Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1264423.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Sherlock_(TV), Sherlock_Holmes_&_Related_Fandoms
  Relationship:
      Sherlock_Holmes/John_Watson
  Character:
      Mummy_(Sherlock), Mycroft_Holmes, John_Watson, Sherlock_Holmes
  Additional Tags:
      Alpha/Beta/Omega_Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Omega_Verse, Mating_Cycles/In
      Heat, Arranged_Marriage, Age_Difference, Alternate_Universe, Underage
      Sex, Underage_Sherlock, Omega_Sherlock, Alpha_John
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-03-03 Words: 3929
****** The Breath Before Us ******
by fayfayfay
Summary
     A simple romance that takes place in a traditionalist alpha/omega
     society.
     John is invalided home and finds himself an eligible bachelor;
     Sherlock is a stubborn omega who has refused all of his suitors. They
     take to one another.
     Sherlock POV version of The_Breath_Between_Us.
Notes
     I'm going to dedicate this to damsansmerci for writing and continuing
     to write And_All_I_Loved,_I_Loved_Alone, a wonderful Omega Sherlock
     fic that I've been hanging off of for months now :)
Sherlock is standing outside when Mycroft approaches. He knows why Mycroft is
here, and wishes he didn't. Sherlock turned down their family's last resort
last night: the last single alpha with a sizeable estate this side of the
Atlantic and Sherlock refused him, bluntly and rudely. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes were
mortified. Mycroft had rolled his eyes as if he hadn't seen it coming.
Sherlock tries not to stop what he's doing. He doesn't want to give Mycroft the
satisfaction.
"Before you know it, you'll be a spinster,” he says. “They'll marry you to
cousin Ned just to get you out of the house, and then where will you be?
Birthing his two headed whelps in the countryside, confined to oblivion,”
Mycroft sounds almost bored, lecturing his brother.
"Do try to contain your jealousy," Sherlock says. Combs of honey are dripping
and swelling under his watch. "If they weren't all such bloody fools perhaps I
could tolerate them enough to sign away my independence, but--"
"You have no independence, Sherlock. You never will."
Sherlock stops.
"You have a pimple, just there, you know," Mycroft says. He points to his nose,
then walks away.
 
Sherlock is lying in bed and he hasn’t left this position for fourteen hours.
 
“You’re going to get bedsores,” he hears his brother say from the doorway. “Or
you'll get fat.”
 
“Not like you,” he murmurs. His interrupted thoughts resume.
 
Sherlock doesn’t have to look at his brother to know that he’s standing with
one shoulder against the doorframe. His posture is hatefully artful. He’s too
young for his suit, too young for his baldness. He’s still Sherlock’s best
friend, sort of, in the way that your only enemy is your worst enemy.
 
Mycroft is home from work at 6:37 PM every day; he’s moved home from London
since Sherlock debuted, hot property in upscale society.
 
They host dinner for Sherlock’s suitors near every night, still. He thought
that once they had run out of landed gentry, his parents might have given up
altogether, but that is not the case. Sherlock has eaten more in the past four
months than he ever has: cream soups, nut pastries, roasted root vegetables,
rich meats tucked into pie crusts, herbs tossed in oils, baked cheeses and
fruits. It churns in his belly when he’s trying to think, steals the blood from
his brain, taunts him from his plate, trussed up and pretty like he’s going to
be for any hand he dares not to shake.
 
Luckily, it’s within his rights to refuse every man and woman who visits. It’s
rare that after sitting through an evening with Sherlock that an Alpha will
show interest, but should they endure the insults and the deductions and the
inquisitions with grace and still pursue Sherlock and still try not to shake
his hand, Sherlock can insist. It’s within the graces of their society that
should an Omega shake a courting Alpha’s hand, they are not to be contacted.
Sherlock hadn't touched anyone in years, before all this.
 
It was February, a bitterly cold day last year, when Sherlock knew. He sat in
his chair and breathed through his nose and for once heard and saw and smelled
nothing around him, but sat with closed eyes while his classmates stirred and
sniffed. After the class let out, Sherlock stayed, and didn't dare rise until
his professor had long left. His knees trembled as he pulled himself out of the
sticky residue on his school chair. 
 
That was the last day Sherlock left the estate. Mostly, it doesn’t bother him.
Sherlock’s neurons live in the present, rejoicing in the space to fire while he
studies and researches and roams outdoors. Mostly, he’s happy to spend the
daylight hours staring at his hives, watching his bees wander, industrious and
lively. Other days he feels like a veal calf, held in a box while his muscles
atrophy and are made tender for the slaughter. 
“Remember that we have dinner tonight,” Mycroft says.
“When don't we?” Sherlock asks.
“You know what I mean,” Mycroft says, gently and with exhaustion as he turns
away.
 
An hour later, Sherlock is standing calf deep in the stream at the far west of
the Holmes estate. His toes flex inside his wool socks, the ones he forgot to
take off. At least this time he remembered his shoes; they're sitting shiny on
the banks when Mycroft approaches.
“What are you doing?” he asks, “Dirtying your short pants like a little boy.”
“Do shut up,” Sherlock whines. “Every time you speak I get a little bit
stupider.”
“At least they aren't new, your clothes. You've had the same pants since you
were twelve, when you had that growth spurt.”
“I was an early bloomer.”
“Tell that to the gynecologist,” Mycroft says, cruelly standing contraposto,
pretending not to notice the way Sherlock's back seizes up with shock and just
a bit of hurt. “Dinner tonight,” he says, and walks away.
 
So Sherlock remembers dinner; that is, until he forgets. He forgets until he
remembers, and he almost deletes dinner entirely, but that’s before he walks
past the dining room, damp and covered in moss and dirt, and he hears John.
“Used to,” John says, the end of a sentence, or perhaps grudgingly reminding
his mother of something, some hidden defect, some little problem that echoes
across the plains of his personality, oo, yes, an issue! Sherlock hides with
his back against the wall; he can almost see greying blond hair glowing in his
periphery.
The man's melodic drone, something about the way he speaks, it catches Sherlock
unaware and suddenly he finds himself very, very curious.
Sherlock returns to his room, changes, washes the mossy stench of pond mud from
his feet, and he's downstairs quite quickly. Then, he meets John.
He meets John and the rest of the world stops around them. The man, the alpha,
he's different. He's compact, capable, calloused but gentle. He looks up at
Sherlock and the gaze expects nothing, offers nothing but a little amusement,
hides everything, mostly everything. Sherlock looks at John, gnarled body,
disused brain, perfect, shining eyes. From the first few words John speaks an
entire possessive flood washes over him and Sherlock knows that John will be
his.
“You were shot,” Sherlock says, and John's eyes open a bit more, the lines of
his face expand to reveal more of his face, a bit more of who he is and what he
wants with Sherlock and just What is he doing here?
John stops. “Fascinating,” he says.
Sherlock's ears perk. He smiles.
 
The courtship is agonizing.
Sherlock has never been patient. Mrs. Holmes frets over protocol, and Mr.
Holmes embodies it. John must contact him first, but he doesn't. Sherlock isn't
supposed to touch John at all, but he does, when they meet. The first time he
slides his hand under John's during tea, the man gasps involuntarily. He stops
talking and he looks at Sherlock and Sherlock can't remember ever wanting
another human being before this. Perhaps he never did.
Every minute Sherlock wants John, wants him around and speaking and moving with
him. Their entire society is built around Sherlock being given, so why is it
that he feels like taking, taking, taking? Why can he not just live with John,
be given over in a crude ceremony and be fucked out of his wits for the next
few decades? The few times he retires to bed to sleep, he feels desperately
alone and empty, his insides flexing with the need for his alpha, his John.
 
If the courtship is agony, the heat is hell. The Holmes's servants lock him
into his bedroom as soon as his temperature purports a mild fever; he's left
with fruit and water and crackers and wine to depress his ceaseless need.
A panicked fear starts to creep into him as he lies naked and sweating under
the bedsheets. Heats before had been terrible, even painful, but now, now that
there's a subject to his want? And oh, how he wants John, in every minute, in
every instance of physical being.
And there. There's his phone.
I want to touch you, he says, and it's the beginning, the merest inkling of
what he's feeling. John should be just starting his shift.
I want to feel your skin, he types. I want your tongue and I want it to touch
mine.
I think I would like my nipples to be touched
licked, maybe.
Tell me you'll fuck me, please.
Will you close your eyes when you fuck me or will you watch?
I want to take your fat alpha cock in to my mouth. Do you think it will fit?
Do you think it will fit inside me?
John never responds. The next time they see one another, Sherlock asks to see
John's phone, and John's hands are shaking.
 
Mycroft is at his door again. Sherlock has yet to get out of bed for the day;
it's still dark outside. He hasn't slept. He hasn't slept for days.
“Here you are, again,” he says. “In bed. I thought Dr. Watson would cure that
much.”
“Standing is boring,” Sherlock says.
“Except for when John is doing it.”
“He uses a cane,” Sherlock says.
“Which he doesn't need.”
“See? Wonderful,” Sherlock says, and Mycroft is quiet for a while, but stays,
watching from the doorway.
"You don't know how bad it is, sentiment," Mycroft intones. "You won't know
when it's happening, but it will happen. He'll start to crowd you until you
can't think. You will be frustrated, but you won't be able to say why. Then you
will resent him," Mycroft continues. "You'll resent him because he does not
understand you, and because you won't be able to function like you used to.
You'll push him away, and then he'll push back, and you'll lose him."
Mycroft can't see his face but can surely see his shoulders seize with
discomfort.
"And when you lose him, you won't be able to just go back to normal. You'll
just stop, and that will be it. Your only occupation will be exposure and
neglect."
Sherlock can't help the wrenching of his face. Anxiety shoots through him like
a shower of arrows.
"Father's been sending e-mails," Mycroft says. "Consider yourself engaged."
Mycroft is gone when Sherlock starts to cry. Everything that Mycroft said to
him slips out of his ear like butter melting over a pancake. He never knew what
it was like before, to not be alone. Now he has a word for it. Engaged.
 
When Sherlock visits John that night, he can't restrain himself and lays his
entire body along John's, creating a blanket of flesh and breath. John's hands
hold his hips fast and he watches as Sherlock tries so desperately to feel him
through his clothing, watches and whispers, “Please, please; you're so
beautiful, Sherlock, you're all mine. You're all mine.”
 
John still comes by and it's every once in a while. Sometimes, his mother will
ask how John's visits were and he doesn't remember. He only remembers sitting
across from John and staring into his eyes, feeling calm and quiet and
brightness wash over him. He only remembers buzzing, soft little bodies, making
honey, making patterns, and pointing John's hands for him as an excuse to touch
him. He only remembers crushing John's mouth to his and wishing it were so much
more, more flesh, more scent.
“When you are married, this shiftlessness will not be tolerated,” Mother warns,
“You will be expected to keep a house.”
Sherlock scoffs.
John will never own a house.
 
Later, when he thinks of their wedding, he won't remember much but the stretch
of words standing between two points in time. He remembers more than anything
sweating under his clothes, feeling like his skin itself was melting under the
faint white cotton of his shirt. The sweat collected around his collar and in
the dip between his collarbones, traced his nipples under his shirt. He'll
remember John's jaw clenched tight, the coolness of the ring on his finger.
He can't stand. He's somehow made it to the cab.
He's shaking; his blood pressure has dipped low and his heat has set in fully.
There's a buzzing behind his ears and a warm fullness at the bottom of him,
pooling blood in his genitals and the fleshy glands inside of him. John is next
to him but also coursing through him; the scent of the man is enough to make
his mouth drip.
His head is suddenly under John's jacket, breathing in the scent of his abdomen
through his clothes.
“Oh God... Oh, Sherlock,” John whispers in a shaking voice, his hand trembling
on the back of Sherlock's head. His alpha cock is slowly growing, tenting his
trousers. Sherlock can feel it under his head, reaching up to touch his cheek,
his ear. He turns his head to mouth at the lump in John's trousers, hears John
struggle not to groan out loud.
“Please, John,” he says, and John, the only person who will ever be enough, he
looks at Sherlock with bright, knowing eyes.
“Shh, Sherlock,” he says, petting Sherlock’s hair, cradling his body. “I’m
going to make you so wet inside. I’m going to make you so full,” he promises,
“First with my cock, and then with my seed. I’m going to pump you full until
you’re dripping.”
Suddenly the door to the cab opens and the rush of cool air is almost enough to
make Sherlock cry. The fever in his blood and the sweat blistering on his
forehead make the calm Autumn day feel arctic and John is talking to him.
“Please, love,” he's saying, but Sherlock's joints are liquid. John's arms,
solid and strong, wrap around his back and under his knees. The grey asphalt,
the hinge of the door, the stairs all flash before him until he feels the
blissful coolness of a solid bed. John is braced over him, breathing heavily,
almost as deeply as Sherlock.
His heats before were studies in agony, the beginnings of them torturous, the
duration terrifying and empty and dull. Now all he can feel is an unending
stimulus: John's hands, mouth, and arms. John, John, John.
Every desperate kiss, every touch over clothing, every mime of what they could
now actually do was leading up to John's hands on his body, stripping his
trousers, gasping in admiration of the wetness flowing from between his legs.
John is grasping his thighs and he's naked, yards of flesh ready to be laid
against Sherlock's. His breathing picks up and his insides can't stop flexing
and burning, wanting nothing but John and his fat cock, standing proudly
against his belly.
John's hands come in to him and they slip so easily; Sherlock's head throws
back and he groans, long and loud. His knees snap onto John's arm and he begs,
“Please, John.”
John's eyes are dazed and he nods, short and fast, “Yes.”
He feels it but he can't look at it; John takes his long, fat cock in hand and
presses it between Sherlock's legs. The head feels so large and blunt and
rather than wondering if John will fit inside of him Sherlock keens for it,
“Please, John, please--”
John is inside of him and Sherlock screams, the inside of him singing with heat
and pain and the most delicious stretching sensation, everything he'd been
imagining for months, everything he'd wanted. John is breathing in his ear,
Sherlock's legs on his shoulders and every breath is a choking gasp.
John braces himself around Sherlock's ears, looking down at him and for the
first time Sherlock feels visible and like every part of him is laid out to
John, charted and labeled and free.
John's right hand darts to Sherlock's belly and he begins to move, feeling his
own cock move through Sherlock's body. The feel of him, in and outside
Sherlock, is too much. His cock starts to pulse and a warmth rushes from the
core of him and outward like a fire.
“John, please, I'm going to come,” he gasps and John rocks in to him, coaxing
him toward orgasm and it happens, fast and pure, smacking him strong like an
ocean wave.
“I love you; I love you so much,” he says, “my beautiful Sherlock, mine,” John
is murmuring, holding him fast, continuing to work in to Sherlock's body.
Sherlock can hear their flesh smacking together, warm and wet and frictionless.
“Come inside,” he says, and John shakes his head. Sherlock can feel John's knot
swelling, large and hard and Sherlock wants it in his body like he's never
wanted anything. John is protesting even as his body drives into Sherlock,
brutally and hard. “Do it, please, John, knot me--”
One, two thrusts and John holds Sherlock so tightly that it hurts, pulling
Sherlock's body on to his knot.
John screams. Sherlock's vision whites out in pulses and he murmurs, with
pleasure, with love.
 
Sherlock wakes up and breathes in London.
John knew he could've never lived anywhere else. John is thoughtful and
perceptive. John's friends hate him and he has no family and his fridge is full
of condiments and take out and John sees him.
John presents him with a lab in the form of several bottles and burners and
jars. As a marriage gift, he says, and hanging on the door is a wool coat.
Sherlock puts it on and the back sweeps out in a dramatic circle.
One of John's broad, rough hands cradles first his neck, then his jaw, then his
hair, the other grasps totally at his cotton shirt. John's mouth finds his
temple, then his ear.
"You're not to go outside without it," he whispers. "I won't have you freezing
your little arse off."
"Of course, John," Sherlock replies, and John leaves. He is suddenly cold.
Of course, Sherlock goes outside constantly. Within an hour of waking he's
memorized every corner and cranny of their apartment, every dust leaving, every
mouse dropping (three, all more than a decade old and hidden beneath the
baseboards), every pore of their meager furniture and it's all very cripplingly
boring.
So, Sherlock goes collecting.
Within a week, he has entirely new, decrepit, old furniture, the kind mummy
threw away all at once when he was born in concession to fashion. He has winged
chairs, rotting tables, the bleached skeleton of a rat in a jar, an Erlenmeyer
flask from behind the hospital and a few knives purchased from a peddler. More
importantly, he's met a group of half a dozen homeless children posing as
schoolboys who make a living conning tourists for "tube fare". He's young
enough that they don't know whether to distrust or deify him but the quick work
of a couple of pound notes clear that up quickly.
John comes home at staggered times, sometimes in the evenings, sometimes in the
mornings or in brightest daylight and there's always something new that
Sherlock's picked up.
"Had I known I wouldn't have to pay to keep a spouse entertained, I might have
gotten into the business a bit earlier," he says, crawling over Sherlock's
body, which is warmed by sunlight and a sheet.
"No, you wouldn't have," Sherlock says, "You were meant to have me," he
insists. John's hands are under the sheet now, and his trousers and pants are
gone. Sherlock is still wet and open from the night before and his eyes and
skin are dull with sleep, but John touches him, throws Sherlock's legs over his
shoulders and his body is on fire. Already he's anticipating the speeding of
John's breath on his neck, the way his grip tightens on Sherlock's middle as he
approaches climax, the burst of his orgasm echoing through Sherlock's body in
warmth. He starts to shake and he is already full and hard, aching for John to
touch him.
"Yes," John smiles, and his body is inside of Sherlock's for the hundredth
time, "Only you."
 
The first time he's jailed, he doesn't have his coat. He's pacing around the
holding cell, whirling with contempt--even the drunk and disorderlies seem to
have multiple layers and it wasn't until he got thrown into this bloody cell
that he realized how incredibly cold he could be.
His first instinct is to call Mycroft, who has moved back to London following
Sherlock's marriage. They've been brothers for so long, partners in arms. He
couldn't possibly tell mother and father. His brother is the only one who
understands--if not the urge to flout the law entirely, then the curiosity that
puts him into spells of action. He's come to realize that everything Mycroft
said to mock him, to scare him off of John, it really was a form of jealousy
meant to make him stay. Mycroft really would have preferred if Sherlock stay
with the Holmes estate, so that they could be lonely and ludicrous and strange
together instead of alone.
Sherlock hates him for it.
Then, the thought comes to him: John!
John is his husband now. John is his ally. He must call John.
He speeds up to the bars: "I would like a phone call!"
 
John comes speeding in with haste, flushed from the wind beginning to pick up
outside. His lips are pink and chapped and Sherlock stares from the wooden
benches as he speaks with one guard, then two.
An officer who he'd not grown to like fetches Sherlock from behind bars. John
is less than fifteen feet away now, growing closer.
“Gentleman come to pick you up,” the officer says, “you're lucky your dad's
willing to come out so late.”
At first Sherlock is confused. His father hasn't come out; he's at home, most
likely sleeping, most likely a little balder, a little older since last
Sherlock saw him. Then it hits him: oh.
John has always been a bit sensitive about their respective ages. Sherlock
looks to him, and of course, his head is declined in a show of deference, as if
to apologize.
“My father is in the country,” Sherlock says, before he knows what he's doing.
“This is my husband, Dr. John Watson. That much should be obvious.”
“Oh! Excuse me, didn't, erm, didn't realize--”
“Of course you didn't,” Sherlock says, “Matching rings? Have you even smelled
us? Idiot. Moron. Obvious.”
John holds his head high and leads a snivelling, muttering Sherlock out of the
building for the first of a hundred times.
It's snowing.
“God, I'm a pervert,” John says, staring at his shoes, and for a few seconds,
Sherlock can't help but laugh.
“Is it not customary that you chastise me? Given that I was jailed?,” Sherlock
asks. Then, he gets it. “No, John,” he says. “Perhaps eager, but not a
pervert,” he says, laughing, and John shakes his head.
“No, I'm much too old for you, you know, Sherlock. I don't..”
“Don't be stupid,” Sherlock says, sneering. “No one else would have had me. I
wouldn't have let anyone else.”
He takes John's face into his hands and the two of them stand, allowing dry,
cold snow to touch delicately to the hair on their heads, around their eyes. It
melts and sticks the strands of John's eyelashes together. Their cold, naked
hands press against one another and the rest of them does, too, Sherlock's dry
lips touching those of his husband. Sherlock's heart beats slowly, assured that
with every thump, thump, thump John's heart will thud back, just a step behind,
following Sherlock's, always.
  Works inspired by this one
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!