Work Text:
The heating was broken. It had given Sherlock the idea. Or rather, it had given her the excuse to claim a sudden epiphany and bring it up, when really she’d been considering it for a while.
And now.
There were goosebumps prickling on Sherlock’s skin, and her mouth was full of ice and cold water. Her eyes were closed. Her lashes flickered on her cheeks. Her bare shoulders trembled, and—because she was kneeling on the floorboard which always creaked—every time she gave a particularly hard shudder, there was a quiet, wooden squeak from the floor. Aside from Sherlock’s slow, heavy breathing, in and out through her nose, and the different rhythm of Joan’s inhales and exhales, it was the only sound in the room.
“You’re doing well,” said Joan, stirring the silence. She had Sherlock’s wrists in one hand, and a tray of ice cubes on the arm of her chair. She was right at the edge of her seat, fully clothed in jeans, shirt and jumper—socks, Sherlock thought slightly wildly, while her own feet froze—though she didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t want to. She trembled in the dark instead, Joan’s hand on her wrists the only thing warm in the world.
She was her body. And she was freezing cold. There was nothing else to think about. The freezing agony was a white landscape; a blank. She was even cold inside, the ice in her mouth making her head hurt, numbing her tongue. It tasted of tapwater. “That’s right. That’s perfect.” One droplet of cold water slipped down her numb lower lip, drawing a straight line right down her chin.Then she was alive with sudden anticipation, skin prickling, as she waited to hear it fall to the floorboards—but she misjudged it. It dropped onto the bare skin of her knee. She whimpered around her mouthful of cold, her whole body jerking. “It’s alright. You’re still alright.” Yes. Yes, she was. “Jesus, Sherlock...”
Joan’s last words were quiet and rough in the unmoving winter light of the room. The lace curtains created a still, sharp pattern of light and dark on the floor and on Sherlock’s bare skin. She was kneeling there in just her knickers, quite still, her whole body crying out with cold. (“With the curtains open, Sherlock?” “Yes? Why else would we have lace curtains?”) So the warmthless sun got in, and nothing got out. Sherlock shook. Joan held tighter, and moved her thumb back and forth over the dent just at the side of Sherlock’s wrist, where no bone tried to keep her out. “Swallow when it’s melted.” Sherlock shivered in a way which meant nodding was too difficult.
It was just ice. They were both thinking it—or they had been, until that just ice (“Alright—open your mouth,” and Joan had placed the ice cube slowly and delicately on Sherlock’s tongue, her cold fingertips brushing against the wet heat inside her lower lip) had frozen all coherent thought out of Sherlock’s mind.
Sherlock swallowed, cold water sliding down her throat, the muscles there straining (she was pulled so taut) and kept her eyes closed. Her breaths shuddered through her mouth, and suddenly, released from the tension and the distraction of holding the ice in her mouth, the cold really hit. She shuddered in earnest, almost struggling against Joan’s grip—it wouldn’t have been hard to break it, not with Joan trying to wrap her fingers around both of Sherlock’s wrists, but, “Sherlock,” Joan said, not chiding but sternly calming, and Sherlock slumped. “Better. Brilliant. How are you feeling?”
The sigh she breathed against Joan’s knee, her face now pressed to her trouser leg, wasn’t cold at all. “Freezing,” Sherlock mumbled, gritting her teeth to stop them chattering.
“Not surprised.”
“Very funny.”
“Not joking, either,” Joan said gently. “And not hanging around.” She got up, releasing Sherlock’s wrists in favour of taking her hands, helping her up.
“I’m fine.”
“Shh.” Joan’s hands slid up to hold her by her goosebumped forearms, and she walked her slowly backwards until the coffee table hit the backs of her shins. Sherlock narrowed her eyes and opened her lips to speak. “I’ll put another ice cube in your mouth,” Joan warned. Sherlock raised her eyebrows. “No,” Joan agreed, “I don’t know if I’m trying to threaten you or turn you on either. Come on. I want you sitting on the edge...good. And now I want you leaning back...further than that. And a bit further—that’s right, that’s it. Exactly, that’s perfect.”
Sherlock was leaning back on her elbows, her torso arched up, her legs spread wide. Her shoulders were strained—Joan’s mouth went dry—her head was tipped right back. Her neck ached. And she was shaking, shivering, her skin prickling and her nipples hard and dark as the freezing air pricked every inch of her. She stared at where the ceiling met the wall behind her, wetting her lips. The feeling in her mouth was slowly returning. And Joan was moving away.
There was no need to hold her breath until she came back, having plucked the tray of ice cubes from the arm of her chair and set it on the floor, but she did. Joan saw it, the way her chest froze and then relaxed, and stared speechless for a moment before circling the table, putting a knee up on it to make the angle easier and pressing their mouths together upside down, sucking urgently at Sherlock’s lower lip, trying not to press too hard so as not to make Sherlock’s position even more difficult to hold. Sherlock shook harder, suddenly whimpered up into Joan’s mouth, and Joan hushed her, told her to stay as she was; “You’re brilliant. Just stay like that. You’re doing perfectly. You have no idea, Sherlock...”
Joan reached for another ice cube, and placed it delicately at the base of Sherlock’s throat—in the hollow underlined by her clavicle. “Just stay very still,” Joan said, and Sherlock said, “Oh God,” and Joan dug her nails into her thigh. “If that ice cube moves, Sherlock,” she said, calmly, as red lines of pain seared their way into Sherlock’s brain, “you’ll regret it.”
Sherlock didn’t say yes Joan. They were a past that. Joan knew what her answer was. It was written in how she was straining to stay still, the ice cube trembling as she trembled, balanced.
The floor was freezing, Joan realised when she sank to her knees. She could feel the cold through her jeans. For some reason, the realisation made her grateful, and she pressed a quick kiss to the inside of Sherlock’s thigh; “You are insane,” she muttered there, her eyes closed. “You are insane, and I—”
“Joan.”
“—am going to absolutely ruin you.”
“Mm,” Sherlock said, wary of dislodging the ice cube. Her neck and shoulders burned, aching. She closed her eyes, and tried to predict where the next would be. The fact that she was correct didn’t make it easier to take when Joan balanced a piece of ice on the trembling plain of her stomach, just above her navel. She pushed her hips up to balance it better, Joan’s hands briefly guiding the motion, rubbing circles above her hipbones. Her breathing rasped harder; she tried to calm it so as to keep them in place.
“Like that. Just like that,” Joan breathed. Sherlock shivered her agreement, and Joan sank down again between Sherlock’s legs, where it certainly wasn’t cold. Her hair tickled Sherlock’s thighs, and she lowered her head. Sherlock tried to keep still, but her whole body jerked when a droplet of cold water streaked down the side of her neck and fell onto the coffee table. She gasped in a ragged lungful of cold air and then—oh God, then Joan’s mouth was warm.
She was lapping at her through the black lace of her knickers, sucking slowly at the fabric, and another droplet was streaking down Sherlock’s side; and Joan’s fingertips were stroking up over to where a tiny dark purple bow sat just above a triangle of damp curls—then she pushed Sherlock’s underwear to one side and lowered her mouth to where she was hot and wet and swollen, with nothing between them. On the coffee table, still stretched backwards, staring desperately in the opposite direction, Sherlock moaned and pulled herself taut, and lost herself between hot and cold and Joan and Joan again.
She fell into a rhythm, counted her breaths and kept herself steady, arched and uncomfortable and determined to do as told. She felt like she was stretched between everything—Joan, the ice, Joan’s mouth, the coffee table, the cold—hyper-receptive and open, raw. She felt like her skin was the thinnest it had ever been—when the ice cube on her stomach slipped downwards. Sherlock’s nerves shrieked. She gave up on her hips, letting them fall back down to the coffee table and gasped in desperate, needy breaths. Joan said, “Oh, Sherlock,” in a hoarse voice, touching the half-melted ice cube where it had come to a stop, having streaked a cold, wet line from Sherlock’s navel to the band of her skewed underwear. Slowly, she moved it downwards.
“Oh God,” said Sherlock. The ice at the base of her throat was just water now, shining on her skin. She was struggling not to let her teeth chatter. Joan paused. “Don’t stop,” Sherlock nearly snarled, pleading and threatening; “Please—don’t you dare—”
Joan huffed a breath of warm laughter against Sherlock’s thigh, and surged forward. She trapped the ice between her tongue and Sherlock’s clit and listened to Sherlock cry out, hips bucking up sharply; she tongued the ice into water and tongued Sherlock, too, until her chin was damp and Sherlock was somewhere distant to everything and everyone but Joan, and gasping out something which neither of them recognised, at first, as Joan’s name.
Sherlock fell back against the coffee table with a low whimper, staring dazedly up at the ceiling. They both breathed. Joan closed her eyes, and put her cheek against Sherlock’s thigh.
“I’m—”
Joan was already on her feet. “Cold. I know. It’s okay.” On the table, Sherlock tried to sit up, and then decided the idea wasn’t one of her best; the room swam before her, but before she could lie back down, Joan was behind her to give her something to slump against. She gave a quiet, mildly interested, “Oh,” as Joan first wrapped a blanket around her and then locked her into her arms, chin on her shoulder.
“‘Please don’t you dare’. That’s a new one,” Joan said, quite innocently.
“Shut up.”
“Didn’t say a word,” Joan promised her, before ruining it with, “but I liked it.”
“Well. Good.” Sherlock felt like she should say something else, and so tried, vaguely and slightly haughtily, if it was possibly to be dazedly haughty, “You were meant to. Probably. Not quite sure what I was thinking for most of it.” She didn’t quite know why Joan started giggling, but she knew why she joined in in the end. In the background, the kettle rumbled towards boiling point, and the world started moving again.