BBCSH 'Sevens, Or A Case of UnManned Examplitude'

Author: tigersilver

Pairing: Sherlock/John

Rating: NC-17

Word Count: 3,800

Warnings/Summary: The very first time, as it happens. Unashamed PWP; totes it is, peeps. Wouldn't know what to do with a plot device if it slapped me.

For quite seven minutes, Sherlock comes to stand before John. Two minutes in, he hikes his trousers down.

Four minutes in, John cautiously extends a hand after carefully laying down the glossy magazine he'd been staring at intensely and blankly for the prior two.

Five and three-quarter's sees John Watson scowling. And bears witness to Sherlock Holmes rocking back on his heels, flinching.

At the commencement of the seventh minute exactly, the doctor-cum-purveyor of this odd hand job in progress speaks:

"It's not like that. I mean. You don't do—you've got to re—Sherlock. That's—here! Let me—that's not right, either, oh no. Not right at all. Shift closer, will you? Lean forward more. If you want this, you'll have to cooperate, at least a little. I've a crick in my neck now, thanks to you."

John Watson spouts all this grumbly nonsense at his flatmate in all seriousness but he has his steady-as-she-goes palm and digits wrapped round Sherlock's protruding John Thomas all the same. He pats and pulls at it, fumbling as it isn't his own and he's not familiar. Metal zipper teeth and mundane silk shorts rucked around Sherlock's slim hips impede him, slip-sliding. The metal tongue of Sherlock's sagging belt buckle pokes at the doctor's calloused thumb where it circles the uncut head of Sherlock's member.

He shakes the wretched buckle away, scowling. As there's a willy, not his, bobbing madly before his frowny face and he's not best pleased with his stubborn flatmate—who, for the record, is not best pleased with him.

"John!"

Not John, per se, but the positions the men are situated in vis-à-vis this wanking.

"WhenI do it…" the doctor mutters slowly, softly, adamantly intent no matter what may come, concentrating. The tip of his tongue peeks between his teeth. "When I do it, I…"

The detective grunts.

There's a tug and a hangnail catch at curly black short hairs which stings—or maybe not—and Sherlock is all at once entirely impatient and collapses himself in half, bending to smother a mumbly John with a kiss.

It's a brilliant kiss, though sideways and canted, but he worries it doesn't have the desired effect, after.

"I always—" John muses wetly, still caressing, reaching fretfully after the retreating, annoying, painfully erect prick with a rising note of irked desperation in his tone. "Argh! If you'll just sit, Sherlock," he grouses, his arm twingeing painfully from the way he favours it, "this would be easier."

"No." It's flat and it is final. "No. Bed, John."

Sherlock rears upright, paces back to make his point. Returns. He's adamant as well.

"My room."

He's barely breathing between syllables, the detective. He cannot sit. He cannot fall, as his blogger wants him to do. He cannot subside demurely upon the sofa, god no! He can barely remain vertical; the only solution is to move.

"Not here—not for this."

"I—what? Why not?"

He cannot touch John from where he stands; the man is an island parked on their sofa, inviolate. He is forced to stand above, looming. Does not compute. Horizontal access is much more logical.

He feels it is useless to articulate this quandary of reach-and-trajectory; contents himself with a long deep stare. John's hand slows as his fingers trickle firm over Sherlock's frenullum.

"Oh."

"John." Sherlock won't be able to tolerate a jot more of this otherwise. "Yes, John." Privacy is needed. He cannot even think of ejaculation without it.

He wills John to know that. Stares and stares and stares.

"Oh." John blinks up for a long moment and then ducks his chin, gaze whizzing away. His features close down, upon and around their usual open honesty, containing it. He's all po-faced and lemony-biting all at once, folding down the corners of his neat mouth; he knows and regrets the expression his face is currently making, true, but. For a moment he reminds Sherlock uneasily of Mycroft. Sherlock, he fidgets.

Stares and stares. Sullenness threatens.

"Oh…kay. Coming," and there's a variety of John-sigh at long last issuing from pursed lips. It's reassuring, overall. "Keep your hair on."

He heaves himself to his feet, the sofa cushions creaking behind him as he goes. The detective clasps his wrist immediately and tugs him.

Floorboards crack like scattered gunshot under their tread.

"Come along, then."

Such a long way. Making the short trek to Sherlock's room is a bloody nightmare. Neither seems to know the way there. They do, of course, but it's terribly awkward. It's very slow progress for two men who've just been engaged in a spot of handsy. Miscellaneous snogging had been the introduction to that but such oral activities as occurred had occurred as a separate instance, hours earlier.

The gap spent in motion seems to stretch time in its wake. Uncomfortably elastic time; it rebounds.

John stumbles at one point of their perilous passage. Sniffs and swallows uncomfortably. Makes as if he's about to roll his head about on his neck: always an ominous precursor. Sherlock is forced to grab more firmly at John, admittedly terrified the obstinate man might veer off.

"Come on," he growls, angling his roommate toward the doorway admitting entry to his room and then bung on through it with haste and with a degree of force. John does actually consent to come. Tacitly. "Come in."

Tea, and the making of it, a ritual soothing act Sherlock feared may very well overcome this first attempt at truly valid intimacy if the urge is left unchecked, evaporates from the equation, like a cancelled 'x' factor. Sherlock can only feel relieved.

"Welcome." He giggles it, high-pitched and strangled, and bows slightly at the waist, inclining his head. Hates himself, instantly.

Is not himself, evidently, but some stranger.

John has clutched at Sherlock as well, but with a grimace bourn of learnt methods of handling.

"Er. Thanks." John smiles up at his erstwhile lover, but it's forced.

Sherlock stares at the widening gap between them as John lets go his forearm and steps back…and back…and back. Till his knees bump the edge of Sherlock's bed frame.

He's bathed. John's bathed. They are clean, he thinks, inside and out, so there's that issue out of the way. Oh, joy. And he knows John is interested, intensely intrigued, as is he. In him, in sex, in…in closure. A relief, that. However. He is not relieved to be disrobing before another man. Another person.

There are scars upon him. Marks, bruises to the bone, never fully digested as belonging. Weals and shiny lumps on his skin. His face…well, John seems to like his face, at least, but that's only a fraction of the whole John will need to appreciate if ever this experiment is to fly.

It is not an experiment, it is an endeavour. A most serious endeavour. The urge to giggle hysterically vanishes as if it had never been.

"Eh," he gulps, closed door firmly at his spine and the two bony points of his pelvis. His trousers are very fine, yes. They suit him well. "We...uh, we're here."

Obviously. He's trying far too hard. Sherlock knows it.

John blinks. Opens his mouth, pauses, and closes it right up again, almost with an audible swish. Like a door on a bus.

The detective pulls a face, one he knows consciously is very silly. He's tempted to wink salaciously as he had before once but some salutary benign influence prevents him so he settles for a partial grin instead, one corner tilted up, one corner turned down. His most charming. John knows precisely where they are, anyway. What they intend to do there.

Hopefully, why.

Sherlock feels a total fool, a randy one.

It's completely plastic, his grin. Lunatic.

"There's," he swallows, losing it altogether, his fake smile, "the bed." He swallows again. "John."

He cannot seem to work his throat sufficiently to overcome the bewildering lack of saliva in his mouth. He despises himself, really.

"I see, yes. Here we are."

With the wry smile and inhalation on Watson's part, the tiniest of aborted movements forward, the detective rather expects his quietly intrepid flatmate to then leap upon him in an excess of passion. Or to instead hurdle past his person and arbitrarily flee his room altogether, having reconsidered. That is not, though, what happens next.

Nothing happens next.

For the longest time. "Yes," the doctor nods amiably after eons have died unmarked by society and just before his amiable face clouds up like a minor stormcloud. "Um…no," he tacks on, after it does.

"No?"

Sherlock had previously believed he'd cornered the market on performance anxiety. Though he shouldn't care, hasn't cared and, if asked, he'll assure anyone he doesn't.

He does. He won't admit it, though.

"I don't." But it's the doctor who's the skittish one, here. Predictably in a twist over the—

"The mechanics, sure, I understand them," John states, neatly. "But I don't." He rests a spread-wide hand upon his own belt but he doesn't make a move to discard it. He simply stands there, inert, facing Sherlock. Lips flapping more nonsense, before a Sherlock who watches, eerily silent. "Know. I, erm. I haven't. Exactly…with a man. To a man. Yet."

He takes a long breath and visibly pulls himself together.

"Yet," he says again, quietly emphatic. Pauses with intent, blinking rapidly as he glances offsides for a second, scanning the contents of domain Holmes. "Not that it's not all right, either. I just haven't," he shrugs, glancing back again, "you know?"

Sherlock is the one who knows all that. Knows and knows and knows, till he's bored with it, twitted to tears. Tedious past sexual exploits, excessively dreary current lack of relationships beyond the surface physical—that's John H. Watson. Schoolmarms, fellow medicos and nurse-practitioners, barristas and barmaids, John's methods and means of getting off are so obvious they're yawn-worthy. Clearly there have been no men. Very few women of lasting note, either, though John's definitely been down that road before. Feels confident, even, to try his luck often and as it strikes him. Even with a man—even with his flatmate. In re his flatmate: likely is curious as to whether the hints of something passionate boiling below the surface are more than merely the result of two testosterone-producing healthy males crammed into the space of one flat for a longish dry spell.

Snogging, prior incident, over tea: an instance of example.

Or not. It may well be his unhealthful interest in trouble. John has an equally unhealthful fancy for gambling.

He has, they did; Sherlock devised; here they are. 'Let's have dinner,' as the Adler female might text.

But, no.

This is not the ken Sherlock swims in, no. Oh, he can fuck—no, 'fornicate with consent of the King' is proper—with the best of them, he's certain of that. Ask anyone he's ever laid or been shagged by and they'll tell one he was quite the most intense shag they've ever had. Best at the act of it—god, but isn't it obvious? Pleasure centres, prostate, clit, maybe-imaginary 'G', slot A into B—all so obvious, all so readily obtainable!—but perhaps, just perhaps, best also at scarpering off out afterwards, and never texting back after.

There's no place to go for safety if this venture with his good friend falls through. Nowhere to run.

"John," he murmurs and inches forward. Falls back again, nearly defeated before it's begun, the next farcical act. "John, I—"

Sherlock feels briefly a deep flash of empathy for Molly Hooper. He gestures a wide swoopy arm, but there's no meaning to it. It's nerves alone.

Oh, crikey, but he does honestly hate himself for that.

"Uh, urrr…um." John is…well, John is, at best, hesitant. Also, and for the moment. "…Ah."

There's a mental quibble.

For a split-second Dr Watson is very much resigned to thinking this will be a no-go. Or how it will become forced, or as ungainly as it is now but all through and through, tainted with all manner of not-sexual undertones, or perhaps instead it will pass over them both well enough but like galloping rough ground lightly—John is military, after all—it will jar them off their pins and bog straight down in the aftermath.

Sherlock, musing along similar lines, abhors the aftermath. He's no idea what to do with it.

"Um," John waffles. "Sor—" He cuts himself off with a snap of teeth. His fingers clutch at his own securely fastened belt for an instant and all Sherlock can vividly imagine is his own massive crystallized disappointment, shattering amounts of it, should John choose to not follow through.

Oh, dread. What now? He can barely repress a terrified shudder.

John, for his part, looks a bit ill about the gills. Feels it, too. He's shifting back and forth on the balls of his bare feet and licking his lips repeatedly. He can feel himself doing this and he despises that he is.

His gut churns.

"John?" Sherlock rips at his drifting shirt abruptly and yanks at a button. "John." His trousers and shorts are barely hanging on slim lean hips, where John had tugged them up so he could walk without falling. He is so erect, despite everything, it is honestly painful. It juts out, his dick, and cannot be ignored by either of them. "John, I," he growls, using the door as a last leverage to really enter the fray, "John, I want this—you."

"Right, right." His friend looks vaguely uncomfortable. "Yes, of co—"

"John, no, I really do," Sherlock is quick to say, advancing. "I want this."

He gestures for a second time between them, peering closely to note that the doctor is also still interested in proceedings. He is, demonstrably. There's a bulge at the juncture of his thighs under the worn denim, just below the sagging hem of his eldest jumper. If anything, it's more prominent than it was before. Both 'befores'.

"Oh, god, so do I, sod me." A white smile cracks briefly Sherlock's way and disappears just as soon. John shifts slightly on his two well-planted feet. "Uh, h'erm?"

Sherlock takes a relieved breath. He feels he can again. But…this is awkward.

There should be some sort of biological switch, a handle or knob one can adjust up or down. On, off.

"Sherlock." John, for his part, has apparently decided to go with on. He's not fucked a man before; that's all dandy, that's fine. He knows how. Theoretically. He wants it, very much—so, he will. "Sherlock," he murmurs softly and Sherlock's furtive inching off the closed door and John's own one-single-long-determined stride-off-the-precipice-of-tedious-hetero at last collide. Mid-ground, like plate tectonics, but on a carpet recently hoovered by Mrs Hudson.

"Ah," Sherlock says.

"A'hem," John replies. "Er, shall we?"

It's the snogging that saves them.

"Sherlock, harder," John wheedles of the man after a searing moment, and the detective does as he's asked, rubbing his fingertips into John's arse with a bit more force, as if he means it. He does mean to; that's why they are here. The pleased groan that greets that fine show of enthusiasm is infinitely reassuring. "Sherlock," John whispers, tugging his head downwards by the nape of his neck and the quick wrap-around of a cock-eyed elbow joint, "more."

The snogging, at least, is bloody brilliant. As before.

Minutes are spent on lapping mouths only, with little nips and swipes of tongues and much moisture exchanged. Electricity sparks up Sherlock's spinal column. John sways on clenched tip-toes, dizzy.

"John, John," Sherlock pants, and he angles them for the inevitable fall, shuffling his partner quick-march backwards. The mattress gives springily as they land, sprawling across it in an ungainly fashion, legs tangling.

He's hampered by his trousers; John is still fully clothed, excepting his feet. It's maddening, really.

Skin would be the next great thing. Horizontal is achieved; they can each make use of all four hands and both sets of lips. But skin. Is desirable. More of it, soonest, exposed. Very hot, damp skin, as core temperatures have escalated significantly in the last few moments.

Yes. Brilliant snogging, and inventive, too.

The doctor's tongue squirming in the detective's exposed ear canal does much to derail the detective's fine mind from its purpose. He retaliates by fiercely chomping down on John's neck and applying specific suction.

Scrambling madly to strip down, both one's own self and each other, results in knocked heads and a few accidental pinches and unromantic winces. Grunts, moans, nasty hissings. There's a mutter of foul language and the disturbance of Sherlock's neatly made up bedclothes to move through with a modicum of grace and a mostly unrelenting focus.

"Fuck, fuck," John snarls at one point, bending hastily, "fuck, why didn't you take off your shoes before, Sherlock? Why even put them on?"

"I don't know, I don't know, sorry," the detective gasps, kicking them off as he speaks. "Sorry, sorry, John—please—come—come."

He never says please or sorry normally. He feels and he expresses both emotions—gratitude and regret—of course and all the time, at least to his most favoured blogger, but he seldom uses the words. It's a measure of how much he truly desires this outcome that he can't stop saying either word now.

"Please. Come."

His flatmate hardly heeds him. Though he may recall the courtesies paid him later, with a smile.

John's pleasant features screw up into a fret of lines at the edges; he can't seem to make himself comfortable. The detective is heavy on him despite the deceptive skinniness and they each have pointy joints and no true sense of where to lay hands next.

This is new, all new. He'll have to wing it, going by what he knows as a half-arsed guide.

He settles with a hand laid back round the length of Sherlock's pulsing livid prick and a hot palm cupped gently under the crest of a high-beamed, shallowly-indented cheekbone, and thrusts his one free leg across Sherlock's hip where it's turned up, exposed. They're sideways, facing. He bears down with his inner thigh and his knee joint, throwing his weight into it and twining his ankle about Sherlock's shin as he clambers. This, as the detective flails, attempting to solve the puzzle of his own hideously awkward limbs.

Sherlock cannot make up his damned mind, for his part.

"Ngh! Nnhh!" He fumbles for John's cock through the intervention of old denims-plus-a worn belt all parted awkwardly but his fingers are much too twitchy to coordinate properly and they slip. He pushes and pulls at the smaller man's upper body, wanting him plastered close enough to share heat but paradoxically wanting him far enough off him so Sherlock has a choice of where to kiss next, where to caress next, where to indulge in his craving for touching John Watson next. It's all extremely frustrating for Sherlock. His bedroom is sweltering. He fears he might ejaculate just from glancing observations of the physical effects they have upon one another. "Nh!"

He gives up entirely on using his formidable vocabulary to communicate with his mate, too. Pants, gasps, groans, moans, nasal whining noises and wordless, nearly silent inhalations and exhalations do well enough, he thinks—doesn't think. Grabs and clinches, nips and licks: all that is a newer language to him. Not 'new', exactly; he's only a bit rusty with it.

"Urrrngh…"

No, he's familiar but it's been a long time. Relatively speaking.

"Ah!"

John's a natural at that language and he, at least, finally has a decent grasp on proceedings. He eases into a steady rhythm of thrust-pump action in the pelvic region, one guaranteed to have his flatmate getting off spectacularly well in a matter of practiced moments—but Sherlock snorts and bats his hand away at the near end.

"No!" the detective rumbles in a snarly fashion, nearly cross-eyed from peering at John's pop-eyed puzzled glare. "Penetration, John. This is useless without penetration."

"I—er," John squeaks, winded. "I sort of thought we'd work our way up to that bit, Sher—"

"May as well have wanked off on the sofa, then," Sherlock sneers snidely, going up on one elbow, "and not bothered. Penetration; you or me, I don't care which, but we'll be having it. I have the supplies."

He does. He feints to go for them.
"No you don't!"

John grapples Sherlock, grinning like a rabid dog. They tussle but the detective wins this one. Of course, Dr Watson wasn't seriously trying to stop him, either. He chuckles when they roll about; Sherlock licks the sound away but the playfulness remains for a space.
"Go on, then, if you're going to."

But there's a glint in the doctor's clear blue eyes that is all subdued seriousness when Sherlock really does reach over his bedmate to drag open the drawer of his side table with a bang. John flushes more brilliantly pink than he already is from exertion, all up and down his chest and reaching in hot waves over a stickily-smeared belly, and considers seriously calling it quits right then and there, the whole business. Waiting about, given too ample a time to really think it all through, what's happening to him, to them—it's the worst.

Logistically, they can do it. They've the means and apparently at least one of them has the iron-clad will and the other the medical knowledge sufficient to avoid injury. But—but.

He really doesn't want it to be him, cheers. Going in. Into Sherlock. God, no. Really, really not.

"John?" There's a wealth of hurt in Sherlock's voice when the man elegantly tumbles back to face his friend, having ungracefully scrabbled one-handed and brought forth an overflowing spill of foil packets.

Sherlock closes his eyes briefly. John's expression?

He may die, happily. Die and be done with this—this disaster they created of what's intended by some to be an act of love…or, more commonly, at least, an act of animal desire. Die, expire, and die again. Ignobly.

He doesn't die. The doctor saves him.

"You, then," John blurts out, and abruptly rolls over, presenting a shut-eyed, grievously wretched Sherlock with his fine arse. It's firm in the buttocks, nicely toned, and a virginal area, fish-belly white from a complete lack of exposure to UV. "You, please." He waggles it, making much of it in a fit of pique-and-passion, and Sherlock's reluctantly well-guarded eyes pop open accordingly. "If—if—fine."

Rollercoasters without braking mechanisms intact, the swoop of the Eye in a fierce lightning storm and the act of falling six stories into a rubbish-laden lorry, all previous actual experiences of Sherlock's, have nothing on this singular feeling.

He feels un-sheeted, vastly over-exposed.

Watson has no patience for that, no. Not when he's made up his mind, thanks. "Oh, for god's sake, Sherlock!"

Mr Holmes hustles forward hastily upon his sliding kneecaps, clutching at various parts of John's person with his hands first, his curling toes when they reach shins, his clamping knees and thighs at level, and even his sharply dropped chin clamping down on John's strong collarbone. More like, he descends like an over-large afghan drape upon the form of a reclining Dr Watson, drowsy-warm and all-encompassing of that bum, that breadth of back, that particular idiot. He's so very grateful.

He doesn't feel that easily, no.

"Get on—get on with it, then," John hears himself mutter aloud, though muffled by one of the plumped up pillows still miraculously on the bed. The rest they've scattered, between restless jerks and graceless flopping about of the two of them. He adds, as bits of his brain still chime in sanely: "…Carefully."

Sherlock is quick as a fox, leaping nimbly over a log. Sits up to kneel on haunches en garde, assuming the upper position. Tears into packets super-fast.

Sheath out, lubrication on. Then, lube in: lube in John, precisely placed by slippery finger-hold. But very fast, all of it. Fingering flesh as one fingers one's strings.

He's ace at this; he knows it. Been informed by reputable parties.

John moans, bearing up under two fingers sunk to the second knuckle.

Really, he's not, not, not ever considered being placed in this position by anyone. Ever.

It's funny that it feels good. John's prostate has been located. His entry is stretched and there's a new type of sensation nudging at it, quite insistent and blunt. At the base of his flushed neck, right where his hair is curling damply, he can feel a heated stare, an unblinking gaze like twinned laser beams.

"Go—on," he grunts.

"Yes," Sherlock replies, simply. "Thank you."

For quite the seven strokes, they fuck. Properly.

It is the single, longest-lasting, non-timed sexual event either man has ever experienced.

When it's finished, and properly, Sherlock's lips curl up without his volition right where they happen to be resting, buried in John's touselled hair.

"Mmm…" he allows. "Mmm." He thinks, loudly and at a bit of a laggard pace for him, that while that set of seven strokes was truly excellent, he'd rather like to eke it all out for a while longer, next time.

John grins into the pillow he's just bitten and slobbered noisily into, moments before. He thinks—quietly to himself but likely evident to Sherlock in a set of clumsily collapsed shoulders and the pleased wiggle of abused hip joints into mattress—that it wasn't so bad at all, really, and yes, the prostate is a marvellous organ. He might very well consider dipping his wick into Sherlock's bum the next time and try experimenting until he has his detective replicating the very same fascinating noises John just has. "Be that way, then," is what he smiles teasingly into his pillow, though. "Tosser."

They both realize it'll be different. The same again, yes, but essentially different.

Neither regrets it. Not a bit of it.