didn’t write this. just thought i should share it  >^.^<

For some reason the full moon was getting to John this month, in a way it usually didn’t. Probably the result of a long run of recent sleepless nights the week before in the service of a rash of cases; that was the logical explanation. But John wasn’t in the mood to be logical, or anything but irritable and snappish.

Everything annoyed him today, from the familiar clutter of the flat to the rare beauty of the autumn weather gleaming just outside the windows. On an instinctive level he recognized his own volatility and went to ground in his favorite chair, sitting hunched and miserable, for the protection of the rest of the world. They were out of drinkable milk (again), but any chip and PIN machine that dared defy him today would get a fist through its screen, followed by a kick and a claw-rake for good measure, so he couldn’t even risk doing the shopping.

Sherlock might be the undisputed king of days-on-end marathon sulking, but when the shoe was on the other foot he didn’t have a great deal of patience; he put up with John until exactly sunset, at which point he all but picked John up by the scruff of the neck, threw his jacket at him, and announced they were going out.

John bridled at the high-handed treatment, but a lifetime’s worth of self-discipline kept him from giving in to the momentary burst of rage that reddened the edge of his vision. He clenched his shaking left hand into a tight fist to keep it from sprouting claws, gritted his teeth and pulled on his jacket. Sherlock, already kitted out in coat and scarf, sleek and impeccable as always, watched with an unreadable expression. If Sherlock had any idea how close he’d come to having a pissed-off wolf in his face, he didn’t show it. He merely dropped his chin in a tiny nod of approval when John was ready and led the way out of the flat in a swirl of fabric and intent.

John, stifling a growl at the back of his throat, gave in to habit and followed.

The last red-orange rays of a frankly incredible sunset painted walls and streets with false warmth; at its zenith, the sky was clear as crystal and the pale, indescribable color of Sherlock’s eyes. There was frost coming later with no insulating cloud cover to hold in the day’s warmth. Even in the heart of the city, the air tasted crisp and clean under the everyday scents. John shoved his hands violently into his pockets and hated all of it.

Sherlock didn’t bother to speak; he simply began walking, picking a random path through the maze of the city, drifting as smoothly and silently as a wisp of ash on the wind. John lengthened his stride to keep up (he was getting good at that) and radiated resentment at the unavoidable feeling that Sherlock was taking his pet werewolf for walkies. If Sherlock wasn’t good with the sulking role-reversal, John wasn’t good with being coddled or looked after — that was his job, helping others heal.

Eventually the ceaseless flow of physical movement began to work on John’s psyche, touching deep places connected to concepts like patrolling the territory and moving with the pack. He began to relax. Sherlock’s penchant for staying silent unless he had something worth saying helped, letting John shake out the knots in his muscles and emotions in his own time.

It wasn’t just walking for walking’s sake, either; there was a lot of hard work involved in keeping Sherlock’s personal version of Google Street View current. Sherlock spent hours every week walking like this when he wasn’t distracted by a puzzle, tracking all the tiny changes that were part of a living city’s daily existence. Knowing that helped John get past his personal feelings. This wasn’t entirely for his benefit, this was something normal and necessary — at least in Sherlock’s version of reality.

By the time midnight rolled around, John’s mood had shifted a dizzying one hundred and eighty degrees.

They were crossing a small park, ignoring the paved and lighted pathways since both of them were at home in darkness. Frost-covered grass crunched under their feet (well, under John’s feet, Sherlock was as silent as the air itself), ragged autumn trees arched above them, and high overhead the moon sailed through the sky in pale splendor. Its blue-white radiance was bright enough to touch the earth even here in light-polluted London, casting deep pools of black shadow. Reaching the edge of the trees, on the verge of an open sweep of lawn glittering with frost, John hesitated and turned his face up to the sky.

He felt good, better than good, in that had-one-too-many-pints way but without any blurring of his senses. His weight was forward on this toes, and he gazed up at the moon with a glorious delight. This, this was why it was so dangerous to be a shapeshifter out and about under the full moon: it wasn’t necessarily that one got more violent or dangerous. It was this surge of power, of joy, of loss of control, of loss of propriety. One might do any number of insane things under that influence, which was why John usually cooped himself up out of reflex. Tonight, though, he could feel safe, because Sherlock was with him. Sherlock would keep him from doing anything stupid.

Even as mentally-compromised as John was, he realized there was some flaw in that line of thinking, but that niggling concern was overwhelmed by the night and the moon and the pleasure thrumming through John’s blood. That energy begged to be released; John’s voice rose up and stuck in his throat as he stared at the silver, crater-pocked surface.

Natural wolves howl to bring their pack together and to declare their territory. They don’t howl at the moon because that would be a waste of their energy. Werewolves, on the other hand, are not wolves. They are magically-gifted humans whose shapeshifting nature is bound to the greater cycles of the world and planets — and they do howl in honor of that intimate connection.

“Go on,” Sherlock said from beside John, voice low and amused. “Howl and have done with it.” He’d been growing more and more silent-smug as John’s mood lightened, another point proven.

John looked from the moon to Sherlock, who was all pale reflection and black shadow at his side. “You know, your periodic telepathy is really annoying sometimes.” John said it as a joke, actual telepathy not being a standard vampiric power so far as he knew.

“I don’t need to read your mind,” Sherlock told him with good natured condescension. “You’re a werewolf and you’ve spent the last forty seconds staring at the full moon while wearing an expression that says you want to open your mouth but don’t quite dare. It’s not a difficult conclusion.”

“Yes, and howling isn’t exactly a prudent thing to do in the middle of a city park,” John said. “Which is why I’m not doing it.”

Sherlock snorted. “There is nobody else remotely near us right now,” he said. Vampires were better than mosquitoes at sensing warm blood in the cold and dark so John knew he could believe it. “No normal human is going to run toward a howling werewolf and it will take some minutes for the police to be summoned. So if you’re going to howl, howl.”

“Well, if you put it like that …” John said, terribly tempted. Oh, yes, the sane part of his brain said, this is why it’s not a good idea to have a thrill-seeking self-proclaimed sociopath serving as your moral anchor for the evening.

He glanced up at the white face of the moon and drew a deep, frost-flavored breath, but let it huff out silently, feeling self-conscious. Sherlock had heard John howl before, but at a distance; this was different, somehow. John cleared his throat and shot a glance at Sherlock, who was standing stock-still, vampire-still, radiating amusement. John hummed in his throat, as a half-hearted warm-up and nearly binned the idea altogether … but then he looked back at the moon, and the balance tipped. Without further thought, he threw his head back and howled, freely and ecstatically, pushing air out through his throat with the full force of his abdominal muscles.

It was glorious.

John’s howl echoed into the distance, carrying with all the power that might be expected. What he didn’t expect was to hear, at exactly the right point, a baritone voice joining in from beside him. For a moment it was wonderful — beyond wonderful, perfect, until Sherlock’s voice slipped into elegant thirds with his and John broke off with a choke of laughter.

Sherlock stopped a second later. “Christ,” John gasped in helpless amusement, almost staggering with mirth, “that was awful! Don’t harmonize. You do better with your violin!” Off in the distance, yips and howls from the natural canine population were starting up, but John ignored them.

“Which I didn’t bring,” Sherlock said, dryly, but with a crooked grin, teeth gleaming pale in the moonlight. “We’re still clear, care to try again? I’ll attempt to suppress years of musical training.”

John nodded with giddy abandon. “Just remember this isn’t choir practice,” he said, before sucking in another deep breath and loosing a second huge, liberating howl.

As before, Sherlock joined in with perfect timing, and this time managed to achieve and hold the proper dissonance. Shivers of delight ran down John’s spine. This was right, this was pack, and sod the fact there were only two of them and one of them was a vampire. He ran out of breath while Sherlock was still holding his descending note; another inhale and John rejoined the chorus, this time sounding a different note, maintaining the delicious anti-harmony that confused the ear so two voices sounded like a multitude: confusion to whatever enemies might be listening. Sherlock, still on cue, dropped out and then rejoined at yet another pitch, carrying the circular pattern forward.

John, restraining himself, stopped when he ran out of breath a second time. When Sherlock fell silent, they could hear still more frantic yips and howls in the distance … followed by the start of sirens.

“Ah,” Sherlock said, sounding not at all unhappy. “Now we need to run.”

He sprang into action, bolting across the open space with John close on his heels. Sherlock vaulting the park’s man-high wrought-iron railing as if it were hardly there. John followed with ease; compensating for his weaker shoulder was becoming second nature. A mad dash through a few alleyways, vampire outpacing werewolf (though only because he had longer legs and, full moon or not, John wasn’t about to change and lose his clothes and wallet) and they emerged on a busier street where Sherlock immediately fell into a don’t mind me, nothing to see here walk.

John matched his steps, suppressing a case of the giggles, still breathing hard and enjoying the sense of lungs and muscles given a genuine challenge. Every nerve was tingling and he felt alive in a way he never had before he met Sherlock, not even in Afghanistan.

The feeling, it seemed was mutual, since, at the first opportunity, Sherlock grabbed a rough fistful of John’s jacket and jumper-front and dragged him into a shadowed doorway for a quick, fierce snog. John, parting his lips in response, felt the points of Sherlock’s extended fangs and deliberately nicked the edge of his tongue against one of the sharp razor-points. The bright, coppery flavor flooded both their mouths and Sherlock made a low noise of desire that went straight to John’s groin. There could be no question now that this night would end in blood and sex, and if Sherlock was fonder of the former and John the latter, well, there’d be enough of both to go around.

Sherlock broke the kiss with a wrench of his head and a gasp of breath. John had a brief glimpse of eyes gone empty black from lid to lid before Sherlock was gone in a swirl of coattails; John followed, a bare heartbeat behind, as they began to run in earnest, racing towards the same goal. Their previous random, looping progress was replaced with a fiercely directional, straight-line dead heat in the direction of 221B Baker Street.

Sherlock reached their front door just before John, thanks again to his long stride and John’s enforced two-legged state. One of these days, I have to even the odds and show him what a werewolf can really do, John thought, just before Sherlock grabbed him and yanked him bodily inside, slamming the door behind them.

The door-slamming told John all he needed to know about whether Mrs. Hudson was in or not; Sherlock would never have dared if their landlady-not-housekeeper were in. Not a surprise, though; the full moon tended to be her night out, which worked brilliantly for everyone.

Sherlock kept his grip on John and kissed him like a drowning man, right there in the entryway, so John had no compunctions about grabbing right back and slamming Sherlock hard against the wall where they’d once leaned and shared a laugh after their first mad dash through the city.

Sherlock growled, bass and dark, and John growled back, bracing the palms of his hands against the wall on either side of Sherlock’s head and, since they were in private, letting his bones lengthen into a few extra inches’ worth of height so he could meet Sherlock’s mouth easily with his own. The kiss was ferocious in its intensity, but Sherlock managed to pull back enough to gasp, “Wallpaper!”

“I know, I know, minding the wallpaper,” John responded, and it was true. He was resting his weight entirely on the palms of his hands, fingers held rigidly straight as a precaution, for all that his nails were still blunt and human. He blinked, and met Sherlock’s black, vampire eyes. Darker than the void between the stars, endless and bottomless, the stuff of nightmares, Death personified.

Exhilarated, John grinned. It was the grin he’d never let anyone else see, ever. “Feel like rearranging the furniture tomorrow?” he breathed in a voice that hovered on the bare edge of humanity.

Sherlock smiled. A sane man would have run from that expression. “Now you’re reading my mind,” he said.

“Oh, God, yes,” John responded, somewhat incoherently, and they made for the stairs together.

—

John, tousle-haired and wrapped in his dressing gown, heaved a sigh and followed it with a sip of breakfast tea as he surveyed the damages. In the cold light of morning, there was a lot to sigh over.

Ten deep scratches in the wallpaper — gouged into the plaster, in fact — in two big, five-fingered starbursts, mapping out perfectly where John’s hands had rested when he and Sherlock had reenacted their hallway moment with less restraint. The accompanying bloodstains were a perfect example of arterial spray-patterns. They’d have been brilliant in a forensics textbook, but were less so on a sitting-room wall.

Note to self, John thought. Next time there’s a vampire latched onto your carotid, feeding, do not stick your hand down his trousers and make him gasp, or you’ll have this to clean up. John played living-room-furniture Tetris in his mind, trying to figure out how to cover up this latest transgression and failing. The wallpaper’s coated. Maybe it’ll wipe off. If we’re lucky.

He sighed a second time.

Sherlock wrapped a long arm round John’s waist from behind, taking a noisy sip of his own tea in John’s ear. He didn’t need the fluid, after the amount of blood he’d ingested the night before, but Sherlock liked tea for its flavor.

“There’s no help for it,” John declared, absently covering Sherlock’s arm with his own, rubbing his hand over the familiar blue silk of Sherlock’s favorite dressing gown. “We’re going to have to take up paper hanging as a hobby.” Matching the pattens alone was going to be a nightmare …

“That,” Sherlock said, his chin digging in as he dropped it to rest on John’s shoulder, “or buy more bookshelves.”

John caught the bibliophile greed in Sherlock’s voice and groaned. New shelves would mean an excuse for more books and clutter, resulting in even less free space than their flat currently contained.

“You won’t be happy till we’re completely hemmed in, will you?” he asked.

“It’s one way to ensure we won’t damage the walls,” Sherlock said.

“You have a point,” John admitted, leaning into Sherlock’s embrace. “But also, I suspect, an ulterior motive.”

“Does one automatically nullify the other?” Sherlock asked, sounding utterly rational. “I think we’d better decide soon. Before sunset, at the very least …” He trailed off, nuzzling at the side of John’s neck, and sucking ever-so-gently on the healing bruise there.

John’s eyes closed and his head rolled back, resting limp against Sherlock’s chest. Last night’s activities had damped things down a bit, but the silver tide in John’s blood was still running high, as it always did the days to either side of the full moon. By sundown this evening, that surge of life force would be rising to another peak and things would be getting interesting again at 221B Baker Street.

“There you go,” John said, eyes still closed. “Reading my mind again.”

Sherlock chuckled, deep and promising. “I wasn’t reading your mind,” he rumbled. “I take it that’s a yes?”

It was possible for two people in a situation to have ulterior motives, John realized. Thinking about it, the acquisition of new bookshelves and the subsequent time Sherlock would spend poking about in second-hand stores (or on-line) for sufficiently interesting titles to increase his library would equal time where Sherlock wasn’t actively bored, while still providing a break from the grueling rash of recent cases.

This would not be a bad thing.

John sighed, trying to sound put-upon rather than hopeful. “Yeah, that’s a yes.”

“Excellent.” Sherlock emptied his cup in a single gulp and released John, giving him a light push to re-balance his weight so he wouldn’t fall over backward when Sherlock spun away, going into Action Mode. “Finish your tea and get dressed. We have a date with Ikea!”

John blinked as he realized he’d just inadvertently agreed to go with Sherlock to another large chain store. He took a fortifying swig of tea. We aren’t shopping for murder weapons this time, he thought, with a hint of desperation. Just bookshelves. What could go wrong with bookshelves?

I really should know better than that by now. Sherlock is nothing if not creative.

John found himself huffing out a small, unexpected laugh. Instead of feeling apprehensive, he was actually looking forward to seeing how Sherlock would manage to generate retail disaster once again, no matter how annoying or inconvenient it might end up being in actuality.

He could blame it on the time of month, but he knew better. After all, it was like this constantly, really. Sometimes it was howling at the moon, sometimes it was destroying wallpaper, sometimes it was baiting Scotland Yard and sometimes it was behaving like madmen in shops, but the simple truth was, Sherlock was a bad influence and John liked being influenced.

Fuel, meet fire. Fire, meet fuel, John thought, and rubbed his free hand across his face, trying to suppress an outright fit of giggles.

He turned just in time to reflex-catch the turtleneck Sherlock threw at him in passing. Trust Sherlock to know exactly which shirt John was planning to wear. “Stop reading my mind!” he told his flatmate’s retreating back.

“Stop letting me,” Sherlock called over his shoulder on the way out of the room, in the process of pulling on his own shirt.

John did laugh then, as he set his teacup in the sink.

“Trousers, John!”

“Relax. They aren’t going anywhere without me in them,” John quipped, moving unhurriedly in the direction of his bedroom.

“Yes, exactly!”

John grinned and let himself be influenced into picking up his pace.