Title: The Giggle Loop
Author:
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Warning/Spoilers: None.
Word Count: 1036
Rating: R
Summary: To know of the giggle loop is to become part of the giggle loop.
Notes: Based on this prompt from : John knows/believes that Sherlock isn’t sexually experienced, and doesn’t want to screw up by denting his pride or embarrassing him during their first time. Their tentative first encounter is going well, until…John falls under the spell of THE GIGGLE LOOP. Fortunately for John, Sherlock is suppressing an even bigger Giggle Loop of his own. (Bonus if their later shags also tend to collapse into giggling, including (especially?) when they’re next door to a roomful of police.)
***
John’s congratulating himself on how seriously he’s taking sex with Sherlock for the first time when it starts.
See, he hasn’t had sex with a man since university (and it was fumbling, awkward and strange, and neither of them found much to say to each other until graduation), and Sherlock hasn’t had much sex ever (he was upfront about that — screwed up his face and said, “Hm — 1993, I believe?”), so John was afraid it would be weird, even if he and Sherlock were such close friends people already assumed they were together.
(Of course, he’s the one currently taking off Sherlock’s soft and finely-woven clothes and babbling about his lovely his legs are, how sweet he finds Sherlock’s hips. So maybe it’s not just about friendship and never really was.)
But it’s not weird.
That in itself is weird.
It feels perfectly natural to have a naked Sherlock Holmes beneath him, one long leg wrapped around his hip, hands skimming over John’s skin and Sherlock’s deep, smooth voice saying, “John, yes, there, oh, don’t stop!” — and there’s something about it all, maybe it’s the way John hasn’t quite managed to get his trousers below his ankles, maybe it’s Sherlock’s curious fingers running over his nose and eyebrows, maybe it’s just that he’s got Sherlock Holmes naked and hard and it’s just as absurd as it is wonderful —
John feels a giggle building up like air bubbles. Tiny pink nipples under his tongue and John wants to chortle, Sherlock’s hair curling damply around his fingers and John wants to snicker, Sherlock pushing him onto his stomach so he can kiss John’s back and John wants to cackle. He rocks up to Sherlock’s mouth and hopes Sherlock interprets his impeding howls as passion, because laughing right now — laughing when Sherlock is enjoying himself if those noises he’s making are any indication — would mean doom for their burgeoning sex life.
It’s not funny because he doesn’t want to sleep with Sherlock. No. It’s funny because he does.
John rolls over again and pulls Sherklock to him, thinking if he snogs Sherlock for a while he’ll lose the urge to giggle, and Sherlock’s mouth tastes just as warm and delicious as it did before, when he realizes Sherlock is shaking. “Sherlock?” he whispers, and thinks, Oh, shit, he’s scared, I did something wrong, when he hears a low, hitching sound and feels Sherlock’s chest quiver. “Sherlock,” he says again, “it’s all right be nervous the first time,” and that’s when Sherlock turns onto his back and lays a hand on his forehead, and he’s —
He’s —
Laughing.
John watches him, blinking. He’s seen Sherlock laugh before, of course, mostly short huffs of amusement when someone else is particularly obtuse, but never like this, never like he’s lost every ounce of self-control, not with one hand on his stomach like he’s pulled a muscle from laughing so hard, and his toes curling and his shoulders shaking, every inch of his body participating in this epic, unending bout of laughter.
Sherlock’s eyes meet John’s finally, squinted and streaming tears, and he visibly tries to calm down. “Sorry,” he says, “sorry, John, I just –”
And then he’s off again, a hand over his mouth to try and keep it in.
John starts to smile. Smiles fully. Allows himself a chuckle, and then a giggle, and then he drapes himself over Sherlock and laughs with him, full-bellied and hearty, and Sherlock’s hand falls on his head and strokes his hair, and when they finally kiss again they’re still laughing.
It’s much better after that, relaxed, comfortable enough that they nibble and suck and tickle and lick, they tease, they say, “I want to try this,” and “Have you ever done that?” and it’s the most fun John has had since — well, being with Sherlock is usually fun.
It’s just a more intimate kind of fun now.
And when they’ve come (and come and come, and John suspects he’s going to fall asleep in the surgery again tomorrow) they lie side by side, gasping for breath and still lazily touching (Sherlock’s fingers are amazing and John can’t stop stroking them), Sherlock looks at John and John looks at Sherlock.
They both smile.
***
“Sh,” John scolds in a whisper, which of course sets Sherlock off.
“You started it!” Sherlock protests as he pulls John’s shirt from his waistband and sneaks a hand under John’s jumper. “You start and then I start and it’s hopeless from there on out.”
“You’re the one who wanted to shag at a crime scene,” John hisses, and then buries his mouth in Sherlock’s neck to muffle the laugh that’s burbling up.
The problem with laughing so much in bed — and they do laugh, they laugh so much, and John wonders if he’s been doing it wrong all these years that sex was never so much fun before now — is that when they’re out of bed (like the time at Mycroft’s, when Sherlock gave him a look over the supper table and touched his leg, and John got the giggles so hard he choked on his wine — or that once in the cab, when Sherlock’s leather-gloved hand over his own was just enough to set him off and the cabbie looked in the rear view mirror as if he suspected he’d picked up a couple of lunatics from the way they were cackling — or when they tried to go on a date like a normal couple and Sherlock let John take him to the cinema even though he found films dull because John promised he’d make it interesting, by which of course he meant “yes I intend to suck you off in the theater,” and Sherlock laughed out loud right when the lead character declared that the diagnosis was fatal and he had three months to live) the laughs don’t stop.
Or is that a problem? thinks John as Sherlock tests the sturdiness of a cabinet and then hauls himself onto it, his eyes glinting with mischief and his fingers undoing his exquisite trousers with just the right amount of tease — and John thinks, No, it’s really not.
End