Sherlock Holmes likes putting things in his mouth.
Before John, Sherlock used that mouth for purposes for which it was not intended. During experiments, when both hands were busy for example, he'd clench a pipette between his teeth, stoppering the thing with his tongue until such time as the mild toxin, acid, or algae within was needed—then two times in five he'd forget and breathe in through his mouth instead of his nose and accidentally ingest some mild toxin, acid, or algae.
Before John Sherlock would almost always taste at crime scenes anything that looked like blood but which he was ninety-three percent certain was not blood. Lab tests took too long and gave criminals lead time his talented tongue could deny them, so for quite awhile Sherlock tended to stuff all sorts of evidence in his mouth—and only got mildly sick one time out of six.
After John things changed rather a lot.
For example, seven times out of ten John could be persuaded to hold a pipette nearly indefinitely so long as he was promised whatever he happened to strongly desire that day. This has included an hour of peace in which to read, breakfast in bed, a buggering, the last six biscuits, or a kiss.
After John, Sherlock was denied the use of his mouth for the sifting of clues, for another example. If they were at a crime scene and he forgot, lifting anything clue-like toward his lips, Sherlock would inevitably find himself on the pavement, a small man sitting on his chest, swiping a finger across his palate and demanding "Spit, spit for god's sake!" This had the annoying effect of slowing Sherlock down and usually caused every constable within one hundred metres to stop and stare.
Yet the way in which Sherlock processed clues or did experiments was not the biggest oral change post John. After the small man made his big impact, Sherlock learned he liked things in his mouth that were not pipettes or clues.
Sherlock liked John in his mouth. He liked him in there for the purposes of nibbling, he liked him in there for tasting, but Sherlock especially liked John in his mouth for sucking. And what Sherlock liked to suck was pretty much any part of John which John wanted to have sucked.
This has often been John's cock. Through the years John's responses to Sherlock's lavish lips wrapped around that part of him have included chanting Sherlock's name, crooning a sing-song of endearments, or at last confessing the identity of a boot camp fling when John was on the tip-top cusp of coming and Sherlock stopped sucking.
But cock is not the only thing Sherlock sucks. He's watched goosebumps skitter like heat lightning down John's chest when he's pressed behind him and sucked a munificent lobe or the salt of a stubbled neck.
On snowy mornings, when the only duty presenting itself is staying warm and snug in bed, Sherlock will spend hours dreamily sucking on John's nipples, an affection that makes them each dozy, then later indolently aroused.
In certain moods Sherlock has happily been in the mood to suck on John's eyebrows, bellybutton, the tip of his nose, his elbows, knees, and butt cheeks.
Yet John often responds just as grandly to having Sherlock's parts lavished with oral affection. For example, Sherlock's more than one time brought John to orgasm by wriggling bare toes between his sweetheart's legs and softly moaning as he sucks his own fingers.
Yet with all that sucking, Sherlock finds that he hasn't one time thought about sucking John's horns, mostly because John does not have any. If John did have horns Sherlock would suck them. If John had horns Sherlock's pretty sure he'd suck them rather a lot and in any fashion John found pleasing. Sherlock would himself be especially pleased if a horned John made the sounds Loki was making right now, as he stroked himself. His horns, as he stroked his horns.
So extensively was Sherlock daydreaming—in his dream—about sucking and about horns and about Loki (or John, at this point even Sherlock's subconscious isn't clear), that for two long seconds Sherlock did not notice several things.
The first was that his own mouth was open.
The second was his tongue slicking over his lip.
The third was that he was moving toward Loki.
And the fourth thing that Sherlock didn't notice was that Loki was moving away.
By the time Sherlock observed these things he stopped doing one, two, and three, then petulantly pointed out four. "You're moving away. Why?"
Loki Laufeyson of Asgard, Jotunheim, and most recently 32 London Bridge Street, SE 1 9SG, whispered, "You know why." Then the god giggled high-pitched and breathless and so very, very fine.
And Sherlock's erection throbbed in over-aroused Morse code: Sherlock Holmes, you are going to hell.
...
"Sherlock. Sherlock."
At this point Sherlock and the tissue box may be conjoined.
"Sherlock. It's all right."
Sherlock did not think it was all right. To relay this in the strongest possible terms Sherlock stared at the wall, lifted his chin, and continued to use a cardboard box to do awful, awful things to his innocent, overinflated penis.
It would take John years to make the point—and the point would have to be pointedly made again and again through those years—but eventually John Watson's husband will learn, and he'll become easier with desiring an actor or pop culture scientist or a fictional Asgardian immortal. But that future day appeared to not be this day and so Sherlock committed tissue box atrocities upon his member and he felt guilty.
"The giggling made you think of me, didn't it?"
Mash.
"You love my giggle."
Maaash.
"Especially when we're in bed."
MashMashMash!
John contemplated yanking that tissue box out of Sherlock's hands but was pretty sure that would close Pandora's box and John would go and drown himself in the toilet immediately if he himself was in any way responsible for a premature end to this story.
"So when Loki giggled you got turned on."
Mash?
"Even more turned on."
Sherlock no longer mashed, but that chin still jutted and he continued to stare at the far wall.
"Turned on enough to do things. Things you've not done with me."
Slashes of pretty scarlet flared on Sherlock's cheeks.
"Maybe this is how we start," John whispered. "Maybe we try things in dreams."
John went silent for so long that Sherlock was forced to unjut his chin and with the most peripheral of visions check if his husband had fallen asleep.
John grinned against Sherlock's skin, kissed. "And then we bring what works, what we like, into the real world. Erotic little gifts from wonderful little dreams." John giggled, much like an Asgardian might, and said, "And by little dreams I mean dreams that are so vast they require Pan-O-Vision and the lurid charms of Technicolor."
Forget peripheral vision. Sherlock looked down at John, jaw a little unhinged, big brows tugged up at the middle, his face the very picture of what fresh magic are you?
Right from the start Sherlock didn't understand the rules. The ones by which everyone insisted on living. He didn't understand when to shut up, when to talk, what to do when he did either. And over time he screwed up so often and so badly that he simply learned to loathe the rules—all of them, any of them.
Then there was John, who seemed to have a whole different set of rules. Strange ones that allowed him to compliment where others complained, rules that let him kill without question, rules that allowed for the exceptional and the rare—which didn't only encompass Sherlock, it included them.
And though it's been years now, years of being John's lover and then his husband, Sherlock's still amazed by John's rules because John's rules don't seem to fetter, they free, and how was that possible?
"Don't worry, I'll keep telling you, until you believe it. This is okay Sherlock. All of this, all of you." John blew his nose until his ears squeaked. Then he giggled. "Now, what happened next?"
...
"You know why."
Sherlock stood still on plush carpet in a lavish flat in front of an immortal man and he listened to the after-echo of those words. Then he scowled rather dramatically because no, frankly very much no, he had not one fresh clue why Loki was moving away, why the earth goes around the sun, or why for the love of god they were still standing there, why everything so far was still subtext and innuendo, why they were still dancing around one another with arched brows and sassy comments.
Sherlock was about to say exactly that when instead he said to himself in a manner most shrill: oh no he didn't!
But yes, yes Loki did just roll his eyes at Sherlock in exactly the manner that Sherlock rolls his eyes at everyone else when they've absolutely bored the living—
Sherlock rolled his eyes at himself. Oh. Oh. It was so obvious.
This thing between them, this dance of words and looks and fleeting touches? It was sex, just as John had said, but it was a kind of sex that prolonged the moment, maximised sensation, it staved off that dread of which they'd spoken earlier: Boredom.
Because yes, boredom is the bane of the brilliant mind, lurking ever at the edges of a sharp intellect, waiting for the bright flare of interesting things to fade. The moment they do it starts to feed.
Though Loki was no Sherlock, you try being immortal and lord of nearly all you survey. Unrelieved abundance can become as dull as anything else endlessly repeated, and so here they stood, and frankly here they would stand for as long as they could stand it.
Because the wanting, and the endless talking about the wanting, and then still not having? Very not boring.
At last understanding with his mind what his body had long ago known, Sherlock took a step back.
Loki grinned toothily in delight and after many long seconds took a step forward.
Sherlock took another step back.
A bigger grin and Loki took half a step forward.
Sherlock half a step back.
And this was precisely the point where the dream began to derail, as so many dreams do, on the cusp of wandering into the sensible territory of: Oh, so you want to dance? Okay fine, everyone's now an anthropomorphised teapot at the ball…and yet, mercifully, though on the very Disney-esque brink, that did not happen.
There was a good reason for that.
In a very real world, in a very real flat called 221B, a sleeping John Watson-Holmes got a bit cold. So John Watson-Holmes scooted backward, toward the nearby source of body heat, all six feet of it. When he had comfortably slotted his sleeping self against his husband's front, his husband's sleeping self comfortably slotted his erection against the crack of John's arse. And he began to lightly thrust.
And thus refocused, in an epic dream inside a genius's head, Loki—without even a hint of a handle or a spout—took two steps forward and bowed at the waist. Sherlock then proceeded to open his beautiful mouth and slowly run his tongue up the curve of one hard, gold horn.
Loki and John moaned.
...
Sherlock held his breath, looked down.
John's eyes were closed, brows drawn in concentration. He was a little bit wanking.
Sherlock continued.
...
At first Sherlock only licked Loki's left horn because it made the immortal moan and the moaning, oh the moaning was fantastic. Then Sherlock was on a mission and he licked higher and higher, but finally stopped near the top because for the love of gods he absolutely could not figure out how to get the tip of the horn in his mouth.
And he wanted that thing in his mouth because the entire point of sucking is to suck. But you know what? You try getting your lush lips around something that's curved so sharply the only way you'd be able to find any oral gratification in it is if you climbed on your dream paramour's pretty head and contorted yourself like a Claisen distillation adapter, but then you'd still have to—
Sherlock grunted and stood on his tiptoes, hoping an extra three inches would give him the impossible flexibility to lean, curve, reach and—
Sherlock grunted again, tilted his head sideways in hopes that he could maybe kind of out-flank the—
Finally Sherlock just opened his mouth really wide, grabbed hold of Loki's right horn and—
The god jerked away, his cheeks flushing so-faintly blue and he hissed, "None of that."
Sherlock got off his tiptoes casually. He then casually took a step back to make room for Loki's petulance. Then without any casualness whatsoever Sherlock took in the immense, splintered walls of glass rising tall around them, the roof of a few faint stars, and the clement breeze ruffling dark hair.
They were on the Shard's open-air observation deck.
Sherlock chuffed out a breath, scratched the side of his neck, and matter-of-factly got right to the heart of the matter. "So. You want me to react while you act. You want me to pretend you're in control."
Loki started, a flush of scarlet on cheeks replaced the faintest of ice blues, and then he began giggling like a loon.
Again.
Look, at this point dream Sherlock would like a little clarity. He's super okay with making sex last. It's kind of a Sherlock thing. Heck, boxing day last year he and John spent six and a half hours hard, just to see if they could, but by now Sherlock's really not sure if Loki wants to bed him or just boss him around.
Still giggling, Loki threw arms wide, head back, and as if he were informing the dark city glittering around them shouted, "Oh bed my darling, of course bed!"
As if in portent, the clement breeze stilled. A distant gull went quiet. Even the murmuring river far below seemed to hush. And as if it were the most natural thing in the world Sherlock thought: Can you read my mind?
For one second, two, Sherlock read Loki's, so to speak. By noting—even in night-light—the twitch of a lip, the breath caught in a long, pale throat, the consulting detective knew the god was kicking himself for being caught out, was debating how best to lie.
Don't bother.
Sherlock didn't think more than those two words, because saying, I'll know it if you lie. Your face is an open book, like all the rest of you, from that mouth you can't seem to close, to those legs you spread absurdly wide every time you sit down.
"I'm sorry."
What?
Now it was Loki stepping back. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to do it."
Well that was completely unexpected. Sherlock wasn't sure which stunned him more, the admission or the contrition. "It's…"
Loki took another step back. "Arrogance people can stomach. Bravado, sarcasm, tears and tantrums, people will put up with all of that and more," Loki said, eyes gone wide and glassy, "if you're pretty, if you're interesting, if you thrill…oh they'll put up with almost anything." The pretty, interesting man laughed, a tear sliding fast down his face. "But this they don't forgive, this they fear and with reason. When the sanctity of your soul is violated of course you spit and hiss and move away."
Sherlock took a step forward.
"I didn't ask for this you know, I can't stop it, any more than you can stop seeing all the things you see with that sky-blue gaze. All we can do, dear detective, is shut up about it." This time Loki's laugh was real. "But like that's ever going to happen."
Sherlock took another step forward. They were close enough to see the pulse in one another's throat, and wasn't that strange, to be so near another man, to have to look up, just a little?
"I live with a man," Sherlock said, "I love a man who already sees, senses, maybe smells so much about me. He knows me better than I ever will. I love him for that and so much more. Yet even with all of that, I am not surrendered, I'm not fully known. No, Loki, the sanctity of my soul is mine to give, it can't be taken, not by you, not by anyone."
Mortal and god.
The balance seems tipped, always and forever, in favour of the god; a god can do most anything, while a mortal is always mere.
Bullshit.
As long as mortal and immortal each have hearts they're as equal as a warmth-giving sun to a tide-taming moon. Their purposes and powers might vary, but in the end they're more alike than they could ever be different.
Now, Sherlock said, where were we?
There it was again, Loki's grin, the one that was all teeth and sass and glee. He looked as if he wanted to say something, a whole host of things about gods and hearts and long-fingered touches but in the end he thought better of it and instead dropped chin to chest.
Ah, yes.
As if complicit a warm wind kicked up, pushing Sherlock forward. A distant gull laughed raucous. Even the Thames seemed now to murmur go on, go on. So Sherlock did.
He took double-handed hold of the horns on Loki's helm and held them long enough to see if Loki would complain.
Then Sherlock began to lift the helmet from the god's head, moving slow to see if Loki would suddenly transport them to the middle of Euston station.
And then Sherlock removed that helm and pressed it against his belly just long enough to see if Loki would—
Loki did.
Holding Sherlock's eye, the god was already moaning as the tip of one gold horn slid inside his mouth.
Sherlock sighed. Because Sherlock knows moaning.
There are the manufactured, like when Sherlock sighs for John's pleasure deliciously pornographic and entirely fake moans, until John's neck arches and he's murmuring breathless sweetheart, angel, my love.
There are the real, like when he and John make love and one of them moans raw and pushes in deep, murmuring breathless my love my love.
Loki's moan was that. Real, visceral, it was needy and desperate and it made Sherlock crowd close, press his mouth against Loki's, the hard tip of a curved gold horn very much, totally, completely in the way, and somehow that was fantastic, the two of them fellating the hard thing between them, their tongues swiping hot against each other, teeth chattering against cool metal—
...
"Metal?"
Sherlock stuttered to silence, choking delicately on his own halted arousal. "Hu? What?"
John grunted by way of reply, then pushed and pulled his husband, gestures seemingly random until they weren't, and finally Sherlock got it. He lifted the tissue box from the boner in his lap and, path thus clear, John clambered over him and to the other side of the bed, snuffling all the way.
"It's sweaty over there," he offered and instinctively Sherlock rested his hand on the recently-vacated space. Sure enough the little nest left behind by John's little body was fever hot and damp.
"John," Sherlock began, about to suggest naps, Lemsip, cock-sucking, or other fever-reducing measures, but he never got the chance.
John made a long arm across Sherlock's lap, reseated the tissue box in Sherlock's lap—went so far as to gently mash it down a little—then said, "I'm fine. I'm sick and I'm fine. You're going to keep talking even if this takes all night because the second you go to sleep you're probably going to over-write your dream hard drive with a dream of white butterflies on white flowers backed by a white winter sky and if that happens I'm going to need psychiatric care to manage my grief so no, I'm not napping, you're not napping, and please, just…okay? Please?"
Perhaps for the first time during the entire telling of this dream Sherlock grinned wide. He stroked John's dewy brow and said so softly he might have been murmuring I love you. "Yes, metal."
John's brow knit. "Wouldn't that be really heavy? I mean he'd have to have a neck like Thor."
Sherlock nodded, as if he remembered who Thor was, then said. "He's a god, I suppose they have strong necks."
John's brow unknit as if this was logical, something you'd find on the Wikipedia page about Norse gods, then he shifted until he was fitted perfectly against Sherlock's hip, returned to his lazy masturbation and said, "Okay, I'm ready."
...
Yes, well, Loki's moan was real, visceral, and sexy, sexy, sexy. It made Sherlock moan in reply and horn in harder on the horny action. It was wonderful, their mouths touching but not enough, their tongues slicking just barely into one another, now-hot metal a kind of oral chastity device between them. It was fantastic and delicious—oh yes, especially that—because Loki not only smells of pomegranates, he tastes of them too, that thin-lipped mouth all sweet, tart, and intense.
Perhaps an ordinary detective or a regular deity would have at this point taken double-handed hold of the helm and chucked it over someone's shoulder, but Sherlock doesn't know from ordinary and Loki's always been irregular and so instead Loki clutched high at the right horn and shortly found Sherlock's hand wrapped around his, then Sherlock found his other hand covered with Loki's and together they moaned higher because both their palms were sweating—
...
John wheezed and got more serious about his wanking. Sherlock didn't so much as pause.
...
—and oh yes that's sexy, when a man's body has grown hot because of you, when he wants you so badly he's wet.
So as long-fingered hands slicked over each other, Sherlock keened and Loki bit and down below they tried to grind against each other but with the helm between them they couldn't and that was just fine too because here's a fact: the sounds of desire have weight. So Loki? He listened, and he felt.
Listened to Sherlock's voice grow hoarse and deep, and felt himself get harder. Listened to Sherlock's breathing grow sharp and fast, and felt his skin grow wetter.
And Sherlock? Oh he listened to Loki's teeth scrape at metal and listened to Loki keen and those things felt exactly, perfectly, wonderfully like a hand between his legs.
All of that would have been enough, in time, but at the same time each man at last let go of the helm, ignored its clatter, and as Sherlock eagerly reached out, slid both hands into black hair, curved them along a skull, pressed gently at its base, and leaned forward—
"Wait."
His entire body flushing cold with cranky adrenaline, for a good long moment Sherlock thought about saying something like, "Oh dear fucking god are you absolutely god damn kidding me with this?" but he didn't. Partially because Sherlock rarely talks that way, even in dreams, and partially because the whole dazzling grin thing was going on again and Loki was stepping away, pulling Sherlock with him into the moon's bright light.
Then hosanna, finally, at last, he who was burdened with blah blah blah leaned forward, and Sherlock's throat went deliciously thick with the humid, sweet-smelling heat of the man, his mouth busy with the tongue of him, and then they were wrapped tight together, kissing, touching, breathing, needing.
And almost immediately it started.
The mingle of their moans broke apart, Sherlock's voice a constant purring hum of want, but Loki's, oh that went somewhere else entirely. That went over to grandeur.
For each time one of them moved to push deeper into the other's mouth, to nip careful at lip, Loki's moans got louder, more decadent. He sounded like pomegranates if a man can—and even if a man can't, a god can—and squirming in Sherlock's arms was six fine feet and two wriggling inches of divinity, a divinity who sounded like sweetness and tang, and each time he got louder Sherlock got harder, which made Loki even more vocal.
They danced on the edge of this everything for the longest time and then a small little nothing tipped them over.
The wind whipped hard through the Shard's shards, gathering cold from the splintered walls of glass and metal, Sherlock drew in a high, surprised breath, and at the sound of it Loki tipped back his head and shouted "Oh god!" and started to come. Then Sherlock did, too.
...
"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait."
Sherlock waited.
"Did you…did Lok—d-did you both just?"
Sherlock cleared his throat. He wondered what the opposite of a *clatter* was because whatever it was it would mean less attention instead of more wouldn't it? Because right now Sherlock wanted a bit less than he was getting as in maybe minus none? However, Sherlock does not know what the reverse of a *clatter* is and so he said, "Yes."
Under the duvet John's hand stilled. And then it fell away from his cock. He looked crestfallen. "Oh."
Sherlock blinked, immediately realised the obvious. He petted John's brow. "There's more."
John blinked back. Beneath the duvet he tentatively touched his privates. "More?"
Sherlock lofted the tissue box, which had recently grown less important somehow. The absence of the box exposed the presence of a stiff penis. "Not the first one. Or the second."
John thought about what these fantastic words were saying. "So there's more moaning?"
Sherlock nodded.
"There's more touching?"
Sherlock nodded.
"And more sex?"
Sherlock nodded quickly.
"And sass?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes as if that one was obvious.
John, gurgling happily, threw a leg over Sherlock and started humping him. Then, in a voice low and hoarse and sweet as pomegranates, he said, "Go on."
Holy moly that was over ten thousand words before the orgasms, which might be a Chez Atlin record. Please don't ever let me do that again. Whew. Now. Well. Please allow me to choose my next words carefully. There is more of this story…coming.