move.

John looked at him expectantly as he propped his torso back up on the chair with a heavy exhale.

"I won the bet."

"You did," John conceded.

Sherlock glanced at the floor, his body language tightening, obviously uncomfortable. He seemed to weigh something in his mind for a second before looking into John's eyes again and proposing, "Come to my show. It's at half past six tomorrow, at the local music hall."

John sat up fully, then, despite himself. "No strings attached?"

Sherlock hesitated. Then nodded.

"What? Why?"

"Experiment," Sherlock replied, finally turning away and walking to the door, where the coat rack was. He picked off John's coat and threw it at him.

John couldn't help but let out a disbelieving, yet humorless, laugh. "Are you serious?"

"I've never been anything but serious with you, John." Sherlock eyed him carefully.

John's smile slipped, and then his entire face eased into acceptance. "Yeah," John bit. "Fine. You shot me down, and now you want me to pay money to watch you play your fucking cello." John stood up abruptly, slinging on his coat. "Fine."

"It's a violin."

"I know it's a violin!"

"And if the money is a problem-"

"The money isn't a problem, Sherlock, I won four thousand quid just this weekend."

Sherlock's gaze was quizzical as he watched John cross the room to the door. "I thought that this is what you wanted."

John paused in his exit. He paused, and he smiled a tight smile. "Huh," he mused, turning back and locking eyes with the man who had just unraveled him in mere minutes. He didn't know what to make of him.

There he was, six feet of lean muscle, pants tightening around the crotch. That was the only way John even knew he was human. He could make John come in three minutes flat, and now he wanted him to watch him twang a violin? For what bloody reason?

"When have you ever given a fuck about what I want, Sherlock?" John pushed on the knob, not caring to look back. "But you did win the bet."

***

As soon as John left Sherlock's office, he cut into a smaller, empty hallway that led to the loo. He could feel the wetness spreading in his boxers.

Also, he was about to scream.

He couldn't let Sherlock throw him around like that. It didn't matter that he'd won a stupid bet. John could wipe himself off and barge back in and tell him exactly what this was.

John's life wasn't a game, or an experiment, or something to relieve boredom. He had a job. He had connections, ties he couldn't sever. Sherlock said it himself, last night. He said he didn't want connections. The scars. The reminders. Nothing had changed.

And if Claire found out that he was cheating on her - with a man, no less - what would happen then? Sherlock was being careless. Going to Sherlock's event meant lying. It meant sneaking out of the house. It meant rousing suspicion John couldn't afford.

John looked both ways before he entered the unisex single stall bathroom and locked it shut, as if anxious. As soon as he was out of sight, he let himself start breathing again.

Dazed, he drifted to the toilet, unzipping his trousers and fixating on a mirror above the loo as he did his business. His reflection didn't belong to the image he saw when he thought of himself.

He didn't know how to do this. He didn't know how to be a bad person.