I know that readers of my blog assume that our lives are just fraught with excitement. A never-ending thrill ride. And that's good, I suppose. It means that my writing is getting better. I'm able to spin the tale in a captivating fashion. But of course, real life is not the same as our stories or our movies or our telly.
Real life has pauses, boredom, and awkwardness. And no convenient editing.
Things that come out of our mouths wrong do not get a chance for a second take. They aren't written out ahead of time by a professional. We have to do the best we can.
Which, sometimes for Sherlock, includes destruction of our landlady's property.
Boredom had prompted him to start his little marksmanship display, but I suspect that, like a three-year old with a new sibling, Sherlock was also seeking my attention. Also like that three-year old, negative attention would suffice as well as any.
Things with Sarah were sufficiently patched up after the incident with the kidnapping for us to continue working together and dating casually. She kept me somewhat distracted from Sherlock. You know, unless he was using my gun in the flat. That was convenient for him anyway.
I wondered at the time how I could possibly devote more time and attention to this child-man. We lived together. We ate together. We solved crimes together. I even let him disrupt my dating life when the call of The Work sounded. But the problem of giving Sherlock more of my attention was calling more of his down on me.
So, yes, there are periods of time, intense time, where excitement is the watchword of our lives. It's a pendulum that swings all too far from side to side. We're up; we're down. We're in each others' space too much; we're tracking each other through the streets of London.
His histrionics over my blog write-up was attention and excitement I could have lived without. And I'll freely admit I reacted poorly to the hissy fit and editorial critique.
Ah, the lovely contradictions.
I had wondered when I had written up my blog entry how he would react to my 'spectacularly ignorant' phrase, but I had rationalized that he would parse out the definition of ignorant from the common usage. He didn't have some knowledge. That's all I meant. And I had prefaced the phrase with more accolades about his brilliance.
Somehow he missed those.
I was surprised by the circumstance of Sherlock not knowing anything. So sue me. He seemed to be a walking World Wide Web of interconnected information. Sure, we all have our smart phones in our pockets, but bringing meaning to facts is still a bit beyond AI. I never imagined that he would be so defiant about his ignorance. Dismiss it as irrelevant. I found that positively shocking.
His little display of pique was much less shocking and much more annoying.
He confessed to me later that he had, at the time, begun to form some sort of feelings for me. So not only was he colossally bored but also perplexed by the uprising of new emotion. Any emotion-anger, warmth, confusion-sentiment, in his words. To compensate, he clamped down on any stray expression of affection or simple caring toward anyone or anything.
Lucky for both of us and our petty little emotional problems, James Moriarty decided that that was the perfect time to start his own bid for our attention. And his attention was the catalyst for what came after.
By the time I was standing in front of Sherlock at the pool, covered in explosives that would kill us all, I was re-prioritizing my life as quickly as possible. What did I want out of my life? What was important to me? What would I willingly die for?
Sherlock. He was the answer to all three questions. And suddenly, my attraction was about much more than a fantastic shag and a hot arse. I was falling for Sherlock.
I was invested in making sure that this brilliant, beautiful, brat of a man-child not only survived his cat-and-mouse game with the equally brilliant and bratty supervillain but also learned the value that caring could bring to his life. The reasons that caring would separate him from the path that Moriarty walked.
I harangued him about the lives at stake in the middle of his and Moriarty's game, and he admitted he didn't want to care about these people. He did not see how caring could help him in his pursuit of The Work.
However, he did cop to caring about disappointing me. He cared that I had my hopes pinned on him. He cared that he might not live up to my image of him.
He tried to put me off by claiming he was no hero.
But it was too late, and he knew it. He already was my hero. The way he puts all of himself into his crime solving. The way that he demands the next level of effort and performance from all of those around him. The way he tries so hard to make sure I don't up and leave him out of frustration or pique. These are the ways he is my hero.
He was my hero in his offering of his heart to me.
When Sherlock reminded Moriarty that people had died during his little games to draw Sherlock into a battle of wits with him, I knew that a corner had been turned. Sherlock was thinking about how his joy of puzzle-solving had provoked someone else into unspeakable acts. Sherlock felt indirectly responsible for those peoples' deaths.
If he hadn't presented Moriarty with a target for his ire, perhaps lives could have been spared. If Sherlock had not caught his attention . . .
But if Sherlock were not Sherlock, then I wouldn't love him like I do. And watching him grow and evolve into the better man I knew he could be-thus deepening my love for him-was my greatest pride.
Therefore, the excitement in our relationship comes not from his sulks or his insults. It's not from anything designed to grab each other's attention. It arises from our individual need to pay attention to each other. The gaze inward rather than the pull. By being nothing other than ourselves, we developed the inability to turn away from each other.
I could not give up his brilliance. He could not give up my steady presence. Two halves of our whole. That's what's exciting.
His smirk faded as he began his slow slide up and down me again. But now he gained momentum much quicker. I could feel my sweat bubble to the surface of my skin, flushing with the pleasure of sex. I knew that my cheeks were bright red with exertion as well as arousal. I also knew that Sherlock liked cataloging these changes in my body.
He ran his tongue over my clavicle, tasting the salt of my sweat. He began chasing the rivulets back up into my hairline, nosing my scalp when he arrived. I turned my head to allow him more access to my more sensitive areas behind my ears and at the nape of my neck. He didn't disappoint me.
"John," he murmured. "You taste like home."
The first time Sherlock had pronounced me 'home' I had had a visceral reaction. Home for a veteran was a special term. It was full of more meaning than any number of Christmas television specials, runs in the World Series, and cheap, sentimental advertising campaigns combined. Home was safety and life. Home was sacred. Home was the reason a soldier left home. To protect.
So being Sherlock's home was overwhelming and categorically comforting at the same moment, sending me into emotional overdrive. He knew that dropping that particular phrase was like dropping a red flag before a bull.
Sherlock stopped his kissing for a brief second before pronouncing, "And cherries." Then he laughed.
"I'll show you cherries," I teased, and with a growl, I leaned back onto the bed and rolled us over, straddling Sherlock where he once was over me. His sly smile told me this had been his objective in the first place. Git.
As we budged up the bed to ensure proper traction, my knees sank into the mattress with purpose. My hips began to roll in a rhythm much practiced over the years. It was calculated to draw out the most delicious sounds from Sherlock, to make him undulate like a belly dancer below me, and to bring him to climax with maximum pleasure. My mouth latched onto a pink nipple and suckled.
After a moment of listening to his whispered pleas for more and harder, I bit down lightly on the erect nipple. Then I planted my elbows on either side of his rib cage, my hands slid up under his back to cup his scapulae. I did not touch him with my mouth now. I wanted to watch that resolute face crumble. To see him let loose and know that it was all because of me.
I would watch the formidable Sherlock Holmes become a writhing puddle of sex.
My hips snapped and rolled and sought out his most sensitive areas and pressures. Sherlock was rapidly losing the power of coherent speech. Only my name even remotely sounded like an actual word anymore. The rest were primitive imitations of speech formed to convey the equally primitive urges and sensations that were currently arresting any higher thought from the most amazing mind I had ever known. His brain stem must have looked like a Christmas tree on an EEG.
When his breathing began coming in shorter and shorter gasps and his fingers dug into my triceps, I knew that things were well and truly progressing. That 'un-boring breathing' I had promised earlier was realized. I huffed a few breaths of warm air onto his lips. His eyes popped open.
Sherlock's eyes are universes unto themselves. I could star gaze into them for weeks at a time. The contrasting colors, the depth of expression in those orbs were miraculous to me. And when he was this far gone, they dilated so widely that I felt myself falling into them to be lost forever.
It wasn't an entirely unwelcome fate.
"Oh, John," he moaned. "Fuck." The expletive sounded almost painful. I knew what he was experiencing. The intensity of pleasure that tips over into pain, into work, into a test of character. I knew he had the stamina to withstand my assault on his senses, but to hear him tested was thoroughly stimulating for me.
My hand snaked down between the two of us to grasp his leaking cock and pump it with vigor. No need for finesse at this stage of the game. We were ensured orgasms short of bombs falling from the sky. And even then, it might just be worth finishing first.
You know, before we had to deal with that sort of shit.
I ran my thumb over his leaking slit, then leaned in to whisper in his ear.
"That's right, my beauty. My brilliant man. Give me everything you have. Take my cock and give yourself to me, now," I told him in no-uncertain terms.
The shudders began deep in his abdomen, rising to the surface and spreading through his groin where I could feel them begin to grip me differently. His legs then trembled where he had planted them on either side of my own legs. I could feel him pushing his feet down the mattress, lengthening his legs and straightening his knees before bringing them back up.
I slowed my thrusts slightly to draw out the pleasure. No need to rush to the finish line when we could enjoy some prolonged togetherness. Prolonged mindlessness.
When Sherlock was spent, he lay beneath me like a banquet for my feast. His eyes sparkled in the low light as he regarded me.
"I love you, John," he pronounced, his voice unhurried. His hands reached up to brush my sweaty hair from my forehead and cup my jaw. I answered him with a few more snaps of my hips and an answering orgasm which stimulated a few more aftershocks for him.
Lowering myself to his body, he wrapped those endless arms around me. We had long since grown accustomed to our bodily fluids and their sticky proclivities. Nothing that a quick, shared shower couldn't remedy soon enough. But we would have our kisses and our continued intimacy now. No need to interrupt that for anything.
Again, even bombs might not be enough.
But they sure would make things extra exciting.
fin