Title: My Phone’s on Vibrate For You 4
Author:
Fandom: Sherlock
Pairing: John/Sherlock
Warning/Spoilers: None.
Word Count: 2300
Rating: NC-17
Summary: John tries an experiment.
Notes: Continued from part 3.
John is eating lunch (apple, roast beef sandwich, crisps, with his third cup of coffee of the day) and fidgeting with his phone when he has a thought. When he and Sherlock have had sex, it’s always been Sherlock’s idea, which has been fine with John, as Sherlock is neither a demanding nor a neglectful partner. John hasn’t initiated sex because he simply hasn’t needed to — whenever he starts feeling restless and hungry, Sherlock knows, the same way he knows every damn thing, and John gets one of those texts that make him shiver and flush with anticipation.
And while John is not quite to that point yet — not quite remembering the way Sherlock’s hair catches on his fingers, not quite curling his toes inside his shoes whenever he hears Sherlock punching the velar plosives in his baritone voice, not quite imagining the taste and texture of Sherlock’s skin under his tongue — he is near it, near enough to be aware of what he’s not thinking.
Which, of course, leads him to thinking about it.
He toys with his phone as he eats, pressing the button for texts and then coming back to the home screen, and then finally John wipes his hands clean on the paper bag he used to carry his lunch and types, “What are you doing tonight?”
His thumb circles the send button a few times, until he tells himself he’s being ridiculous and clicks the button.
His phone buzzes a few minutes later. “Incubating microbes. SH.”
John types, “Want to do something more interesting?”
“Nothing more interesting to do. SH.”
John hesitates before typing, “You could do me instead,” and sets down his phone. It’s a ridiculous thing to say and Sherlock would be perfectly right to say No on the grounds of John being a terrible flirt, particularly over the phone, but still John is hopeful Sherlock will take it in the spirit in which it’s intended.
Sherlock answers more quickly than John expects: “You are far more interesting than microbes. SH.”
“Then we’re on for tonight?”
“We’re on. SH.”
“I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be home soon,” John promises and puts his phone away.
*
“I wasn’t sure you’d say yes,” John says as he enters the flat and takes off his jacket. Sherlock is reclining on the couch, his feet bare and his sleeves rolled up, and he puts down his book and watches John with a lazy smile.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Sherlock’s fingertips trace the buttons down his shirt, and he pops one open, flirtatious as a burlesque dancer.
John watches Sherlock’s fingers and licks his lips. “This entire, er, endeavor has been your idea.” He meets Sherlock’s eyes.
Sherlock’s hand pauses. “Yes. And?”
“And I … and I wasn’t sure you’d say yes.”
Sherlock has this particular smile, a small and private one that John thinks he isn’t even aware of using. He’s smiling it as he says, crossing the room to meet John at the door, “Because you think my attraction to you isn’t as strong as my interest in my work?”
“The moment Lestrade calls,” John murmurs, backing up against the door, “you lose interest in having sex.”
“I never shag while I’m working.” Again, that small peculiar smile as he unbuttons John’s shirt.
“Only when you’re bored.” Sherlock hums as he stoops to kiss John’s neck, his teeth dragging over John’s artery, his fingers rubbing John’s skin in tiny unselfconscious movements. John whispers, “It’s better than shooting the wall,” and Sherlock laughs.
*
They move upstairs to John’s bed. It amuses John that it’s taken them this long to get here, while they’ve used the sofa, the door, Sherlock’s bed, the kitchen table and the floor many times. Sherlock gives him a hopeful look as they climb the stairs, but Mrs. Hudson is in tonight and John doesn’t want to risk it.
Sherlock reclines on John’s bed, beautiful against John’s heather-grey sheets. John lies beside him and runs a hand over his soft white shirt, and Sherlock takes John’s face and kisses John carefully. He still kisses John like he’s not certain he’ll be welcomed, no matter how often John kisses him or how reverently John kisses him back.
“You know,” John murmurs, “if you ever want to just snog, we can.”
Sherlock’s nimble fingers pluck at John’s buttons. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Because sometimes it’s good to just kiss.” He kisses Sherlock again, his hand on Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock tugs on him and shifts under him, trying to get him to move faster and push harder, but John keeps a leg between Sherlock’s and a hand over his shirt, and kisses him, slow and deep and deliberate.
After several minutes pass with nothing but the wet sounds of kisses, Sherlock whispers, “All right, you’re right, I like this,” and John chuckles.
“I thought you might.” He hesitates. “If you’re ever not in the mood, if you ever just want to be close but not have sex, it’s fine. We can just snog or just … be. Together. Um.”
Sherlock arches an eyebrow. “Is that what you want tonight, John?”
“No,” John admits, “but if you weren’t actually in the mood and said yes just to humor me — well, you don’t need to.”
“You are so careful with me,” Sherlock observes and puts his hands on John’s cheeks. “I’m not sure why that is, but I like it.” He rubs John’s face, his expression thoughtful, and John closes his eyes and parts his lips as Sherlock’s fingers pass over his mouth. “I find it interesting that you have never said no to me.”
“I won’t,” John says. “You’re far too –” he rejects beautiful and sexy, those words are far too commonplace to describe Sherlock — and says, “undeniable for that.”
“Undeniable,” Sherlock murmurs, and then inhales sharply as John sucks his fingertips into his mouth. “I think you need to take off your clothes now.” He moves his hands down to John’s shirt buttons again. John does likewise, kissing Sherlock’s neck and chest, and slides down his body to kiss his stomach and hips. Sherlock raises his hips and John yanks down his trousers and takes Sherlock’s prick into his mouth.
Sherlock groans, a sound that’s deep and deliciously obscene. His back arches and he throws back his head, and John places a hand on his hip to feel him move. There’s something feline and sinuous about Sherlock’s body, particularly when he’s like this, on the edge of losing control. John sucks him until Sherlock’s legs tremble and his toes curl, and then pulls off and moves up Sherlock’s body to whisper in his ear, “Undeniable. Incontrovertible. Irrefutable.”
Sherlock moans even louder and clutches at him. “Oh, more of that.”
Only Sherlock would find vocabulary arousing. John whispers, “Your epidermis is delectable,” but he’s finding words rather difficult at the moment so he just kisses across Sherlock’s collar bones and licks the base of his throat.
Sherlock pulls away enough to wrestle himself out of his trousers. John pushes off his own and kisses him, and when Sherlock breaks it off he buries his face in John’s neck and pushes his hips against John’s. “Now,” he whispers into John’s skin, “now, John.”
“You’re not half ready,” John whispers in protest. Sherlock grabs his hand and sucks on his fingers, wetting them thoroughly and making John shudder.
Sherlock spits out John’s fingers. “There. Get me ready.” He opens his legs, hands wrapped around his thighs.
John licks his lips and kneels between Sherlock’s legs. He takes hold of Sherlock’s thigh and pushes his fingers into Sherlock, slowly as Sherlock’s eyes close and his breath quickens. He reaches back to grab the headboard as John opens him, and his fingers scrabble at the smooth wood until he gets a good grip on the edge.
This is John’s favorite Sherlock variation. He’s fascinated by brilliant Sherlock, smirks at snarky Sherlock, tolerates moody Sherlock — but this Sherlock, the wild-eyed, flushed and gasping Sherlock, is the most beautiful thing John has ever seen.
When John is satisfied that Sherlock can take him — and Sherlock’s pulling on his arms and whining with need — John pulls out his fingers and lines up their hips. Sherlock drapes his legs over John’s shoulders as soon as John rolls on the condom. John pushes into him slowly, their bodies folded together and their eyes fixed on each other’s. John slides his arms under Sherlock to pull him closer, and kisses him, deep and hungry, as his hips thrust. Sherlock’s groans are muffled by John’s mouth, and he grabs John’s arse and digs his fingers into John’s flesh.
It happens fast — it’s been that kind of night, it would seem, when they are both strangely frantic and wanting. Much sooner, much faster than John expected, Sherlock cries out and wetness coats John’s stomach. He thinks, He wants me, he wants me as much as I want him, he wants me, as he groans Sherlock’s name and comes.
His head drops to Sherlock’s chest and he gasps for breath. Sherlock wraps his arms around John’s neck and his legs go loosely around John’s hips, and they doze, warm, breathing together.
*
When John cracks an eye open the room is sunset-gold, and he can see dust motes floating in a shaft of sunshine. Sherlock strokes John’s back in lazy figure-eights. “Oh, good, you’re awake,” Sherlock murmurs.
“No, I’m not,” John mumbles into Sherlock’s skin and licks up a drop of perspiration.
“Should we have tea? I think I’m going to be hungry soon.”
“Tea,” John agrees, but neither of them move.
Minutes pass — John has no idea how many, he suspects he may have dozed off again — and then Sherlock says, “So, about this endeavor,” and John looks up.
Cautiously, “Yes?”
“You find it a mystery.” Sherlock is calm, as he so often is.
“It’s not your area, remember?”
“Girlfriends are not my area. I think I’ve proved by now that boyfriends have occasionally wandered into the neighborhood.”
“Such a welcoming neighborhood it is, too,” John murmurs and kisses down Sherlock’s stomach. “Tell me something.”
“The average human eyeball weighs a quarter of an ounce.”
John rests his chin on Sherlock’s breastbone and says patiently, “Something about you. Answer a question.”
Sherlock sighs. “Very well. What is it?”
“Your first boyfriend.”
“That’s not a question.”
“What was he like? How did you meet? How old were you?”
“That’s several questions.”
“Sherlock.”
“John.”
“Just tell me about him, would you?”
Sherlock sighs with exaggerated patience and folds his hands behind his head. “Sixteen, at uni, he was … flattered.”
John props himself up on his elbow. “Flattered?”
“By the attention. By my crush on him. By the fact that he was my first kiss, my first everything.” Sherlock shrugs. “Flattered.”
“And you had a crush on him.”
“I fancied myself in love.”
“Were you?”
“I don’t know,” says Sherlock quietly and stares at the ceiling. “He made … he made the world less noisy. I wanted him for that. I thought that meant it was love. I wanted to hear everything he had to say, I wanted to tell him everything I knew, I loved everything about him from his toenail polish to his book collection. We had sex because he wanted to and he expected me to want it, too, I suppose. I liked what I got the rest of the time.” He pauses again. “I used to lie with my head in his lap and he’d stroke my hair, and I thought it meant he loved me too.”
“What happened? Why did it end?”
Again Sherlock pauses, eyes fixed on the ceiling. When he speaks again his tone is even, almost unemotional. “He had a girlfriend at home. I didn’t know about her, of course, and she only knew about me as one of his friends. He finished at uni — he was in his third year when we met — and went home to Manchester, and invited me to visit him one weekend. I thought we’d spend the weekend shagging. I was actually looking forward to it, and he sounded so excited that I was coming to see him. But instead his girlfriend was there and I slept on the couch, and when I confronted him about it he said he thought I knew we were just having fun.”
John closes his eyes and whispers, “Sherlock, God,” and lays his head on Sherlock’s chest.
“I did the only thing I could do,” Sherlock finishes in that same even tone. “Went back to uni and shagged as many blokes as would have me.”
John looks up at him again. “I’m having a hard time imagining you, slutting it up.”
Sherlock smiles and looks away. “I was an excellent slut. You’ve certainly enjoyed what I learned from the experience.”
“So then what happened?” John asks, not acknowledging that yes, he has enjoyed the fruits of Sherlock’s slut period. He lays his head on Sherlock’s chest again, an arm across his waist. “When did you decide you didn’t want a lover anymore?”
“I discovered cocaine,” Sherlock says calmly. “You’d be astonished to learn what it does to the libido.”
John nods, unsurprised. “I know what cocaine does to the libido. It’s not a wise cure for a broken heart, either.”
Sherlock huffs. “My heart wasn’t broken. It was a life lesson.”
“All right, then what did you learn, Sherlock?”
“Only fools do it for love,” says Sherlock and John lifts his head to look at him again.
“So you’ve never fallen in love since.”
“I’m still not sure I fell in love then. Could we go back to snogging? I like snogging.”
“Yes,” John says softly, “we can go back to snogging,” and kisses him fiercely. He pauses only to ask, “He never kissed you much, did he?”
“No,” says Sherlock, “none of them did,” and John kisses him even harder.
End ch.4.