John woke slowly, surrounded by warmth and comfort. He felt content to drift and doze with no pressing need to rise for the day. He hadn't woken so pleasantly in… goodness, it must have been years. Before his injury when he woke with pain and nightmares, before the war when he woke to cannonballs and gunfire and the screams of young men. It made him feel old briefly, to think of not having a pleasant rest since the years of his minority. And even then, this luscious, languorous feeling was rare and fleeting.
Then the source of heat against John's back shifted, awakening him to the fact that he was not alone in his cozy bed. His heart gave a few thunderous thumps, but the rest of him remained intensely still, assessing the situation. Sherlock. Sherlock had climbed into John's bed last night when John had woken in a panic, broken the unlit lamp near his bed, and had been found crouched on the floor unable to move. The nightmares were worse than battle. Fear of pain, he could understand, and fear of death. The nightmares were fear in its purest form, undiluted and insurmountable, and John found them utterly debilitating.
So that led to Sherlock, quite logically, helping John into bed and back to sleep. He said the sleep sounds of a bed partner might ease John's unconscious mind. And it truly helped. John had drifted off to the sound of Sherlock's regular breathing as he lay on his back in the bed, not sleeping but thinking, always thinking. Though at what point Sherlock had curled up so tightly behind him, John couldn't say.
John tried to relax, pretend he was still slumbering. This was the most contact Sherlock had ever initiated, even if he was asleep and unaware. It felt nice. John wanted to imagine it meant more than just warmth on a cold night for a little while longer. Sherlock's warm breath on the back of his neck was pleasurable; his long fingers were splayed over John's belly carelessly. Sherlock's lanky form was bent up against his, knees tucked behind John's, groin firmly pressed against his buttocks.
And speaking of firm, Sherlock's body was displaying a certain tumescence, though whether from dreaming or proximity to another body in bed, John couldn't be sure. Sherlock shifted and pressed a little closer; the resultant friction prompted a breathy sigh against John's nape. Sherlock's lips were so close to John's skin he could feel their heat. John felt his own arousal stirring, especially when Sherlock's fingers tightened around his waist, pulling him closer.
John felt the pleasure like a vigorous fluttering inside; when Sherlock's lips pressed solidly against the curve of his trapezius muscle, the fluttering coalesced into a full-body shudder. The cords of John's neck vibrated under Sherlock's lips much like the violin strings did under his bow and fingertips.
John's reaction escalated when Sherlock's fingertips slipped below John's navel in a blatant caress. His nightshirt had rucked up in the night; it would have left him bare from the waist down had he not decided to start wearing drawers to bed. Sherlock's fingers danced below the muslin of his drawers, teasing the bared skin of John's belly. John laced his fingers with Sherlock's, halting the downward movement of his hand. It wouldn't take much more of this for John to achieve a full cockstand.
Twisting in Sherlock's arms didn't stop the sensual assault, but heightened it. John's breath caught in his throat as Sherlock's lips brushed along his jaw, over his morning-rough cheek, and finally over John's mouth. Trembling, John returned the kiss. God, those perfectly etched lips, so soft, he thought, tracing his tongue just along the moist edge. When Sherlock's lips engulfed his more passionately, John responded with a husky, "Sherlock," moaned into that voluptuous mouth.
The repercussion of John's voiced desire, however, was that Sherlock suddenly became very aware of his surroundings and he pulled back, eyes wide in alarm.
"John, I… didn't intend for the arrangement of bed sharing to culminate in my unconscious molestation of your person."
"Sherlock…" But Sherlock did not allow John to voice his desire.
"No, no, the indiscretion was unforgiveable," Sherlock blathered as he slid to the far side of the bed. "I believe the experiment was a success up until that point. You did not wake from further violent dreams." Sherlock's face was red to his ears and down his long neck, but he kept talking, not hearing John's pleaded repetition, "Sherlock, please, it's fine…"
"Apparently my control grew lax as I abandoned my deductions and thought to succumb to a few hours of sleep. I had only intended to assist in your untroubled slumber."
"Sherlock, I didn't want you to stop!" John shouted in his captain voice as Sherlock slid off the edge of the bed and reached for his banyan.
Sherlock's utterances stumbled to a stop. He blinked.
"Please, Sherlock, don't run away," John said in a much more tender tone. "I want to talk about this. Please?" John shifted so he sat against the headboard with his pillow cushioning his back.
Sherlock wrapped the damask of his banyan around his body, but perched cross-legged on the foot of the bed facing John, the full diagonal space yawning between them. John mused that neither of them were particularly comfortable, in multitudes of ways. Still, he smiled.
"First I wanted to tell you that I very much enjoyed what we were doing and I would like it if we did more of that. I feel I must be blunt. I am attracted to you. I want to share a bed with you. I want to share pleasure with you. I am aware you are not interested in me in the same way."
"I should think this morning's rather stimulating circumstance would have corrected that idiotic notion of yours, John."
"So… you are attracted to me?" John wanted to believe this. Still, there was one thing that plagued John's mind, something he had to hear refuted directly. "But just after Victor drugged you, you said that you didn't want me." John hated that his voice sounded the least bit tremulous. He steeled himself for Sherlock's response.
"I said no such thing." Well, John hadn't been expecting that.
"I remember quite clearly. You, on the other hand, were under the influence of a mind-altering substance."
"I still remember what I said. I told you that I did not want you like that, with the drug, with the situation under Victor's control. That is why I was going to go with him, to keep you safe. When you came out after us, I had to muster every bit of control I had left to deflect his pin-ring. I couldn't bear to see you sullied with such an obscene chemical."
While John stared at Sherlock with no response and a warm, bubbling fuzziness in his belly, Sherlock continued speaking.
"I do find myself frustratingly attracted to you." Sherlock admitted this in the same way a child might mutter an ashamed apology.
"Then we both want more, yes? But if you are not ready for more, are not comfortable with that, all you have to do is tell me."
Sherlock picked at little nothings on the counterpane. "We both know I am no innocent, John."
"That doesn't matter, Sherlock. You are not accustomed to me, and I am not accustomed to you. We are new at being together. There's always a bit of awkwardness at first, but I think we could get along quite well together."
Sherlock didn't answer.
"Sherlock, I cannot force you to love me. That has to happen naturally or not at all. But I will ask you to be honest with me."
"I'm always honest, John, unless it serves my purposes to be dishonest." Sherlock's biting candor was back, if slightly subdued.
"Then can I ask why you pull away? Do you wish to not be intimate with me? Or at all?"
Sherlock sighed and drew his legs up and looped his arms around his knees. His bare feet and long calves poked out from beneath the fabric and he twitched a bit of blanket over them.
"Is it some form of religious or philosophical asceticism, like Victor said?" John asked delicately. Various men of philosophy and science were known for taking such a vow, believing that the act of releasing one's seed would somehow diminish the functions of the brain. This sounded far too much like Sherlock.
"John, I should think you would know me well enough by now to realize I would hardly make random vows to try and appease a fickle deity." Sherlock dismissed Victor's denouncement with an appropriate amount of scorn. "But when I left Victor, I declared myself celibate for my own reasons. I had not considered Mycroft's choice of spouse would be such a source of temptation."
For all that this wasn't precisely what John wanted to hear, he was a bit relieved. He tempted Sherlock. He could work with that.
"The whole business of matrimony and sentiment is perplexing, I admit that. And sexual pleasure is most certainly a distraction from the crisp and proper workings of my mind. It is an indecorous activity made pleasurable to ensure the propagation of the species. I do not personally feel the urge to procreate, so I felt confident in my ability to sever myself completely from the business.
"I intended to live my life with focus and purpose, forsaking all unnecessary distractions. I had previously allowed pleasures of the flesh to diminish me to a mindless wretch and I despised myself for it. I had so much wasted time for which to compensate.
"And then in the midst of my intellectual restitution, I find myself in the company of a man for whom I have the most unrelenting desire. You're always infiltrating my thoughts. I want to say that I ought to have solved this mystery long ago were you not constantly distracting me, only you've proven so helpful that I wouldn't have recognized several important factors that you yourself have pointed out."
"So you do like me, then." John tried to stifle his grin, but there was little use.
"You are a companionable man, John, and a more than adequate physician. Surely you do not need me to tell you this," Sherlock replied with a weak touch of condescension.
"Actually, I do. I've been trying to understand what I've been lacking, why my husband, whom I greatly admire, turns from me when I ache to kiss him so much. And then when he does kiss me, it is the most wonderful feeling until he soundly rejects me again. It was shaving bloody filings off my heart, Sherlock."
"All the more reason not to have one."
"Sherlock Holmes, you are not heartless." John gave Sherlock a fond look but Sherlock ducked his head away from it. He scrambled off the bed.
"Lestrade informed me that I need to apologize more. I am sorry, John, for rejecting you without telling you why."
"Come back to bed, then." John smiled at his husband and reclined a little more, patting the empty mattress beside him.
"Don't be a lay-about, John, it's half-eight. We need to hurry if we are to catch Irene still abed. I'll dress and return to help you through your stretches. Ring Matthews for breakfast, will you?"
"Why on earth would we need to catch her abed, Sherlock?" The maddening mind of a genius certainly had a thorough method of crushing ardor. John knew Sherlock wanted to talk to Irene about the case, but why, precisely, would that pop into his head now of all times?
"She won't be expecting it."
"She's met you, Sherlock. I think that even entering her chambers before ten in the morning will not be a surprise," John said dryly. Perhaps someday, when they were old men, Sherlock would cease to surprise him.
"Perhaps I shall bring a squadron of street children to breakfast?"
John was startled into laughter. "A trifle extreme, but it would be rousing."