Chapter Text
The house is quiet without Iris, no doubt getting spoiled by the 200 odd centimetres of pure weakness that is “Uncle Barry” at the fair today. But there’s the smell of lemon balm and verbena left from her tisanes, the lingering buttery sweetness of shortbread baked this morning. Beyond, all Detective Herlock Sholmes’ handiwork: the pernicious stench of tobacco ever-present, the searching curls of smoke always settling to stale in the walls. Kazuma had indulged in the odd cigarette in Japan but, not one to allow a pleasure to become a habit to become a dependency, the way this smell ensconces 221b Baker street, as much the light and dark does—it unnerves him.
The burrowing of a memory in the making. Something he knows, now having lost and loved and left enough times, he’ll nose at like a dog in the future—surprised that some stray part of him had been chasing the whiff of it all along.
Kazuma watches Sholmes prepare his pipe. He’s unexpectedly no-nonsense about it, but there’s the graceful economy of a priest in how the short sweep of his hand gives way to a loose spread of tobacco. Then each fill of leaves rolled off index finger into the bowl of the pipe, the flex of his thumb as he packs it down, flick of wrist clean as the spark of his matchstick.
Sholmes leads the pipe to his mouth, Kazuma’s gaze led along with it to watch his face. He tests the draw while the match burns towards his fingers—whether in recklessness or utter self-assurance is fast becoming the greatest mystery about the man. Either way, he proceeds to char the tobacco, eyes downcast as he guides the flame to the bowl one, two, ten times, puffing smoke between each dip of the match. Finally, Sholmes slips the pipe from his lips and tamps with his thumb, not so much as a wince at the burn.
Eleven breaths held in Kazuma’s chest.
Startled right out of him in an unsightly splutter when Sholmes lifts his eyes, soft and lazy as he pins Kazuma, and speaks.
“My dear boy, you need only ask if you’d like to try my pipe. Certainly, it would be favourable to having you watch me like an ominous cat.”
Kazuma doesn’t catch himself fast enough to school the wrinkle of his nose at the thought…like sharing a toothbrush.
Sholmes laughs, insufferable for the way Kazuma feels his ears burn at the sound.
“You know, you’re not all how I thought you’d be from Mr. Naruhodou’s descriptions—the temper and the commanding and what have you. I can’t say I expected quite so much, well, skulking.”
Whatever indignation Kazuma might feel at Sholmes’ apparent assessment of him as a skulking cat dies a swift death when Sholmes strikes another match to light the pipe again, those gold lashes of his like something of the sun.
Digging his thumbs into the sides of the case digest in his lap, Kazuma says: “Sir, you’ve been very hospitable to me.”
“Indeed I have, allowing you to stare as frequently as you do. Repay an old man’s good graces with your delightful company then, why don’t you?” Sholmes takes a pointed drag from his pipe.
Kazuma bites the inside of his cheek, mortified that his covert glances at Sholmes’ forearms the past few weeks were maybe not so covert. Moreover, ashamed he was weak to Sholmes in the first place when he’d caught the man on numerous occasion rummaging through waste bins in the middle of the night. Finally, still a little repulsed at the thought of the pipe, he shakes his head. “Generous as the offer, I would find that…unsavoury.”
“Unsavoury!” Sholmes laughs again, slapping his thigh this time, obnoxiously handsome. “My, for the amount of bickering you do with him you really do remind me of Lord van Zieks sometimes.”
Bristling at that, Kazuma narrows his eyes and rises from his seat to stand, setting the digest aside and holding his hands behind his back.
And, privately, considers another similarity. Lord van Zieks, prone to drink as Sholmes is prone to any number of noxious substances himself. Both insufferable, both indelibly and violently linked to Kazuma, both showing him too much kindness.
But a key difference…
Sholmes’ smile is downright sly. “Not directly from the pipe, Mr. Asougi. Come closer, lad. Are you not curious?”
There’s a stirring in Kazuma’s gut that tells him this is a come on. And because Kazuma is decidedly not like Lord van Zieks, and yes fine, there’s a flicker of curiosity, it’s with a huff that he crosses the distance to the plush chaise where Sholmes sits, taking up far more space than he needs by the broad spread of his knees.
“Good man,” Sholmes murmurs. One hand comes to grasp Kazuma’s wrist, pushing under the cuff of his sleeve, thumb to pulse. His eyes are serious for a moment, unwavering. “Have I misread?”
Against the hideously demure instinct to fidget and hide, Kazuma sets his mouth and raises one eyebrow in mock disinterest. “You don’t sound much like a master of deduction.”
“Well then, let’s say…” Sholmes runs his thumb over Kazuma’s wrist, softly, as if to ponder. And then he grins. “You’ve only smoked cigarettes. You’re curious if it’s true that tobacco from a pipe offers a new world of sensation. And—” He digs his thumb, grasp firming. “You’ll take great pleasure in doing as I say.”
“I’d say the second is leading, Detective.” And if the hand on him wasn’t rough and sure as it was, Kazuma might have graced the third with the suggestion that he’d take more pleasure in taping Sholmes’ mouth so he couldn’t say anything at all.
“Is it, now?” Sholmes exhales smoke, slow and measured, to the side.
“And, if I may, what exactly are you getting out of this, Sir?”
“I’m hardly a monk Mr. Asougi, what do you think I might be getting out of this?”
Too late. Helpless, ugly, Kazuma poses the question: “Did you do this with Naruhodou?”
Sholmes gasps. “As much an opportunist as I may be, I should hope you don’t believe I would take advantage of someone’s grief like that.”
Kazuma raises an eyebrow…considering the fact that Sholmes is propositioning him at the moment. And well, he has his suspicions about Mikotoba-sensei…
“Right,” he levels.
Sholmes doesn’t seem to catch on to the cynicism. More likely, he doesn’t really care, shameless as he leans in to ask: “And did you? With Mr. Naruhodou?”
Glaring, Kazuma shakes his head at the slightly lecherous tilt of Sholmes’ mouth. “That’s none of your business.”
They had. Always drunk, always in the dark, only some dry rutting, hands in each other’s pants. More about completion than anything else, between the laughing breaths—and it had been nothing in the way that a helping hand of any sort offered to Naruhodou had been nothing. Naruhodou, a whole life—everything for a time. And at the point Kazuma realised he wished there was something more to the touch, he’d made sure they never found themselves in the predicament again.
Kazuma’s stomach lurches. He’s woefully hard.
“Of course, no need to dwell on the past. Now lean in a bit, would you, love?”
The endearment has the dual effect of making Kazuma want to sink to his knees for Sholmes just as it makes him want to knee the cad in the balls. Blessedly, it’s shock enough to remove him from his thoughts of Naruhodou, even as he flounders in place.
Sholmes shakes his head, tutting fussily. The hand on Kazuma’s wrist tugs him forward, slides up his arm, over his shoulder, until it rests warm and big and callused over the back of his neck. A mere press and Kazuma leans in, drawn to the upward tilt of Sholmes’ chin. Caught by the hand and held by the man’s eyes; most definitely, there’s dirty work behind Sholmes’ grip.
“What I’m getting out of this?” Sholmes scoffs. “You must know, you’re quite intriguing, Mr. Asougi.”
Kazuma groans as Sholmes’ fingers tangle in his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp before tugging on the strands. “Pretty thing you are—soft as a kitten, too.”
And it’s as Kazuma balks, preparing to express his upset at not only being compared to a cat once again, but demoted to a kitten, when Sholmes pinches Kazuma’s bottom lip, takes a drag from the pipe and exhales it into his open mouth.
And it is—it is warm and heady, grassy as hay, spiced dry fruit—Kazuma breathes like he’s just settled into a bath, his eyes fluttering closed as Sholmes lets go of his lip to hold the side of his face. Like that, Kazuma melts into Sholmes’ kiss. A kiss, which is really a great many kisses, first pressed light, nipped gentle at the sides of his mouth, then deeper as Kazuma sighs. Wet, drawn and slow as water, until he’s unmoored. Sholmes kisses Kazuma till he could be liquid, then kisses him till he’s caged again, gasping for breath, scrabbling to get closer so he can steal it back.
Sholmes pulls back then, his laugh coarse and sweet as his hands. And Kazuma allows it when he’s turned to face away from the man—laughs, slightly mad, in tandem with Sholmes when Sholmes grasps his waist and tugs him heavy into his lap, nosing up the side of his neck, fingers skittering towards his trousers. A bite before he laves his tongue over the spot, hand sliding lower as Kazuma squirms, hot all over. Sholmes is hard beneath him, rocking up as he bears Kazuma down.
They both groan. And it’s the heat of Sholmes’ grip, it’s the smoke curling around them, the suggestion in the way Sholmes grinds up against Kazuma, and the man’s hand finally, blisteringly reaching under Kazuma’s trousers to palm him through his drawers. And perhaps abstaining from smoke and sex never proved a damn thing. Kazuma could cry if he were one for deluge over quiet drowning. Rather, he considers hermitage as he grows desperate in the plea that he doesn’t come in his pants, or die before he comes at all…though the latter might be preferable to the former.
He can feel Sholmes smile against his neck. “Yes, that’s it. And what a commendable cock-stand we have here, already weeping.” And it should be taunting but Sholmes really does sound more charmed. “Now, unfortunately, both my hands are occupied. So would you touch your chest, just do as you’d have me do please, darling.”
“Shut up,” Kazuma hisses. But he does ruck up his shirt, grateful for the kiss of cool air on his skin, to tweak his own nipple, sharp enough for some semblance of self-possession to shadow the bloom of pain. But that too, Sholmes takes from him—a praise whispered into Kazuma’s neck that settles like a collar, a nip at his ear that jolts him right through.
Sholmes chuckles. Tightens his grip on Kazuma’s prick and tugs tortuously slow, thumbing the precome down the length of it.
“Oh dear, what are we to do with you?” a whisper into Kazuma’s jaw, just below his ear, that sends a shudder down his spine, settling in his gut.
Then Sholmes’ chin comes to rest on his shoulder. And Kazuma feels the motion, sees the rising plumes and blinks through the cloud of it, as Sholmes draws more smoke again.
“Sweet boy, shall I have you suck me off first or bounce you on my cock while I enjoy this pipe?”
Pathetically, Kazuma lets out a sound that really could only be described as a mewl.
He turns his head to consider Sholmes. Soft, flaxen curls, cherubic if he weren’t such a menace. His high cheekbones, flushed with colour. And his eyes, inscrutable, always in on the joke. A second long enough for Sholmes to drag his gaze from Kazuma’s chest to his eyes.
And so, straining his neck, Kazuma chases Sholmes’ obscene mouth. Licking into it for the smoke. Sweet boy. Filthy, lost far enough and Kazuma swears he can taste this morning’s shortbread in the haze of tobacco.