Chapter Text
When Watson began to frequent the Turkish baths, I was reluctant to join him. He would regularly extoll the virtues of the hot and cold treatments, how they eased his aches and pains, and how well he slept after his visits, yet I remained uncertain. It wasn’t that I did not trust my friend’s word, only that in my experience things which were specifically designed to relax the average fellow would often place me in a state of heightened awareness and discomfort in my own skin. Couple that with an unfamiliar environment and the need to expose my pallid, skeletal body to a load of strangers, and one can see why for several months it was solely Watson’s pastime.
He returned from a visit one overcast afternoon with a distinct spring in his step as he climbed the stairs, humming a tune, and he entered our living room looking quite pink in the face. I paid it little mind, other than to admire how the flush in his cheeks complimented his bright blue eyes. There was a smile playing around his mouth, moreso than usual, curling his moustache upward on one side.
“Enjoy yourself?” I asked from the depths of my armchair. I had one of my scrapbooks balanced across my knees, and I kept my head down so he would not realise I had been watching him.
“Hm? Oh, yes, thank you, dear fellow. I feel very much invigorated.” Watson grinned at me fully, evidently amused that I had not moved at all in his absence. “You really ought to join me one of these days. It’ll get that crick out of your neck.”
“I assure you, Watson, I am quite content with our good old English bath.”
“Yes, yes, alright.” He flopped into his chair opposite and reached for his cigars. “What are you looking for so studiously? Got something on?”
I glanced up before I answered—and froze. Watson sat with his ankle crossed over his other knee, and he was lighting his cigar, so he didn’t notice how my mouth dropped open before I was able to wrangle it under control.
But I had seen it. Between his jaw and the top of his collar, easily dismissed by anyone who did not regularly catalogue Watson’s features as closely as I did. He turned to drop his spent match into the nearby ashtray and it became unmistakable; a bruise, colouring his throat like a wine stain on a tablecloth, watercolour bleeding into canvas.
A stranger had laid claim to Watson, marked him in a way he clearly did not mind in the least. He may not have noticed, or maybe he had. Maybe he had paused before the mirror in the changing room and admired it, run his fingers over it, shivered at the memory—
I mumbled something about tobacco and left the house.
That night I could not sleep. Each time I drifted off I was confronted with a vision of Watson in someone else’s arms, with someone else’s lips on him, someone else slipping a robe off his shoulders, unwrapping a towel from his waist, someone else coaxing sweet noises from his gasping mouth. Someone else, someone else, someone else.
I’d had an idea that these things could occur at the Turkish baths. As with any sort of club or society in London, one simply had to know where to look, and I was not so naive as to assume otherwise. It was a building full of secluded corners and half-naked people seeking a reprieve from the stresses of daily life. Some would undoubtedly use other methods of relaxation, if they were available.
I hadn’t thought Watson would be one of them.
It wasn’t fair of me, I knew. I had noticed a mutual level of attraction between us, but my being too much of a bloody coward for too long had evidently caused Watson to give up on the idea of anything more than friendship and professional camaraderie. I could not begrudge him that. If he did not think I wanted him, why should he pursue me? Why not pursue someone else who did?
But how could he not think I wanted him? He drew attention whenever he entered a room; everyone wanted him. Of course they did.
And now somebody had him, and it wasn’t me.
I rolled over and groaned my frustrations into my pillow. To my great shame, my prick had taken an interest in proceedings. I tried to calm down by recalling the extraordinarily dry article about native wildflowers I’d read that morning, but Watson’s face, his body, kept resurfacing—and now he was in control, no longer subject to the whims of a faceless stranger.
He was in control of me.
I imagined him lounging in nothing but a fresh white towel, his blonde hair dampened to brown and curling at the ends, his skin glittering with a fine sheen of perspiration. Eyes ablaze like a copper flame, he crooked a finger to beckon me forward. I went to him as if in a trance.
In my bed, I pressed my hips to the mattress in a slow rhythm. There was a damp spot gathering beneath me, and heat building in my core.
Without a word, Watson made me straddle him, and untied the sash of my robe with a flick of his fingers. I lowered my head, embarrassed by the state of my naked body. He caught my chin and kissed me fiercely, thrusting his tongue into my mouth as he encouraged me to move my hips.
I turned onto my back and spread my knees, hiking up my nightshirt.
Watson’s cock was nestled beneath mine, rubbing me in the most delicious fashion. His hands spanned my waist; he could lift me up and drive me down as if I weighed nothing. I clung to his shoulders and stifled my cries against his neck.
“Let me hear you,” he growled, “I want my name to echo off these tiles, do you understand? Everybody here will know.”
A moan burst from my lips. I froze, fingers wrapped around my leaking prick, listening, quivering. Watson’s bed was right above mine. If he heard me and came to investigate, believing I was in distress, I would be lost.
Nothing. No tell-tale creak of floorboards or stairs.
For about twelve seconds I considered simply trying to get some sleep, but I knew my traitorous arousal would not let me rest in such a state. I gathered a handful of my nightshirt and stuffed it into my mouth, then began to work myself as quickly and quietly as possible. The bed creaked softly with the motion of my hand.
Watson gripped us both with his broad, strong fingers while he suckled the skin behind my left ear and whispered all the things he wanted to do to me. He seemed to know all the most sensitive parts of my body without needing to ask, or even to think about it. His mouth was hot on my skin. I was on fire, sweating, melting in his lap. He lifted me up again so he could reach with his other hand to squeeze my buttocks and tease his thumb between—
I cursed and arched off the bed, streaks of cum spurting over my belly. I didn’t recall ever having such a powerful orgasm before. My ears were ringing.
Far too soon, the afterglow faded; I remembered that I was sprawled half-naked on my bed having just climaxed to the mental image of my dear friend ravaging me into speechlessness. The same dear friend who had that very afternoon had gotten his elsewhere, because he did not want me in such a way. Not anymore.
I cleaned myself up at record speed and curled under the blankets, burning with shame. How the devil was I supposed to face Watson in the morning, knowing what I did, knowing what he’d done—what I’d just done?
Oh, Lord.