Chapter Text
“You haven’t had sex in seven years.”
John bashed his elbow on the towel rack when he whipped around, and bit back a yelp at the pain shooting down to numb his last two fingers. Sherlock leaned against the doorframe, letting steam out of the bathroom.
“What the f—what—get out, Sherlock!”
“This isn’t a personal attack or criticism, I assure you. It’s an observation, leading to subsequent inqu—”
“It leads to you turning around and closing the bloody door! Do you mind not doing this while I’m naked?”
“I’ve seen you naked. We’ve had entire conversations with your penis in my peripheral vision, and I thought, given my desired topic of conversation, this would be an amenable—”
John hit him in the face with a washcloth, then shoved him through the door to slam it behind him. He knew he couldn’t actually move Sherlock without Sherlock’s cooperation, so he took that tacit acquiescence as the only apology he was likely to get.
He was proven wrong, however, when he emerged dressed and grumbling a few minutes later to find Sherlock fixing two mugs of tea. John sat at the table and crossed his arms to wait. After Sherlock deposited a mug gently in front of him (using a coaster, even!) and slid into the seat opposite, he flicked his eyes to various points on John’s face, neck, and hands, in a familiar gesture.
“I’m not angry,” John said, and Sherlock nodded, which meant he’d already confirmed that for himself. “And, by the way, having my dick out for half an hour while we shot the shit was really your fault for not telling me my robe was coming undone.”
“It’s two sizes too small, which I have remarked upon on several occasions.”
“It fits me just f—”
“And I have no objection to your nudity, partial or full, so it should not fall to me to bring your attention to your own sartorial mishaps. I reject the assertion that it was ‘my fault’ we conversed at length last week with your penis in view, as surely the onus lies with the owner of a robe with such little overlap when tied—”
“Alright! I’m dropping the robe. Don’t,” John raised a warning finger, and Sherlock subsided from making his immediate retort.
“It would have been low-hanging fruit, anyway.” Sherlock took a sip of his tea, and started tapping the nail of his pinkie against the ceramic. “Shall we return to the original topic?”
“Did we have one?”
“Sex. Specifically, that it’s been seven years since you last engaged in the act.”
“Right.” John massaged the bridge of his nose. “I don’t care to know how you know, but I am interested to know why you think it’s your business.”
“Yes,” Sherlock said, then said nothing for about twenty seconds, which felt a lot longer to John. The rate of his tapping on the mug increased, and gained a definite rhythm. “You’ve been on several dates since we’ve become acquainted, but haven’t engaged sexually with any of the individuals involved. You still experience sexual attraction and its physiological effects. You masturbate—”
“If you’re about to tell me how many times a week I jerk it, I will throw this tea in your face, mate.”
“Apologies. I merely mean to highlight—”
“It’s highlighted! What are you getting at, Sherlock? You said this wasn’t a personal attack, but I’m feeling more than a little—”
“No! No, Watson, please. Hear me out.” The tapping was a fast staccato now, and John wrapped both hands around his mug to raise it to his lips. If that took his hands out of contact with the cheap IKEA pine, well. He was trying not to get ahead of himself — Sherlock often started conversations in bizarre and terrifying places before meandering to his eventual relevant point — but it was difficult to imagine this train of observations leading anywhere John wanted them to go.
“Do you recall the apparatus I developed to lower blood pressure and stimulate oxytocin release, which became obsolete once yourself and Mariana expressed your readiness to hug me when I required it?”
“I remember, yeah.” John didn’t try to hide his confusion at the change in topic. “D’you need one now?”
“No. Or, well. Maybe later. I bring this up because I have other, more commonly used devices to assuage my sensory needs, that might also be superseded by their human equivalent, if it were available and willing.”
“Right,” said John, and then, when nothing more was forthcoming, “You’ve lost me, mate. What devices are we talking about?”
Sherlock took a deep breath, and John would later swear that he waited until the mug was again at John’s mouth before he said, “Dildos.”
The mug of tea was made disgusting with tea that had been shot back out of his nose, so John set it to one side.
“They do work, whenever I have a restless excess of energy and need that sense of fullness to balance me, but they are at times texturally uncomfortable.” Sherlock stopped tapping at his mug, and spread both long-fingered hands on the table, looking down at them. “I haven’t had anyone to ask, the same way I had no one to ask for a firm hug, before it was offered. And you haven’t offered this, but I believe that you—that is, I think that you might—ah. You recall a moment ago, when I mentioned that I had observed in you the physiological effects of sexual attraction.”
John made a noise that could have been assent, or maybe just a wheeze, he wasn’t sure he knew. Sherlock nodded as though he’d formed a coherent response. “Yes. I’ve observed it several times in my presence, with no apparent stimuli other than myself, my speech, my playing of the violin, and so on. I can cite at least two occasions in which sexual arousal in my company has led you to bid me an early goodnight and retire to your room, whereupon you began masturbating within fifteen to twenty minutes. I’ve gathered enough data points to put the case to you that you are sexually attracted to me, and that I would welcome your sexual attention in turn.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” John put his head down on his arms, as though that could hide how his face was burning. His whole body was burning, actually.
“You’re upset.”
“Yeah, I’m fucking—yeah, I’m upset!”
“I misstepped. I’ve done this wrong. Or—my conclusions were incorrect? Watson, I’m so—”
“No—no, mate, your conclusions were right. It’s just,” John glanced up from his arms, then sat up when he saw Sherlock’s expression. “Shit. It’s just—hold hands? Hold hands, yeah, there you go—it’s just a lot, to be told this all at once, and I know—well, I hope—you don’t mean to humiliate me, but there’s nothing quite like a bloke telling you he’s noticed you shuffling away to beat the meat—”
“I should have extrapolated this when you registered objection to my previous observation of your masturbation habits, that was too bad of me—”
“In addition,” John said firmly, “telling a guy he’d do a bang-up job standing in for your dildo is a little insensitive to his finer feelings.”
Sherlock’s fingers were cool within his. Sherlock met his eyes for a brief second, then his gaze caught on John’s left ear, his Adam’s apple, then returned to rest on their joined hands.
“Feelings,” Sherlock said, slowly. “Romantic feelings?”
“Isn’t that what we’re—”
“I was talking about sex.”
“Well, it’s a little hard for me to separate the two.”
It took a minute of silence for John to catch on. “Wait, you didn’t—you didn’t know that? Oh, bollocks. Fucking balls. Jesus hell.” He put his head back down on the table, but didn’t let go of Sherlock’s hands.
“So you feel—”
“Yes, actually, quite a lot.” John deliberately muffled his words into the table. “And I’m feeling very vulnerable right now, rather like a pea that keeps being skewered over and over, so if you could let me down gently at a later date—”
“I don’t want to let you down.” Seemingly belying his point, Sherlock withdrew his hands. “In fact, I’m very gratified that you feel this way about me.”
“Gratified,” John said dully, sitting up and reaching for his mug before he remembered it had snot in it. “I dunno, mate, that sounds like condolences to me. You had my wank sessions timed to the minute, but missed the giant torch I was carrying for you?”
“Such a curious turn of phrase,” Sherlock said, in the soft voice that he used as an aside to himself, rather than direct continuation of a conversation. “I see. I see now how I’ve hurt you, when I take this into consideration. I’ll reflect on how I can make it up to you.” He stood, and John’s heart leapt.
“Wait! Wait.”
They froze like that, Sherlock half-turned away, John partway out of his chair with his arm raised.
“Hold on.” John’s swallow seemed very loud in the silence. “Just—wait. Let’s revisit this in the morning, yeah? You’re tired, I’m tired—”
“I’m not tired—”
“—and I don’t want you to spend the night in self-recrimination over a failed social interaction, alright?”
“I’ve never done that.”
“Of course you haven’t.” John scrubbed both hands over his face. “Look—we said earlier about a hug, yeah? How about let’s have a hug, go to sleep, and make sense of this tomorrow. Sleep in, in separate beds. Obviously! In our own rooms, which we have. Yep, that’s—yeah, mate. Nice and tight, there we go.”
John didn't have Sherlock's innate sense of time, but he guessed they stood hugging for a decent twenty seconds, John’s arms tight about Sherlock’s middle. Sherlock’s breath moved his hair, and John could feel his heartbeat slowing where it beat against his ear.
Sherlock released him, stepping away without meeting his eyes. “Goodnight, then.”
“Nighty night.”
John stood there for several minutes after Sherlock’s bedroom door latched closed, completely failed to process anything at all that had just occurred, and turned for bed.
***
John entered the kitchen with some trepidation the next morning, and his heart sank when Sherlock whirled around from fiddling with the coffee-maker. His hair was on end, there were dark smudges under his eyes, and his hands were fluttering with a ceaseless restlessness.
“Come on, mate. Why didn’t you sleep?”
“Asking an insomniac why he didn’t sleep. If this is the standard of care your patients can…” He trailed off, visibly chagrined. “No. No, that’s not how I wanted to start. Sit, please.”
John sat. Sherlock’s hands continued to flutter, from his hips to his hair to his chin.
“Are you… going to sit as well?”
“Yes. Yes.” Sherlock dropped into his chair and immediately leaned forward. “I apologise for the manner of my approach yesterday. I hadn’t correctly interpreted the data.”
“Mate, it’s really fine. You don’t need to apologise! Caught off guard, you know me, snappish when I’m on the back foot.”
“If I could remake my approach, I would begin instead with an expression of my—”
“Look, there was nothing wrong with your approach, now I’ve thought on it more. You have a style of communication that’s—well, I was thinking about my mum last night—not in a weird—what I mean is, we’ve spoken before about you, and how you word things differently but it doesn’t mean you don’t, well—care about me, and I know you do care about me, right."
John abruptly ran out of air as he’d forgotten to inhale while speaking, and choked a little bit.
“I do care about you.” Sherlock said this with a solemnity that made something in the back of John’s mind tremble.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding ridiculously high by comparison. “Yeah, so, with that in mind. I accept the, uh, the proposal.”
“The proposal.” Sherlock’s expression didn’t change.
“The one—last night? When you asked for my dick as a sensory regulator? Did I—did I dream that?”
“I was under the impression that I’d committed a serious social faux pas even by asking.”
“See, I knew you would—”
“I need you to be extremely explicit with me, John. Are you telling me, now, that you would be amenable to having sex with me, and that participating in such acts would not cause you emotional distress?”
“Yeah,” said John, even as he extremely did not know anything of the sort. “Yeah, mate, I would. I’d be—glad. To do that.”
“Oh.”
The table was rattling, gently, as both of Sherlock’s legs bounced beneath it.
“So… when would you like to—will you let me know, maybe, when you’d like to, uh—”
“I’m rather agitated now.”
“Now,” John said. “Right. Now. It’s eight in the morning—”
“Is the time problematic?”
“No, no, it’s not—sure, now. Let’s, now then.”
Sherlock scanned his face with the intensity usually reserved for mangled corpses. Then he surged to his feet, grabbed John’s hand, and towed him towards the bedroom.
“Aha, ha, yep. Yep. Great. Goooood stuff—ow—shit—” John stubbed his toe on what appeared to be an antique microscope, then tumbled forward onto the bed. Well, at least that eliminated the potential for awkward hovering.
“Alright, so how do you usually—usually go about this, then?” John affected his most chummy and casual air with a sense of desperation.
“The position, you mean?” Sherlock vibrated by the bed, his hands still restless, and the puffiness under his eyes gave John a pang in his ribs.
“Get down, here, stop looming, you’re tall enough. Yes, the position—how do you want me, er, to—to—”
“I was thinking I would be on my back, whilst you penetrated me from the front?”
“Yeah, yeah, missionary, yeah, classic, can’t beat it, absolutely.” John clapped his hands together and rubbed them, genuinely unsure of what was leaving his mouth. “Right, you just—get yourself into—” Words died in his throat when Sherlock began stripping with speed and efficiency. He was naked within seconds, and his arse was in John’s face as he bent to fish something out of the bedside drawer. He turned back, pulling on a—
“Is that a disposable glove?”
“Yes,” Sherlock made a face. “I need to stretch myself beforehand, and I don’t like the fluid texture much.”
“Oh,” John said faintly. He thought about offering to do the stretching himself, agonised back and forth for second, then decided to let Sherlock get on with his own plan. Next time, maybe. If there was a next time.
Sherlock shoved aside several notebooks and—glass slides?—to lay back against the headboard. He spread his legs, and John reflexively whipped his head away, then cursed himself and looked back, because, well, they were here to have sex, and John was going to—he was going to—
“Are you going to get undressed? You don’t have to, but it might be more comfortable.”
“Yes! Yes, I am getting undressed. Getting undressed now.” John hopped off the bed to wrestle his shirt and shorts onto the floor, then shucked his pants on top. He was already half-hard, and cupped it self-consciously when he turned back to Sherlock.
“Alrighty, we are good to—gghhuh—”
Sherlock looked like every furtive fantasy John had ever had of him, long legs spread wide, flushed down to his chest, two fingers deep and fitting in a third, worrying his full lower lip between his teeth.
“This doesn’t take long,” Sherlock said, and the briskness of his tone jarred with the colour high on his cheeks. “Just to avoid any initial discomfort, I don’t like pain in this region.”
“No, yeah, yeah. Yeah.” John tottered forward to kneel on the bed, more due to his legs being unable to hold him, rather than a deliberate choice. Sherlock twisted his fingers once, twice, then removed them with a soft schluck sound. The glove was wet down past the third knuckle, and John could hear his own breath whistling in his ears. Sherlock peeled off the glove using the thumb of his opposite hand on the underside, then dropped it on the floor.
John crawled into position while Sherlock readjusted himself on the bed, and got a proper look at him. Sherlock kept himself clean-shaven—he said the sensation of prickling on his face was heinous—but the rest of him was covered in a light dusting of hair, concentrated in swirls at his chest and under his arms, then thickening into a line that ran straight to his—
“Christ, mate, well done,” John blurted, then immediately wanted to die.
“Hm? Oh,” Sherlock followed John’s gaze, “Yes, my body responded very well to testosterone.”
“It’s great. I mean, congrats on your—oh god, shut up—myself—shut up to myself, not you, Christ. What a stupid thing to say to someone, well done me.”
“It was a compliment, and I have done very well. Are we going to begin?”
“Yep, yep, definitely.” John gave himself a few pulls, hyperaware of Sherlock following his movements, then nudged his knees under Sherlock’s thighs and lined himself up. Under the thick hair, Sherlock was—very wet. John shuddered when his head brushed the entrance, and gripped himself tight around the base.
“Do you need a moment?”
John squeezed his eyes shut. “Just a little one, yeah.”
“Your last orgasm was—”
“I know how many hours ago it was, mate! Just appreciate that this is… this is a lot. For me.”
Sherlock nodded. “Seven years, yes.”
“Yes, that, but also that it’s—you know, that it’s you.”
Sherlock’s dark eyes considered him with an expression that was more open than usual, and to escape that, John nudged himself in.
“Oh—oh—mmm, hmm. Hm! How are you—how are you doing there?”
Sherlock wriggled a little, clenching lightly around his head, and John nearly bit through his tongue.
“Fine, good. Keep going.”
John pushed in to the hilt. It was tight, but an easy slide, and so fucking hot and slick around his dick that he was seeing stars at the edges of his vision. He paused there, and braced his arms on either side of Sherlock’s waist. Sherlock looked up at him with his mouth slightly open, and his tongue looked very pink. John thought it was lucky, probably, that he was too short to reach Sherlock’s mouth while balls-deep in him, otherwise he might be tempted to try.
“That’s—that’s very good.” Sherlock’s voice was soft, and his chest rose and fell with deep, diaphragm breaths. “Can you stay like that?”
“Sure,” said John, strangled. He was not at all sure.
Sherlock’s eyes drifted closed and his head tilted back on the pillow, inviting John’s eyes on his long neck, the wings of his collarbones, the spare lines of his chest and the dip below the crest of his ribs. His ribs expanded, held for a count of three, then deflated for a count of five.
“Perfect,” Sherlock said, with dreamlike slowness. “I knew it would be.”
“My—are you talking about my—”
“Your cock, yes.”
“Yep, well, you’re welcome, I suppose, ha ha—”
“Having observed it in its quiescent state, I extrapolated that its length and width would be ideal when engorged, and I’ve been proven—absolutely, positively correct.”
“Right,” said John. “Well done, you.” He tried to feel offended at being sized up like a cut of meat, but instead it thrilled down his spine, and he felt his cock twitch a little, which in turn made him gasp as he fought to stay still.
“I was also correct,” Sherlock continued to speak slowly with eyes closed, “about the difference afforded by a penis over a silicone dildo. The sensation of your pulse—the flexibility of the flesh—pleasing, stimulating, but not overwhelming.”
“Sorry,” said John, hearing himself as though through a layer of bubble wrap, "Sorry, can you just—can you run that one by me again? The—the sensation of—have you not done this before?”
“Intercourse? I told you I had not.”
“You didn’t,” John said, “you extremely fucking did not, mate.”
“Last night, I told you—”
“You said you had no one to ask! I thought you meant, like, now, not ever!”
“This agitates you.” Sherlock’s eyes were open again. “You feel… tricked?”
“No, no, not—no. It’s not a, a problem, I just wish I’d known, you know, that it was your first time.”
“Why?”
John was absolutely stumped. “Because… it’s meant to be… I mean, I would have tried to make it more, uh, special?"
“What would you have done differently?”
It was incredibly difficult, John found, to be questioned while his dick was buried in the soft gripping heat of his best friend’s cunt, holding himself up on trembling arms, and watching a bead of sweat collect between his best friend’s collarbones. “I… if I’d… well, for a start, I’d have gotten you flowers, or—”
“You know I suffer from hayfever.”
“—or like, um, gone slower, maybe, uh, kissed you a bunch first, probably—” John began to panic, this hypothetical spinning rapidly into his own profound wants, “—or, or, shit, something else, dinner, something to—”
“None of that is needed,” said Sherlock, and John’s heart sank to somewhere below his navel. “This suits my desires perfectly. Nothing is lacking from this experience.”
John nodded, but wasn’t surprised when Sherlock continued, “You’re still discomfited.”
“I’m fine, mate. Just surprised, you know. Attractive bloke, figured you’d have, I dunno, a string of lads after you at uni, or something.”
“You’re well familiar with my idiosyncrasies that make that an unlikely possibility, Watson.” His tone was lighter, teasing, and John appreciated the clear attempt to put him at his ease.
“If you could not call me Watson while I’m, y’know—”
“Yes. Apologies. Habit.” Sherlock’s eyes drifted closed again, and he blew out a long, controlled breath through pursed lips. John looked away hastily from his mouth, and focused instead on his bellybutton, which was—inexplicably charming. He couldn’t see where they were joined, because his stomach was in the way. Surruptitiously, he attempted to suck in his gut.
“Would it assist your negative perception of your weight, if I said I found your shape extremely pleasing?” Sherlock’s eyes were still closed. “I felt you tensing.”
“Not now, please. But, uh, thank—thanks.”
John wondered, a little hysterically, how long Sherlock usually had a dildo stuck up him. He had no idea whether it had been five minutes or thirty. His dick felt hypersensitised, throbbing in time to the pulse sloshing in his ears. He caught the sound of rustling, and turned his head to see Sherlock gripping the sheet in his fist, then relaxing his hand flat, then gathering up the sheet again. His expression was utterly serene, which made one of them, John thought.
“Nearly finished, I think.” Sherlock rolled his neck from side to side, and when his eyes opened John was struck by how tired he looked, and remembered Sherlock had been awake since the previous morning.
“That’s great, mate. Do you want me to, to touch your—that is, to get you off by, erm, rubbing—”
“‘Cock’ is fine, and no, I don’t think so. I don’t feel like having an orgasm right now.”
“Sweet, stellar, no prob. Shall I pull out, then?”
“Do.” Sherlock pulled himself up on his elbows to watch as John extracted himself, wincing and huffing in what he was sure was an incredibly unattractive fashion. His dick felt like it was burning, and he needed to come so badly he felt his eyes crossing. Sherlock’s inner walls shuddered as he slipped out, punching a surprised noise from Sherlock and a wheeze from John.
“Different again,” said Sherlock after a few breaths, “but not—not unpleasant.”
“Not unpleasant, for sure, yeah. Can I—I’m just going to—”
“May I offer you a tissue?”
“You may, yeah, thanks—thanks, I’m just going to—fuck, oh—oh fuck me—ah—fffuck, yeah, oh—oh—”
Thankfully, John stopped speaking when he shot load after load into the tissue, or possibly he could no longer hear himself through the white noise buzzing in his ears. He felt his calves cramping up, and the arches of his feet. It did not, at all, feel like he’d last orgasmed nine hours ago. He gasped and shivered, and when his vision cleared, he found Sherlock watching him with avid fascination.
John knew his face was beetroot red, and fought hard against the post-nut clarity that tried to convince him he’d made an absolute spectacle of himself and this had all been a terrible idea. Instead, he braced his hands on his thighs—forgetting that one held a sodden tissue, gross, well done—and tried to look like a man who’d just assisted his best mate with sensory input regulation.
“Thank you,” said Sherlock, “that was really very—it exceeded all my expectations.”
“Glad to hear it! Glad, so glad. Gladdest.”
“And you also found it… adequate, to your imaginings?”
“My imaginings! Yes, of course you know about my—for sure, yep, adequate. Most adequate. I think we both witnessed how adequately I—yes, definitely.”
“Excellent.”
They both sat there for a minute, John still regaining feeling in his legs and concentrating on breathing normally. Sherlock still looked like the hottest thing he’d ever seen in his life—hair wild, eyes heavy-lidded, chest hair damp and curling around pebbled nipples, and he’d made no effort to close his legs, so it was an absolutely herculean effort for John not to make eye contact with his—
“Feeling better, then?” John swung his legs over the side of the bed before they were quite ready, and stumbled back down as a result.
“Much.” And indeed, the restless frenetic energy of earlier had subsided into a sleepy stillness, though there was still some tension around his eyes—he was thinking, likely about what had just happened, and John really didn’t want to stick around for any further verbalisations that might result.
“I’ll shower and sleep now, I think,” said Sherlock, and John said a silent prayer of thanks.
“Wonderful, mate. Get some rest. Goodnight, don’t let the bedbugs—goodnight, Sherlock.” Rather than attempting to dress, John gathered up his clothes with his clean hand and shuffled to the door, slipping through it as he heard returned, “Good night.”
John stood naked in the bright sunlight of the kitchen, and panicked.
***