CHAPTER 53 - Head Second, Heart First
After Helen leaves, Sherlock can't resist practicing some more. He realises that, far from wanting to chase John out of the room as he has in the past, some sort of threshold has been crossed, and he is content that he remains. It doesn't matter anymore if John hears him making mistakes. Oddly, it doesn't matter to him that much anymore, either.
His calves are aching from all the climbing, so he ends up dragging a kitchen chair next to his music stand, and sits down to play.
It's not a very complicated piece - the Romanze from Dvorak's Czech Suite, but the trill notes combining the E and A strings have been a challenge. He thinks through the piece first, wanting to grasp the meaning before he plays it.
John reads a medical journal by the kitchen table, stealing occasional glances at him. He's smiling in a peaceful, content way Sherlock doesn't remember seeing in a long time.
Sherlock grabs a piece of cloth he keeps on a bookshelf and rubs it gently against the A-string – rosin build-up had been making the sound slightly raspy. He turns the screw on the bow slightly to release some of the tension from the horse hairs – Helen keeps reminding him that it'll be easier for him to play with a softer bow for now. It makes the sound fuller and warmer - not all that good for Paganini's Caprices, but since he isn't exactly up to his old level yet, Paganini will just have to wait.
He has become rather fond of the Romanze. It takes its time with content — careful, relieved legato notes, singing of liberation and determination. Instead of bittersweet or yearning, it's calming, full of promises of better times.
Bringing the bow down on the strings, he repeats a passage several times, trying to get the transition from one phrase to another smoother as his bow keeps bringing forth a whisper from the g string instead of staying neatly on the a. As Helen had instructed, he tries to deviate his wrist even more towards the ulnar side when he's playing with the lower half of the bow. After a few minutes, that side of his palm - the tendons of his pinkie finger - develop a dull ache that's highly distracting, since it's radiating up his arm.
He does the first two pages of the Romanze once more, then lets his bow descend. He rests the violin on his desk where sunlight from the window can't reach and wreak havoc with the wood. Then he loosens the bow – he is still forced to squeeze it between the side of his thumb and forefinger to get a proper hold. Some things take longer to return than others.
"Have we got any ice?" he asks, and John perks up. He takes in the sight of Sherlock kneading the fifth extensor tendon near his wrist.
"We had a bag of peas yesterday but Mrs Hudson borrowed it. It's only fair, since she probably feeds half the food she buys to us. You haven't been overdoing it with the tennis ball again, have you?"
"John. How can anyone borrow peas? Presumably, she's eaten them and not yet replaced them with another bag. Never mind. It's just a bit sore from the practice."
John dog-ears his magazine and leaves it on the table. As though given a cue, they both take a seat on the sofa. Sherlock splays his fingers and winces as the tendons cramp. John picks up his right hand carefully, running his own slightly coarse thumb tip along the side of Sherlock's palm.
John's finger feels cool against his warm, probably slightly inflamed, joints.
"That was beautiful, by the way," John points out, curling his own fingers around Sherlock's pinkie and stretching it straight, pressing his thumb on the knuckle. Sherlock feels the joint crack deliciously, but when John releases the finger, the ache returns. John pinches the tendon between his thumb and forefinger, cataloguing the entire length of it between the knuckle and the wrist, and when he hits a sore spot, Sherlock breathes out and leans back on the sofa, letting his eyes drift close. The massage continues and he lets his mind drift into idle, concentrating instead on the sensation of John's touch.
When John kisses his knuckles, his eyes fly back open. He opens his mouth to say something, to ask what, but John steals all coherent thought from his head by then taking his little finger into his mouth.
A jolt of what feels akin to electricity runs down his spine as he feels John's lips and tongue curl around the finger, and all less important thoughts are shoved aside: John is taking over what shreds of awareness his brain has left. A haze descends which makes him warm all over, whipping his heart into a rhythm that pounds in his ears like a distant drumbeat.
He can feel it – the two of them skirting the moment when they will either retreat, or move forward to unknown territory. Anticipation is like a low hum in his bones, and the unspoken promise hanging in the air empty air between them kicks his brain into overdrive.
John would probably tell him to stop overthinking everything right now, but it's not like his brain is something he could possibly turn on and off at will. How is it possible to be both present in the moment, yet to step away from the brutal minutiae of it, in order to appreciate the higher purpose of sex, in lieu of just letting it fill a biological need? Whatever romantic notions he might have had in his head about how it should feel, reality is proving to be much more intense. Even the sensation of kissing John feels so intense that he can practically feel something in his head threatening to short-circuit.
He can't help stiffening up his muscles as the adrenaline of anxiety hits his blood system. How will he cope with full-on sex, when the things it requires are something he has battled all his life, such as getting overwhelmed by the barrage of sensations and being robbed of all control?
He knows that John can't understand this. Categorizing, analysing, observing and memorising are things he does to keep the world in order and to keep track of his own position in it. Whenever he had engaged in anything sexual he's had to be in control, limiting what the other person does to him. It has been strictly transactional, no emotions involved at all. He has always suspected that if he lets his emotions and the sensations overwhelm him, he won't be able to handle it.
What sorts of false signals will his body send? If even a hand on his shoulder or lips pressed to his neck can bring him to an intellectual standstill, what's going to happen if John is suddenly everywhere? Will they ever even get there? Will it ever work, or will the Guillain-Barré team up with his strange brain and present its final side effect, robbing him of something he hadn't even had before the illness – a chance to find out what it would be like to make love to John Watson?
"How does it work?" he hears himself asking.
Anything to stall for time.
John places a final kiss on the side of his finger and then crosses all of his own with Sherlock's. It seems to return the atmosphere to something a little less heated, a little less laden with expectation, and Sherlock breathes a little easier.
"How does what work?" John asks.
Sherlock can deduce that he is clearly trying to conceal disappointment. Has he somehow deflated the mood?
Still, he's dodged this for long enough. He pulls in a deep breath. "This," Sherlock says waving a hand in the empty air between them.
There should be a better word for it – 'sex' doesn't quite cut it, because he hardly needs pointers on the technical side of the act. It's the communication involved which he needs to understand if they're to proceed further. It must be a bit like dancing, where there are general guidelines to be followed, but practice is required for everything to become effortless and easy.
"I don't know," John says, "but that's kind of the fun part, finding out."
John has said something similar before, and Sherlock strongly disagrees with anything so dangerous and unpredictable being fun. With any other activity, he would find those attributes desirable, but not with…. this. The thought is daunting – engaging in something without being able to predict any of the significant turns or the outcome. Well, perhaps one might make assumptions about the outcome, but not of what happens before or after.
Shouldn't John be more uncomfortable doing this? Isn't this what he'd spent years announcing was certainly not his thing, being with a man? The notion that John may have got past such reservations without Sherlock even noticing, makes him feel even less confident and more self-aware of how difficult he must be making everything.
"If you want to do something, do. If you don't like something, tell me. That's all you need to know," John says.
Sherlock bites his lip, frowning as he stares at their joined hands. The gesture is chaste, and he finds he has a hard time negotiating it with what John had just done to his finger. The combination is odd, even confusing but… intriguing. "How do people learn this?" he asks, frowning.
"Lots of really embarrassing experiments during their teen years, mostly."
Sherlock opens his mouth to argue, but John intervenes. "I know you probably didn't. You didn't miss anything worthwhile, I promise," John adds with a mirthful laugh. "I'd definitely delete some of the stuff I went through if I knew how."
Does John think it better to do those mistakes, to go through the embarrassment and confusion at the age of thirty-four, then? It's hardly a consoling thought. "What if we find that I have no particular talent in this area? Apart from a modicum of purely technical skill?"
John looks at him as though he's being completely daft. "Sherlock, you couldn't mess this up if you tried. Not for us. It's not just about what happens now, it's about everything that's happened since day one."
Sherlock can't think of anything to counter that. It's very vague, but it does make a modicum of sense. John certainly isn't considering taking him to bed because of curiosity, or because he has no one else in his life with whom to alleviate his sexual frustration.
John is right here with him, because he wants to be, despite having gone through some very testing times due to Sherlock being in his life.
"I'm not trying to talk you into anything. I'm just saying that you can have what you want, whatever you want. Or don't. That's fine, too," John says.
It's not the words that break the log-jam. It's the look in John's eyes that makes Sherlock shift closer on the couch so he can place his head on John's shoulder. It's a promise without a threat, and it's the same look John has given him so many times before. It's a reminder of who they are, that while what they are heading towards might be new, the reasons behind wanting it all are not.
John takes the hint and stops talking. He picks up Sherlock's hand again so he can trail kisses down the side of his palm, then on the inside of his wrist. Sherlock had never realised it might be such an exquisitely sensitive spot. He can't help wondering if this is something John does to everyone he goes to bed with, or if it's something that has been invented just for him. Not that he'd mind, either way, he realises. For once, what's transpiring isn't only about what works for other people.
What John is doing is certainly working on him, and he finds that some of the anxiety that the conversation had stirred up is ebbing away at John's touch.
John then draws his hand down, tucking his leg – his good leg, not that there ever even was a bad leg to start with – underneath himself and shifting sideways on the sofa so that he can grab Sherlock's shoulder in a firm hold and pull him into a kiss, this time where it belongs, on his lips.
If there's a good kind of drowning, then this is it.
It doesn't take long before Sherlock's mad nerves are on fire, and for the first time he's grateful of their heightened sensitivity because he wants to feel all of this, every single thing John is doing to him. He can't keep up, the barrage of feeling and wanting and needing so overwhelming, but he doesn't care. It should be frightening, and he should not be willing to relinquish control like this, but any chance he might have of resisting probably blew out of the window around the time of the first "amazing" uttered in the back of a cab en route to a pink-clad corpse.
In a way, this is where they've been, right from the start. Hiding their desire in plain sight.
Sherlock almost forgets to reciprocate. He practically slaps his hand on the back of John's neck, manoeuvring him even closer, crushing their lips together. John leans his hand on the sofa, stands up onto his knees, and straddles him. He leans his head back and looks at Sherlock intently as though seeking permission, lips pink and wet, out of breath. He looks gloriously distracted, happy up to the point of wearing an almost silly smile.
Now that their bodies are pressed together, Sherlock practically wedged between the sofa and John, he can feel the unmistakable evidence of John's arousal against his stomach. John swallows, then breathes out raggedly, watching him from beneath half-closed lids.
Something in Sherlock's perception shifts.
This is yet another thing he hadn't factored in, at all – what it would do to him to see John in such a state. Whatever doubts he may have had about his ability to reciprocate, for his body to be able to overcome the nervousness he was bound to feel, all fly out of the window as he takes in the sight of the man. He doesn't even know how, but he has somehow had this profound effect on John. He would try to memorise the sight, every tiny detail of it, if he had time, which he doesn't, because fucking hell John's lips have descended on the side of his neck and there's a little bit of teeth even and -
"You said 'yes and no', once," John whispers breathlessly, his voice thick with need and promise, "which one is it right now?"
"Yes," Sherlock manages to gasp out, and he doesn't even sound like himself. He sounds like someone who could do this, someone who no longer floats above a body they've lost a connection to, someone who could take everything he's feeling right now and accept that it's real.
He slides his hand up John's back, gently curls his fingertips under the wing of the scapula, letting his nails dig in slightly through the fabric of John's shirt.
There is a breathless "OH!" of realisation and Sherlock realises it has come from him. John is not the problem. Instead, he's the solution. He feels boneless, weightless, but not untethered at all, because he's not alone. John is not drowning Sherlock in sensation; he's the filter to the white noise that clutters up his head. John takes the useless storm of distraction, and gives him something else instead, something he can easily focus on without being overwhelmed.
"All right?" it isn't a question, merely a gust of wind John whispers into his ear.
He nods, letting his eyes drift closed briefly before leaning back and looking at John. He'd like nothing but to sink into the feeling of John pressed up against him, but something about the question he'd just been posed makes him wonder at the meanings hidden behind it. And for once, he can't deduce them.
John fixes his gaze on Sherlock. He's smiling, and that smile goes up all the way to his eyes, creating the tiniest of wrinkles around the edges of them. "Bedroom?" he asks slowly, his hope trying to seduce Sherlock's uncertainty within that one word.
"Yes – probably better for -" Sherlock answers, and before he can get to the end of the detailed analysis or something he was probably supposed to formulate, John has pulled him to his feet and off to the bedroom they go, before Sherlock has managed to fully recognise the significance of what is happening.
John throws himself onto his back on the bed after divesting himself of his T-shirt, his smile encouraging and his outstretched arm an invitation.
Sherlock sits down on the edge of the bed, and begins to fumble with his dress shirt buttons.
John sits up, circling his fingers around Sherlock's wrists and then his palms, nesting them inside the warmth of his own.
"I can do it," Sherlock begins to protest.
"I know you can," John says, voice thick and quiet as though it's full of barely contained things. It sounds like Sherlock feels. "But I very much want to," he explains.
Sherlock lets his hands fall to his sides. Slowly, determinedly John unbuttons him, reveals his chest inch by inch and places a kiss where Sherlock's collarbone meets his sternum. Whatever strange things Sherlock's nerves are doing right now, he doesn't mind. He had needlessly feared that it would all be too much, when the truth is that right now, he wants so much more.
John runs his tongue over the tendon of the right side of his neck, which sends a tingling shot of electricity down his leg. Clothing feels like a terrible hindrance right now, and all he can think is that both of them should discard the rest now.
He remembers many other times when John has undressed him. The reasons for doing so had been innocent, dictated by necessity or kindness when he'd been ill, injured or so exhausted that even divesting himself of his socks had been too much to bother with. At one point, it had become a regular end-of-case ritual: him, collapsing face-down on the bed, John sighing, dragging off his shoes and socks and spreading the duvet over him.
At one point, John had stopped doing it. Why? Had it occurred to John, then, that what is going on right now might happen? That John might want it to happen?
John's lips are pressed on his forehead next in a hesitant and chaste manner. "What are you thinking so hard about?" he asks.
"Context," Sherlock answers.
John leans back slightly, watching him carefully. "I always knew pillow talk with you would be weird, but I wouldn't have thought you'd get that analytical."
"You want to have sex with me," Sherlock says.
He must have been frowning or something equally amusing from John's perspective, because the laugh lines John has on his temples reappear and he's now grinning. It doesn't look mocking, merely softens his look of determination into something slightly less unsettling. "Yeah, though I hope that wasn't a question. Did you ever think about this? Before?" John asks and sits down next to him on the bed. He twists so that he's sitting slightly sideways and they're facing each other.
The question leaves Sherlock confused, because John hasn't defined before what. And, before he can ask for clarification about when, John kisses him again. Slowly, at first, but then with more boldness, gripping Sherlock's lower lip briefly between his teeth before sliding a hand behind his neck and practically crushing their mouths together.
Sherlock has a desperate urge to tackle John down onto the bed, to get closer, to have every inch of him covered by the warm weight of John. He needs friction, he needs-
John presses his cheek against his neck. The raspy feeling of a five-o'-clock shadow on his bare, sensitive skin is startling at first, but when he forces himself to be still and relax, it merges into all other sensations and gives him that edge he hadn't even realised he'd needed. John's hands on his skin are making his feel as though touch has suddenly commandeered a larger section of his brain's sensory processing than is possible, since he couldn't give a toss about anything else right now.
"I-" Sherlock starts but his lips are dry which needs to be remedied first with a darting tongue, "-feared you'd find out that I wanted you."
John apparently can't help but smile at this. "Wouldn't sit very well with the image of the thinking machine in your blog, would it?"
"At the hospital, you very nearly did find out," Sherlock reveals.
John leans back and looks at him with awe and playful suspicion. His face is flushed, and so is Sherlock's chest, and they both seem to be radiating a curious sort of warmth.
Sherlock finds it irritating that John has stopped the proceedings. He wants more, wants to know how bad the urgent, pressing warmth at the base of his spine will become until he can't take any more of it, until he can no longer resist the already pressing need to take himself in hand. He feels impatient, but isn't sure how to proceed.
"That was for me?" John asks.
"More or less," Sherlock replies quietly. He should be embarrassed, really, at discussing that objectively mortifying moment when John had found him in a state of rather stubborn arousal without any means to sort out the problem, but considering his current state is even more blatantly eager, it's all an afterthought, really.
Is sex supposed to include this much talking? Is this something John enjoys? For Sherlock, the jury is still out. What if he says the wrong thing? He does, often, judging by the reactions of other people.
He decides on less talking. He kisses John, taking his time with it, even adding a bit of tongue which feels obscenely intimate, and judging by John's hum of approval and shifting closer to him, it's a gesture well received.
Sherlock reaches out to switch off the lamp on the bedside table.
"Don't," John says, "I want to see you."
"You've been staring at me for two years; that should be enough to get by," Sherlock scolds him, and turns off the light.
It doesn't get dark – a cone of light from the lamp in the hallway seems to offer just enough illumination to see what they're doing. Sherlock pulls off his socks – surely people don't leave socks on during?
John is still wearing his own. Sherlock proceeds to rid him of them, which makes John laugh. Ticklish, obviously.
"I'd really like to see you right now," John repeats in a playfully pleading tone. He's on his side in the middle of the bed – there's enough light coming in from the corridor to make out his form.
Despite his request, Sherlock makes no move to switch the light back on. It's not because he's shy, or coy about nudity. John has seen him naked plenty of times already, and he's had eyefuls of John when barging into bathrooms and bedrooms uninvited.
It's not just about the way he looks, either, even though this isn't the body John has been staring at for two years. He's still much thinner than before the GBS.
It's also not just the newness of this.
He realises he still fears being overwhelmed. It's the only thing he still worries about. He can't bear to be scrutinised while trying to process everything. And, eliminating the light helps dampen down at least one of his senses. Even the little things John has been doing practically override his intellectual processes, and if mere touch can do that, then combining sensations even more intense with visual cues would be too much at this point. He could never keep up, which means that he'd have to stop.
He arranges himself to the space between John's side and his arm, on his back.
John lays a palm gently onto his stomach. His fingers then slip underneath the edge of Sherlock's T-shirt which has ridden high on his torso. Together they wrangle it off him.
"You've gone quiet," John says in the darkness.
"Thinking", Sherlock says and swallows, as John's warm palm trails down his chest this time, drawing swirly patterns on his skin. It almost tickles, but somehow John manages to keep it just firm enough to feel pleasant.
"I think we need less of that," John says, turns more to his side, and kisses Sherlock slowly, languidly as though memorising every brush of skin against skin and every soft breath afterwards. John then slides his hand down Sherlock's arm, fingernails trailing a fuse of explosions along the palm, drawing out a ticklish shudder. John then laces their fingers, and Sherlock presses their palms together to erase the ghost sensation still there. He realises that John has remembered that too gentle a touch is difficult, and is grateful for the firmness of his actions.
He then turns to face John, pulling him close so that his cheek is against Sherlock's shoulder. John responds eagerly by sliding his free hand to grab hold of Sherlock's buttocks, yanking him close, so close that it feels as though they're merging into one another. Sherlock slithers a leg between John's, which brings his groin against John's thigh, and he can't help letting out a strained sigh. It's part relief, part a delicious sort of frustration that makes him again want to discard every and all pieces of clothing still separating them. How long can this be drawn out?
There's another kiss, then another, until it becomes impossible to tell where one ends and another begins. Sherlock feels as though he's drinking oxygen straight from John's lungs, that he could keep doing this forever, needing nothing else.
It's still hard not to think, especially since John has now somehow hoisted himself atop Sherlock's thighs, leaning on the palms of his outstretched arms on the duvet on both sides of Sherlock's head, staring at him intently. They're both breathing heavily, deeply, and there's a rosy flush on John's upper body that looks different from what is produced by exercise. Well, another sort of exercise, anyway.
Is there a plan to this, a sequence of events John usually aims for? What does John think Sherlock ought to do right now? Should he confirm consent once more, or is it not blatantly obvious he's about to go well and truly insane if there isn't a hand on his cock within the next few minutes? Or should he show some initiative in bringing John closer to the hopelessly gone state he is already in? How analogous is the situation at hand to John's previous exploits? And what about -
"Safety," Sherlock blurts pointedly, his voice a half-broken rasp he hardly recognises as his own.
John's face does something strange, as though he's trying to frown and raise his eyebrows at the same time. "Safety?" John then asks incredulously, mouth quirked up in amusement and confusion. "Not a word anyone ever expects to hear from your mouth." He slides downwards, careful not to let his whole weight rest on Sherlock's knees, eventually burying his face on Sherlock's stomach.
What must be a tongue circles his navel, which elicits a gasp instead of the hopefully sensible words Sherlock had intended to produce with his open mouth.
He tries again, once John has stopped doing that ridiculous gesture, although he wouldn't mind that same tongue doing others things. "If you worry about contagion…. I never did share needles, but-"
"They did a hep screen and an HIV test as part of your screening at UCLH. You're clean. As am I," John says after raising his face to look at him.
As much as Sherlock would like to see right now what other tricks John might come up with next, perhaps this conversation needs to be had.
"I had myself tested after Laura," John explains, placing a warm palm on Sherlock's right thigh as he rearranges himself into a sitting position next to him. "There's been no one since then."
Which one had that been again? Sherlock racks his brain. "The EMT six months ago…?" He can hardly be expected to keep up with Johns conquests.
"No, the drug rep from - never mind. Jealous?" John teases.
"Always," Sherlock announces and John leans forward to gently dig his fingers into Sherlock's sides, obviously as punishment.
Everything John does – every firm finger against his bare skin, every exhalation against the dark hairs that trail down his stomach – seems to govern a larger part of his consciousness than they had before. Is this how it always feels, or is it a result of his illness? As intense as the feeling is, he finds himself welcoming it instead of wanting to push the culprit away, to run, to shield himself like he had wanted to years before during his scarce experiences with what could be counted as foreplay and how is it that with John this is so diff- Good lord.
What is John doing to his left nipple? He scrambles to raise himself by wedging his elbows underneath him, but John gently pushes him down by draping an arm across his chest. His hands then move down to Sherlock's hips and then to the waistband of his boxers.
Time has slowed down, languid like treacle. Everything feels like the scent of honey, all sounds seem muted and every colour has a taste. On the horizon, Sherlock can sense an edge of panic, because this sort of synaesthesia usually marks the onset of a meltdown, but for the first time it occurs to him that he might just ride it out, not resist, because he's not in danger.
For what feels like the first time, his brain is capable of holding on to that thought, of allowing himself to melt away into it, to relinquish some of the control to John, to enjoy the cascade of sensation, no longer fearing that he'll break to pieces.
He can trust this. He needs to trust this. He's not about to fall apart.
He might, again, at some point, because life is bloody unpredictable, but it won't be because of what they're doing right now. He's not alone in a crowd. John is here.
He grabs John's biceps, perhaps a little more tightly than necessary, and pulls their bodies against each another. He feels practically drunk on all the skin pressing against his own, wants to make an inventory of every inch, but right now he can't focus on any single task. John's hands are moving up his ribs, his muscles contracting under the touch. John finally settles all his weight down onto him, and Sherlock can't help arching back when John's groin presses against his cock. The sensation brings him closer to an orgasm than he'd like to admit. Embarrassing, really, but that thought gets shoved aside by the sensation of John bucking his hips slightly against his. He curls his fingers into John's hair and closes his eyes, trying to stop the room from spinning, until he realises he doesn't want it to, because this is not vertigo, it's another sort of falling, and it's not the least bit uncomfortable.
He let's go, sinks into it, allows himself to drift with nothing but the awareness of John to keep him tethered to the world.
Suddenly, the warm weight disappears, and after a moment of shifting he discovers John sitting between his bent knees, trailing kisses southwards from where the dark hairs begin on his lower abdomen. There's a warm palm on his calf, thumb rubbing back on forth in a hypnotic rhythm.
John then takes him in his mouth, and in a moment, Sherlock decides that there are no more thoughts that he needs to be having right now.
oOO
"So, there is an off button to your brain, and it works on your mouth at the same time."
"Oh, shut up, John."
"Make me," John says mischievously, shifting his pillow closer.
How convenient it is that Sherlock has always enjoyed a challenge.
