Sherlock has an amazing imagination.
Give him maggots, a piece of string, and a beach umbrella and he can visualize the haunch of meat that had been tied to the umbrella to tempt the dog which ate the evidence which dribbled on the ground which led to the maggots which in their writhing beauty were a perfect smoking gun pointing to the nefarious deeds of the lady of the house who had gotten rid of her husband piece by nauseating piece using that umbrella and string and really, really perhaps we've made our point.
And the point is, Sherlock has an amazing imagination. Provide him a few clue bricks and from them he can build a case-closed mansion.
Yet here's the thing: Sometimes Sherlock doesn't want to use that imagination. Because sometimes (always) he wants to be surprised. He wants to be wowed, taken off at the knees in amazement, craving it more than he has ever craved any drug. So far the only persons capable of surprising him are Mycroft (exactly twice), his mother (also twice), Mrs. Hudson (eight times), and John (times past counting).
Don't think John doesn't know this.
"Keep your eyes closed."
Sherlock's eyes flew open. Had it already been twenty minutes?
Freshly showered, John grinned down at him, lashes still in damp little spikes, hair moist. Dressed in a black, long-sleeved t-shirt and old jeans, feet bare, the good doctor kneeled beside the sofa, ran a slow hand along his supine sweetheart's neck, jaw, forehead. "Your fever's receded, but if you'd like to rest instead of—"
The laryngitis may have left him speechless, but with a mighty frown and a dramatic shake of his head, Sherlock managed to radiate hell no in hot, spikey waves.
John grinned, then leaned in close and whispered at Sherlock's ear, "Then get into bed my love, and close your pretty, pretty eyes."
Sherlock often surprises John and has done times past counting. For every two instances where the imperious git obeys his lover, there is at least one where he rebels. Usually his mutinies are brief, but they are almost never when John expects them.
Like now.
Because, despite the fast pulse in his neck, the expanded pupils, the fact that he was getting erect as John watched, despite all this Sherlock blinked a slow gaze at his lover, rose languidly, and looked around the sitting room, for all the world a man wondering where that interesting book had got to…
Then, as if it had always been his plan, he walked indolently toward their bedroom, white button-down shirt sliding silent from his shoulders and to the sitting room floor.
John is nearly certain Sherlock did not hear his appreciative hum. What John is sure Sherlock heard were the next words he spoke.
…
"Close your eyes love. Then listen."
Long bones stretched out in the middle of their bed, bare but for dark dressing gown draped loosely over pale skin, Sherlock closed his eyes. The moment he did John's mouth was at his ear but for long seconds the good doctor said nothing, simply…breathed differently.
Sherlock sensed it, felt it, smelled it. Then John said in a deep voice, a dark voice, in Sherlock's voice, "I'm going to do so very many things to you."
The hair on the detective's arms stood up. For several long seconds his brain fired and blazed with basic declarative sentences—oh that's sexy; is that sexy; why is that sexy—and then it began to catalog—timbre; idiom; cadence; all perfect—and then it stopped because John's lips tickled soft along the plane of his jaw, and he rumbled, "I'm going to take your brain offline. I know how to do that. How to reach inside and touch you where it matters most." A soft bass laugh. "I'm the smartest man in the room when it comes to you. You know I am."
A regiment of goosebumps rose along Sherlock's spine and so help him he wanted to stop, take that reaction apart, study it. Why did the sound of his own voice, whispered soft against prickling skin make him—
"I know what you're doing now. Right now."
John was suddenly on the other side of him, mouth barely pressed against Sherlock's temple.
"You're thinking. That's what Sherlocks do. We think even when we're shaking—"
Oh fuck.
We. John had said we. Sherlock reflexively ran hands along his arms, to still the trembling. It didn't work.
"—sometimes I think we think even when we're coming. Just sometimes. Not always. No. Because John's good, isn't he? John…"
John said his own name with a sigh, fell silent…then his lips were against Sherlock's neck.
"…understands us, doesn't he? How to briefly mute the blaze of our brilliance, how to take us apart and then put us back together. John can do that, can't he?"
Sherlock could hear his heart beating in his own breath. He nodded yes. Then he did it again and a third time for good measure. Yes, yes, yeeees.
"If John were here, what would you want him to do to us, Sherlock? How should he touch us?"
Instinct: It's an inherent inclination toward a particular behavior. We pull our hand from a fire, smile at another's smile. Or we instinctively open our legs and slide a hand between them in answer to a pointed, sexual question.
"Yes, he'd touch us there, wouldn't he? John loves our cock."
Sherlock whimpered. Yes, actually whimpered. His brain felt absolutely snarled with the traffic of his thoughts. He needed to understand why he was this hard this fast at the sound of his own voice, and he needed to process the delicious deliciousness of John's words, and finally he needed to figure out how to breathe through his fluish congestion or else he'd be dead from suffocation before John even touched him.
Sherlock opened his mouth, sucked in a wheezy breath. There, one problem solved.
But before he could work on the congestion in his head John was talking again, turning all the lights green at once.
"Do you know someone at the Yard once asked John if the carpet matched the curtains where you're concerned? And the silly git wasn't talking about hair color, she made sure I knew that."
John laughed and Sherlock, who didn't think the hair on his arms could get, you know, more erect, discovered he was wrong.
"'Is it as long as he is?' She was cruder than that because she was drunk and a jerk if you want to know the truth, and so John didn't say anything, but do you know what John would have said about our cock Sherlock? Do you?"
Yes, thought Sherlock. Because he's said it in the dark, just before he's put his mouth there, slick and hot and—
"That it fits. That John's body was made for us."
Sherlock ran the fingertips of his free hand over the hand John had at his neck, opened his mouth wider, as if it would help him hear better.
"Do you know that when he sees we're hard, even now, years after that first time, John's heart beats faster?"
Yes, thought Sherlock. I see it all the time, in the curl of his hands, in the tip of his tongue pressing at his teeth.
John shifted on the bed, one hand briefly sliding down Sherlock's thigh, there and quickly gone.
"But he wouldn't touch our cock so soon, would he?"
Sherlock sighed, then acknowledged this by drawing his dressing gown closed.
"What would John do to us right now, Sherlock?"
For four seconds the consulting genius did nothing. During those long moments he checked in with his grey matter, found that gridlock was still in place, that all he could tease from the logjam was the obvious: wildly turned on; so hard I think my blood pressure might be affected—must check that some time; how does he do this, how in god's name does he know?
Sherlock pushed John away.
The good doctor—no, Sherlock—laughed. "Yessss."
The bedroom was silent for a short time that felt long. Then the bed shifted and moments later John's voice came from somewhere near the window. "He'd tease us, you're right. No touching. Maybe no talking, but not today. Today John would talk."
Sherlock wanted to touch himself but he didn't. That was another thing he knew John wouldn't—
"You can touch yourself, if you like. John would want to see that. Today he would, oh yes."
Two years. Almost. It's the blink of an eye and yet it's forever and how after all that time can this man, this small, sometimes quiet man still surprise Sherlock this much?
Sherlock raised his arms, grabbed hold of the headboard's rails. Well Sherlock can surprise, too.
Another deep laugh and a whisper. "You beautiful brat."
Sherlock grinned—both of them.
"I guess I'll have to touch for two, won't I? Just like I'm talking for two."
Silence again while the seed of that thought settled, then quickly bloomed. John was going to—
"Whose cock am I pushing at right now, Sherlock? Yours or mine? What a wonderful perplexity this great game is. Am I Sherlock? Am I John?"
Seconds, just a few, of sharp-edged silence and then John groaned, but it wasn't his own voice that made the sound.
So strange to be aware of the tick of his own heart, but John did that to him again and again and after all this time Sherlock was still amazed. You beat my heart for me John, you make it drum.
Over that fast beat…silence.
Sherlock strained to hear but this was one part of him that was exactly like everyone else—and this was one of so many ways that John was like no one else. He could become invisible in even the brightest room—by simply going still and silent.
Sherlock held his breath, waited. When his tongue snaked from his mouth like an antenna seeking signal, he was rewarded with a faint sound. "John…" sighed John.
Sherlock hummed high in response, an instinctual reaction to his own voice crooning for his lover. Then for just a flash—a strange bold flash—Sherlock was jealous of the man at the window, the one that sounded like him, the one that wanted John. He growled deep, his sore throat aching, but with that primal sound he said to the other Sherlock, the one that didn't even exist, "Mine."
The answer was another faint moan, so much desire in it that it ticked Sherlock's fever up a full degree.
Tugging two-fisted at the headboard, arching neck and back, Sherlock growled again, harsh and loud, a simple, animalistic call-and-response. I hear you. And—he—is—mine.
Barely two metres away John watched, wanted to soothe and shush his sweetheart but he did neither. Instead he stood there, mesmerized by the veins cording at Sherlock's neck, at the rattle and hum of that long body, and not for the first time he ached to see how much he was wanted.
And oh, right now that ache translated so sweetly into hard as a god damn rock.
"John," he crooned again, then with a deep, shuddering breath he went quiet so that the room could fill loud with the sound of a zipper coming undone.
Knuckles showing white in pale skin, Sherlock stilled the better to hear, then when John moaned he echoed him, the sound high and desperate. I hear you. And I'm here. I'm right here.
John grunted, his voice briefly his own. He wanted to call the game on account of forfeit, wanted to crawl on the bed and onto the man in it but he didn't. Instead he let the heavy sound of jeans falling fill the silence and then the good doctor followed them down, going to his knees, spit-slicked hand sliding over his erection.
Then Sherlock did it again, that strange high hum, that possessive, needy noise that both bullied and begged. Mine. Me. Mine. Meeee.
And then it was just too much for him. He let go of the headboard suddenly, almost surprised he could. Breathing fast he sat up in the bed, turned his long, pale face toward his lover. But he didn't open his eyes.
John.
Sherlock didn't say it, didn't even try, just let his mouth make the shape.
John.
Sherlock stood, turned toward the silence as if it were a hot sun. After a moment he shrugged, the dark dressing gown sliding down his shoulders, catching briefly, almost comically, at his bum before slithering to the floor.
He didn't need eyes to know John was looking. Frankly he could hear it in the oh-so-faint sound of John's hand moving faster.
And so the pretty man posed there in the pretty night light, pale flesh limned blue-white, and then Sherlock took a shaky little breath, and slowly—so every damn moment of it could be seen—so slowly, he went to his knees.
And then kept going.
Until he was on all fours and looking into eyes he couldn't see but yes, yes, definitely yes he could feel the gaze on him, don't you doubt that. Because desire has weight, need has heft and yet even despite that Sherlock would know—he knows that he would—when John can see him, when John can hear him, when John wants him.
Now. And now. And right now.
Sherlock smiled. Then Sherlock crawled.
It was two metres. Barely. Between window and bed. But it can take an awfully long time to span such as small distance. If that's what you want.
John's hand, his busy-busy hand, stilled, because he needed to go quiet and motionless and maybe breathless so that every part of him could devote itself to seeing and so he stopped damn well jerking himself off and he held his breath and he maybe didn't blink.
And what he saw were shadows picking out muscles in arms and legs. The dance of dark and light making small pretty wings of shoulder blades. And moonlight dressing random curls in faint highlight.
Botticelli. Rembrandt. Michelangelo. John's not sure if any of them painted bodies like this. Surely someone must have, but he doesn't know their name, has never seen a painting that's captured this kind of perfection.
John reached out as Sherlock neared, but just as he was close enough to touch, exactly as John lifted his hand to run fingers through those ridiculous curls Sherlock bowed his head.
John and Sherlock? They submit to one another all the time. In bed. Out of bed. With words. Without them. But it's always a submission of equals, how could it be any other way? As forceful as their wildly divergent personalities are they couldn't have lasted twenty minutes as anything less than peers, much less two years. So there's never been one day—not a single minute—between them where one thought himself better than the other. Smarter? Oh yes. Faster. Sure. Stronger. Yep. Taller. Shorter. Politer. Yes, yes, and yes.
But never more than. Never better than.
So John looked down at this bold and powerful creature lowering himself and he let the sight of it make him grunt. Yeah, an inelegant, visceral, from-the-gut grunt of—what? Desire? Pleasure? Confusion? He wasn't sure then and he wasn't certain later. The subject on which he was clear, however, was that seeing Sherlock lower himself until his forehead touched the carpet left John painfully hard and absolutely motionless.
What will he do next?
Five little words both men have thought times past counting in the last two years. Sometimes the answer is really rather predictable:
* He'll moan when I do this…he loves this.
* He's going to break that and make another hole in the table if he's not caref—oh fuck.
* Oh dear, he's going to get stroppy about that in the morning.
And sometimes the answers are anything but.
* He saw those tiny marks on her wrist and knew what they meant before I did. Amazing.
* The bin is still smoking and he kissed me. Did he just kiss me? Why did he kiss me?
* He said he loved me. In front of half the Yard he said he loved me.
What Sherlock did next was somewhat predictable, followed closely by something John never saw coming. Even as he was coming.
What Sherlock did was rise in slow degrees, leaning forward just enough so he could press his head to the side of John's thigh, rubbing cheek, chin, curls, against John's bare leg until John petted him.
Purring his pleasure with soft sighs, Sherlock stretched himself long, pushed harder into John's hand, causing his lover to tip a little even though on his knees.
In a voice not his own the good doctor laughed, low and deep. Sherlock responded by swinging his head against John's hip, once, twice, a pale beast demanding more.
So John gave him more, stroking that head again, dancing fingertips lightly over cheek and ear, delicate butterfly touches, feathery and soft and exactly the way Sherlock caresses John late some nights when they're too tired for anything more than gentleness and quiet and ease.
The consulting detective detected the provenance of those touches, knew that even here John was…not John. He nuzzled his sweetheart's hand with mouth and nose, letting his lover feel his smile and the brief, pearly nip of teeth.
Again John laughed low when that tousled head bumped at his side, this time heavy and hard, a great cat playing rough.
"What do you want?" the one man asked the other.
And Sherlock replied with a grunt and nudged with the bridge of his nose, shoving John's hand toward his erection, then following that hand and opening his mouth, patiently waiting for it to be filled.
John cupped Sherlock's chin, drew his lover close, until lips just barely touched him, then instead of pushing his cock into that perfect mouth John made them both wait.
Sherlock was compliant, remaining motionless despite an intense desire to swipe a fevered tongue across hard flesh. Instead he stayed still and breathed deep, soothed, content that John smelled like John, even if right now he did not move or breathe or sound like him.
"John…"
Sherlock grunt-growled, tried suddenly to take John in to the base but that gentle hand cupping his chin held fast…then the rest of him moved slow.
John's thrusts were small, just enough to push the head into Sherlock's mouth, only enough to daub his lover's lips with pre-come, and much more than enough to start Sherlock keening.
Oooo that sound…it came from down deep, from a place in the body where the brain—no matter how big—has no power. And that place made Sherlock giddy, so he shook his head again, pulling from John's grip, and he butted John's belly with his forehead, laughing a ridiculous, hoarse-throated laugh that demanded and begged and shouted for him, "More, come for me, oh—"
"—god," said the only Sherlock in the room who could speak, fist gripping tighter, moving faster. Head turned now, nipping at John's thigh, Sherlock laughed hoarsely again, grunted, moaned, the sounds raw and rough and very ready.
His lover's needy playfulness, his husky moans, they would have been enough, but Sherlock gave John more, just a little more, pressing his forehead to floor again, placing the bold extravagance of his arse on beautiful display.
John didn't even grunt as he started coming but Sherlock knew, he knew, and he lifted that shaggy head and groaned for both of them as John's ejaculate spattered warm on his closed-tight eyes, his cheeks and chin and mouth. He moaned and nodded yes, god yes, tossing his head so that it was everywhere, all over him, warm and gorgeous and John, so very much John.
With the last spurt Sherlock swarmed in, pushed his lover's hand away, and then clamped his mouth over that still-hard cock before going suddenly gentle and tender, sucking softly at every last bit of everything.
And right about then John's knees tendered their resignation and the good doctor listed left and fell boneless to the carpet, jeans tangled at his knees, heart still hammering hard, and Sherlock was there, right over him, hovering on hands and knees and looking like a blind cat who really had no fucking clue about how to drink his milk.
"Oh…" the good doctor started to say, reaching for his lover, but Sherlock pressed a hand to John's mouth.
No, not yet.
John grinned under those long fingers, kissed them, then he wiped tenderly at Sherlock's face, at the slick, cooling come that just a teensy bit kind of grossed him out, but then also rather suddenly gave him a pretty, pretty idea.
Tugging Sherlock's hand from his lips, John pressed it to Sherlock's face, swiping it through the ejaculate. Then he shoved that long-fingered hand low between his legs. But it wasn't until Sherlock's come-slick fingers pressed gently at the tight hole of John's arse that the good doctor whispered, dark and deep, "Yeth."
Sherlock grunted, almost opened his eyes. His breathing went shallow and fast.
No. Absolutely not. No, no, no.
He would not let his own lisp be sexy.
"Yethhh."
Oh dear god.
Well this took a long time to tell, didn't it? And yet we're only halfway there. One more chapter, maybe two.
In the meantime you need to know two things: I got laryngitis while writing this and what I want to know is if I got that part, can I get the rest of this too? Dear god CAN I? The other thing you need to know is that I stole the line about the falling dressing gown catching on Sherlock's bum from Mirith Griffin fair and square and with her permission. Now please read "Control, Alt, Delete," the glorious story from which it was pilfered and prepare to be stunned by the grace, amazed by her gift, for she really, really is that god damn good.