Half-Cocked
They were just lying there on the kitchen table, innocent as you please.
Sherlock Holmes took one step back.
Contrary to what people believe, Sherlock gets scared. He's scared when he jumps from one fire escape to another, scared as a suspect swings at him with a nail-studded cricket bat, and he's scared—just a bit, only a really little bit, almost infinitesimal—of disappointing John just months into their romantic relationship.
Most of the time Sherlock deals with his fears by outrunning them. If you leap before you look, shout before you duck, and turn your own domineering temperament on yourself, you can noisily bull your way right past most of what frightens you.
This is less easy to accomplish when the thing of which you're frightened is lying on the kitchen table, winking at you as it catches low morning light.
Sherlock took another step back. He felt a spurt of adrenaline prickle his skin. Sherlock's fond of adrenaline. Of spurts, too come to think of it (reflexively Sherlock's mind went to the place on John that…spurts; reflexively Sherlock breathed a little heavier).
Sherlock took a step forward.
So this was something John was into. Sherlock nodded, unsurprised. John had been extensively bedded. It didn't take a deductive genius to figure out that a man with a wide sexual experience would like to experience many…wide things.
And, as evidenced by their sudden appearance on the kitchen table this, apparently, was a thing John wanted to experience.
Sherlock took another step forward, until he was looking down at the unremarkable package on the kitchen table. It was unremarkable. It was a small, plain blister pack, inside of which three silver rings nested one in the other.
Despite having a sexual repertoire only as varied as thirteen weeks could make it, Sherlock knew what these were and what these were were cock rings. Sherlock was pretty sure he didn't like cock rings. Sherlock was especially pretty sure he especially didn't like cock rings like these.
They were circles of metal. Seamless metal. Unforgiving metal. Call Lestrade and have him bring the chain cutters because this thing is seriously stuck metal.
Sherlock took a step back. He was unconsciously clenching his thighs, a vague instinct of defense. His cock, however, did not feel defended. Judging from how tightly his balls were drawn to his now-sweating body, Sherlock's cock felt very vulnerable indeed.
And then there was a sudden stirring and that stirring was not in Sherlock's pants (partially because he wasn't wearing any). The stirring was John, in the bedroom, opening a bedside drawer—left one, the one on Sherlock's side of the bed. Sherlock counted the seconds.
One, two, three… Right. John was not reaching for the tissues in Sherlock's bedside drawer, meaning John had not just finished wanking and was wishing to clean himself off.
…four, five, six, seven, eight… The drawer closed. John had had to feel his way around inside, searching for a tube that tended to slide back into the recesses of the drawer. That meant John was reaching for the lube. And not just any lube.
No, John was reaching for the minty lube, the stuff that sort of burns but in a confusingly good way, a way that the body apparently interprets not really as pain but as sexual arousal.
John wasn't going to wank, if he was just going to wank he'd either have licked his palm a couple times or used the plain lube in his bedside table.
No, John had the minty lube because John knew from ten days experience—they bought the stuff not two weeks previous simply because Sherlock likes mint-scented things—that Sherlock liked it. It hadn't seemed so when first applied. Sherlock had growled, "It burns," and then growled even lower, "leave it," when John tried wiping it off. It was then they realised Sherlock responds well to highly-fragrant sex aids that make his penis tingle.
This all meant that John was in the bedroom and in the mood, and he was hoping to get Sherlock in the mood.
Sherlock took another step toward the table.
Maybe John was in the mood for these, too. Sherlock's slight erection, which had been forming at the sound of the bedside drawer, flagged at the thought. Maybe if he hid them. Maybe if Sherlock did what he does and accidentally buried the rings under an experiment, or the burning remains of one, John would forget that he'd made this terrible purchase.
Then Sherlock's testicles could come out of his abdomen and his cock would stir again at the thought of minty freshness, and he and John would go on as they'd been going, doing a lot of things of which Sherlock was quickly becoming fond.
Then, after a few years, when John was feeling bored and Sherlock magnanimous, the good detective would maybe suggest sex toys of the cock ring nature. He'd pretend urbane knowledge and he'd have already bought a wide array of the things, an array that did not include seamless, cold, unforgiving, unbreakable metal.
A finger brushed soft up the naked crack of Sherlock's arse and the good detective levitated three inches off the floor.
Everyone took a step—Sherlock forward, away from that unexpected finger, John also forward, in high apology.
"Oh god, I'm so sorry! You were a million miles away and I thought I'd tip-toe into your mind palace with, uh, my fingers."
Sherlock unclutched his breast, beneath which his stout heart pounded. He was beginning to long for a suspect and a nail-studded cricket bat.
"John," Sherlock began.
The man so named stilled, one hand on Sherlock's hip, the other reaching for his hand.
"John," Sherlock ended, feeling as if he'd said all that needed saying.
The good doctor blinked up at his just-thirteen-weeks lover and realised this was one of those times when Sherlock needed to say a whole lot but had not one fresh clue how to say it.
John said it for him. And got it wrong. "It's fine, I keep telling you it's fine love, we don't have to, ever, unless you want to. I'm…it's good."
No, no, no.
John was not understanding. It would be an infrequent issue in their long and loving union, but an issue none-the-less. (Though not really, for already John had learned the best way to help Sherlock find his words was to throw out some wrong ones.)
"No, no, no," Sherlock said, clutching John's hands to his chest. "I want to, I want to much more than I thought I would. I want to when we're at the Yard, when we're in a cab, when you're watching telly in nothing but that awful green dressing gown. I want to almost always and on nearly everything but I don't want Lestrade here with bolt cutters because my penis is turning blue."
John Watson is a remarkable doctor, a sterling soldier, a really rather good amateur sleuth, but John's at his most brilliant as an interpreter of consulting detectives. That said and even so, it took the good doctor three seconds and one shift of a luscious hip—putting a previously blocked portion of the kitchen table into view—before John was able to say…
"Ooooh. Nooooo. No, Sherlock, no. Those aren't for you!"
So help him, Sherlock's first thought was that those fearsome rings were for some other man's privates. That adrenaline of which he's usually so fond shot through Sherlock cold, unwelcome, and on the tails of a kind of bark.
This being the first time (though not the last) that John heard that particular sound out of this particular man, the good doctor twitched, cementing Sherlock's certainties that John had erotic intentions toward another man's peni—
"Oh! No! They're not for someone else either!"
Sherlock was one lovely split second from a warm wash of relief and a fresh surge of sensuality when he realised the obvious: He was going to be the cause of John's penis being strangled and turning blue. He was going to have to apply those wretched things to John's beautiful—
"Oh no, no, no, Sherlock, the blasted things aren't ours."
Sherlock is nothing if not a thinker and so, still awash in a confusing mix of sexy hormones and fight-or-flight adrenaline, he used his thinking place to go off completely half cocked, yelling, "Mrs. Hudson!"
Scandalised, as if the woman in question had materialised before them in knee boots and surrounded by exotic dancing boys, both men stepped away from the table.
John regained his wits sooner and, so that this derailment would at last come to a crashing halt, began babbling many, many words.
"Sherlock Holmes, my beautiful sweet love who has the body of a god, the mouth of an archangel, and less common sense than god has given a deep sea sponge, those rings that rest upon our kitchen table are not meant to encircle your fetching penis. They are not meant for the penis of another. And they sure as fucking bloody hell are getting nowhere near my dick because let me tell you, I've seen what misapplied metal can do to tender skin and delicate capillaries and I promise you it will not—" John took a deep breath to stop himself, then began again.
"Sherlock, those cock rings are not for either of our penises, they are not an item Mrs. Hudson has bought for private use and then fetched up here and somehow forgotten. They are something far less alarming than that love. Can you guess what that something is?"
Ordinarily Sherlock would judge such a tone as one, condescending; two, annoying; and three, unworthy of reply. But even only a few months into this romance Sherlock knows a few things about his bedmate: one, the only time John will condescend to him is when Sherlock himself is being uh, condescendier. Two, the good doctor is often annoying but, three, he is always worthy of a reply.
So.
Sherlock began thinking with his thinking place again and within a split instant realised the dramatically obvious.
"They are Mr. Chatterjee's."
John reflected for the first time (though not the last) that Sherlock was pretty as a picture, smart as a whip, brilliant at a brilliant number of nuanced and rarified things—and that sometimes he had the insight of a brick.
John tipped forward until his forehead thunked against his sweetheart's sternum. "Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock. The cock rings are not Mr. Chatterjee's. They are not Mrs. Hudson's. They are not yours and they are not mine. They are just one very simple thing, they—"
Sherlock clutched at the ripeness of his own bare back end, opened his mouth in a panic and John could not even begin to visualise what Sherlock was visualising now.
No, instead John clapped a careful hand over another incipient bark and said quickly, "They are an accident Sherlock. They came along in an Amazon order but I did not order them."
John looked up into pale eyes over which big brows lofted, he wriggled the hand still held fast against Sherlock's chest. "Do you understand now?"
Sherlock nodded carefully, for Sherlock now understood many things.
He understood that John Watson was the only man in England—perhaps the entire United Kingdom—who would not have completely lost his mind in attempting to be Sherlock's lover.
He understood that he was extremely lucky to have found the only man in England—perhaps all of the UK—who could not only retain his sensibilities while being Sherlock's lover but who actually, you know, wanted the post.
Sherlock also understood that his testicles were tentatively descending and his penis cautiously stirring.
And finally Sherlock understood one thing most emphatically: he understood that John had probably ordered something completely fantastic from Amazon.
Feeling the tiniest spike of adrenaline zinging through the bits of him that were tentatively descending and cautiously stirring, Sherlock released John's hand, pressed his naked body against his lover's similarly unclothed flesh and purred, "Oh?"
First: There will be no pause in weekly postings of this already-completed story unless I'm abducted. Second, this was inspired by the lovely SweetLateJuliet, who received from Amazon not the innocent item she was expecting, but an austere little set of metal cock rings. Thank you dear Juliet, I hope you and yours didn't (or maybe did?) go off…half-cocked.