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It doesn’t look like a time machine.
Not that there’s really any meaningful precedent for this kind of thing, not that he can even begin to speak to the physics of the whole business, but really. He just might have expected something a little more Hollywood and a little less… airplane loo.
Still: time machine. Novel. Form notwithstanding.
If it actually works, this is the future. This is heretofore unthinkable scientific progress. If it actually works, this is the most important three square feet on the face of the earth.
Three square feet which Mycroft didn’t see him noticing. The most important part.
This isn’t the kind of thing one should be hasty about. It is, in fact, the very definition of the kind of thing that requires cautious restraint, careful planning, and conscious, lengthy deliberation. It is difficult, delicate work, and unprecedentedly important. Sherlock knows this.
It is very nearly eleven hours before he is back, slipping through the door, flicking the funny little lock closed behind him.
St. Bart’s, he has determined, is altogether too big. Too many moving parts, too many incalculable variations, too disastrous should anything go awry. Not suitable for a first attempt. Possibly not suitable for anything ever. At least for now, he knows, he’s better off cutting his teeth on something more manageable.
Baskerville, on the other hand, offers something of a selection. Not drugging John, for example. Not leaving him in the lab with that thing, the Hound that did or didn’t exist. Revisiting either of these incidents could have an outsize effect in restoring John’s trust in him, or at the very least might provide some useful data points toward that end. Sherlock has weighed the two at length and made his choice, so he punches in his coordinates without hesitation, but then, at the last possible second, he thinks of their argument in front of the fire—
cold fear trembling through his fingertips, the heat of panic rising in his throat—“I don’t have any friends”—John alarmed and bewildered and hurt, lashing out to get his own back
—and he ends up not at any one of his choices; he knows immediately that he’s gone wrong somewhere. The morning sunlight is bright and infuriating, the wood of the outdoor table is digging into his thighs, and the smell of the black stuff in John’s vegetarian full English is nauseatingly thick and unfamiliar.
“So you got it wrong.” John cocks his head cheekily, chewing.
When did things become so hopelessly muddled? When did he lose his clarity, his ability to compartmentalise, the focus he needs to get things done?
“Mm.” John saws at something with his knife and fork. “You were wrong. It wasn’t in the sugar. You got it wrong.”
“A bit,” he says, defeated. “It won’t happen again.” He twiddles his thumbs. May as well make the best of it, now he’s here. “Because—”
At the same time, John starts to say, “Any long-term—?” but cuts himself off, shaking his head. “Sorry. What?”
Sherlock glances down at his fingernails, back up at John—stoic, patient, waiting. “It won’t happen again because… you are important to me.” Immensely so. There’s cotton in his mouth, leeching up his saliva and his eloquence and his carefully prepared words.
“All right,” says John. He lifts his hands, palms out. “All right. I’ve told you, you don’t have to overdo it.”
“John, I—”
“Really.” John raises his eyebrows. “I’m not cross anymore, all right?” He moves to push away from the table, swinging his legs over the bench. “Let’s get moving, huh? I’ll collect our things; we can be back at the flat by lunchtime.”
The black stuff is untouched, the toast half buttered and uneaten, and John does not believe him, does not understand that he is important.
Immensely so. And I’ve been too shortsighted to demonstrate that, but I swear to you it will not happen again. I will show it to you in any way I need to—I swear to you, John.
Sherlock sighs and stands up to follow, mind’s eye looking forward over their ride back to London. Two hours plus of silence in adjacent train seats, John refusing to hear him. Halfway down the path, he gives up and clicks his heels together, snapping himself back to the present, where he stubs his toe on the narrow doorframe on his way out.
A bigger gesture, he thinks, might be the order of the day. The obvious choice is the Landmark Hotel—his ill-timed reappearance, his flippant verbal defences, the regrettable eyeliner moustache… there is very little Sherlock wouldn’t do to wipe it from his memory once and for all, but having another go, doing it right could be just as cathartic.
The thing is… it’s just so very big, isn’t it? And maybe it would be acceptable if he needed a little more time. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with the pit that opens up in his stomach when he thinks about the night, hazy-edged and sharply fluorescent with cocaine, thinks about the muck he made of it, enumerates all the ways he might foul it up further and make things worse.
Is his understanding of things really that much better than it had been? There’s no guarantee that he won’t go right back to misreading things, underestimating and fatally misunderstanding John and his anger, and any planning he tries to do leaves his skin hot and his blood cold and his mind and guts rolling with nausea.
(And somewhere under all his careful logic and reasoning, somewhere deep down there is the lurking fear that the reaction he got is all he can hope for; that in that moment John won’t, can’t care enough, that he’s already beyond that level of empathy; that if Sherlock can’t light the wick of John’s anger, he stands no chance with any other gentler, subtler emotion.)
Sherlock agonises and squirms and talks to himself incessantly, grumbling out his list of scenarios. He shreds the cuffs of his second-best dressing gown and plays the violin and shoots the wall, and he thinks. He thinks and thinks and thinks, working through three or four patches on two separate occasions before he is finally ready. He makes his way toward Marylebone Road with a sour taste in his mouth and his head held high, bracing himself for the raw, heated pain of the scars on his back, the almost unfamiliar glimmer of English in his ears again, the shock of London so bright and bustling and changed.
He zeroes in on the moment, focuses with all his energy—no room for error—and hits the button.
He’s surprised (and, admittedly, giddy with relief) when he doesn’t end up there at all. Never would have predicted he’d be so excited to face down a ticking time bomb. It’s rather brilliant, actually, to wind up in the train carriage, here where his judgement had, yes, been equally bad, but at least somewhat less disastrous in its emotional impact.
And now a chance to rectify that! Better than he could have asked for, really, now with the carriage floor panels lifted up and John taking in deep, nervous breaths, pulse high and eyes wide. Time to be a hero. To be Sherlock Holmes.
“We need bomb disposal.” John is staring at him like he’s Typhoid Mary and Mona Lisa and King Arthur all rolled into one.
“Nope,” says Sherlock, and drops to his knees, coat settling around him with a satisfying whoosh.
“What do you mean, ‘nope’?” There’s a panicked edge in John’s voice, anger rising.
“Why waste all that time?” Sherlock fumbles blindly around the edges, the hard corner, the cold floor. “The radios, the equipment, all that paperwork…”
John gapes. “Christ,” he says. “You can’t be...” He scrubs his fingers through his hair.
“...and oh, the noise, when we can just…” Ah, there it is. “...shut it off ourselves.” He turns his chin up to look at John, who is frozen in disbelief, and he waits for it: fantastic. amazing. brilliant. Something in his chest swells uncomfortably.
“Hold on, did you just—” John shakes off the shock. “Of course you did. Of course you know how to dispose of a bomb.”
“Turn off a bomb.”
“Right.” John bites his lip, shakes his head. “Well. Should we... call the police or something?”
“Already have.” The smile is starting to ache.
“Right. So we can… just… go home?” John gestures vaguely. “Or do we have to, uh, give a statement?”
Sherlock’s heart sinks. “No—no. You, uh… you can go, John. Go now.”
“All… right. Uh, thanks, I… yeah. Yeah.” John pivots with crisp, military precision, and his shoulders retreat at a steady, even pace. The floor is cold and uncomfortable beneath the bumps of Sherlock’s knees, but he doesn’t adjust, doesn’t fidget, doesn’t move an inch.
John hesitates a few seconds in the doorway but doesn’t turn. Sherlock waits until the echoes of his footfalls in the tunnel have faded before he sits up with a sigh, stretches out his legs, and clicks his heels together three times.
Fucking hell.
There’s a particular conversation he’d like to rectify, way back from the whole Tilly Briggs mess. It’s not exactly monumental, not in the big picture sense, but it’s something that’s stuck with him, lodged in his throat like a bone and prickled at the back of his consciousness. A bit of bickering, almost like usual but intensified by the stress of the moment, by Sherlock’s continued inability to reason it out, to put things together and beat the ticking clock. Where he’d finally snapped and whirled toward John to lob a maybe not entirely uncalculated insult as if it were off the cuff, which had struck a particular nerve, possibly, had hit a bit closer to home than he might have intended.
The specifics of his words don’t matter, not now, but he can’t, try as he might, wipe John’s face from his mind—the look of shocked betrayal, the way he flounders to cover his hurt, how he suddenly just disappears—and Sherlock would like to be done with it, would like for it not to have happened. Would like to remake the moment into something kinder, more deserving of John.
He doesn’t quite hit his target here either, but he’s early for once, which is something of an improvement. He can spare half a day waiting to catch up, if he needs to. For John, he will.
It turns out that the only thing duller than daily life is living it all over again. By the time that the time rolls around, Sherlock is pacing, basically vibrating out of his skin, chewing his nails just for something to do, and John is still not there.
There’s room for some error in his recollection and more still in the machine’s calculations, but as the seconds tick by, his anxiety ratchets up, climbing biliously to plant seeds of horrifying ideas, terrible misfortunes, butterfly effect tragedies that he’d never thought to predict, and he could text John, but it’s worse to imagine not getting an answer, so he fidgets and twitches and tries not to scream.
Finally, his eyes catch a flutter of white on the fridge and it’s a note written on the funny stationery that Mrs Hudson used to keep by the phone, the one with the lily of the valley motif, and it says something about Scotland and a conference and back Saturday evening, but Sherlock can’t have been wrong about this, can’t have—
But when he pulls the memory up around him, there’s John standing beside him, handsome and calm and steady in that mulberry jumper, grey denims, light-coloured plaid shirt, and yes, fuck, it’s Mind Palace John, and then Sherlock does scream, because he is the idiot to end all idiots and it is quite frankly unforgivable. And he punches the wall once, twice—right in the smiley face—and throws a cushion at it for good measure, and makes sure to disappear before Mrs Hudson can come upstairs to complain about the noise.
He splashes his face in that cramped airplane loo sink, sucks water between his teeth and stares at his reflection.
This was a mistake. Yes. But none of his other attempts have exactly been successful either.
Which begs the question… is there some meaning in being sent back to these wrong moments? Are they, in some way that escapes him, actually the right ones? Is he meant to do what he did decent, to push the line? Or is that all a bunch of determinist nonsense, bollocks to justify his own cowardice and unworthiness?
He’s a scientist. He’s Sherlock Holmes. He will figure this out.
In the absence of accuracy, seek a big target—in this case, a long, uninterrupted window of time spent together. Which would be better if he was dealing with now or even way back when, but he needs the days of Mary, when those times were considerably fewer, and well, that makes everything terribly inconvenient, because what he has to say is not going to be useful now and not going to make sense until John has met her. If he aims for the easy—a long ago stakeout or Bond movie night or endless span of companionable puttering—he’ll be forgotten like Cassandra. His message will not survive the shock or the grief or the two years, will have faded away entirely by the time someone new comes creeping around the edges of John’s life.
Through lack of viable options, he lands on 18 July 2014. Which is not ideal, yes, all right, but all things considered was…
“My… least... worst choice.” He stifles a belch.
“From the papers. I know.” John’s head lolls slightly, and the lamplight catches in his hair, gleaming.
“From…” The hand with Sherlock’s glass in it gestures. “...limited options.”
“Yeah, all right, I know.” John is laughing at him, eyes bright and hair golden, and Sherlock is laughing back and he has a purpose here, but everything is so unbelievably good, the balance so delicate. “Which means you don’t know—” John uncrosses his legs, leans forward, “—who I am, at all?”
Sherlock squints—his chin is cupped in his hand and his fingers are almost in his mouth, but he makes his most serious face and studies the white rectangle on John’s forehead, his own drunken, angular print.
MADONNA
lady madonna, madonna del prato, madonna dell’impannata, madonna and child, jesus mary and joseph, mary mary quite contrary, mary queen of scots, hms queen mary, islas marías, nuestra señora de guadelupe, todo sobre mi madre, a streetcar—
“STELLA!” he bellows, and aspirates half his drink in a fit of laughter.
“What on earth…”
John is stumbling out of his chair, hovering, perching on the edge of Sherlock’s—hand on his back, rubbing his shoulders, easing the burn in his lungs, patting and soothing. John is laughing too, though odds are he doesn’t quite understand the joke, and Sherlock’s eyes sting but he can see enough to perceive the familiar lines of John’s face, the exact angle of tension released, the way his ribs are shaking, and the light in his eyes, the light and mirth and love, is enough to strike him dumb.
He peers up into John’s face as if from the bottom of a pool, and now John is looking back at him with one hand on his cheek, thumb stroking idly, eyes liquid and lips slightly parted; John is looking down at him like a lover, and he has a—
“Client!”
—and it’s Hudders, of course, and the damned be-cardiganed nurse and it’s not in the least fair, not any of this, and Sherlock clicks his heels together before he can think what he’s doing, and the drunk lingers as he fiddles with the lock—the OCCUPIED mark mocking in its certainty—and stumbles his way to a cab outside.
“Mary,” he says when he wakes with a splitting headache, spine aching in the shape of the sofa.
Mrs Hudson looks up from her vacuuming. “Sorry, dear?”
Sherlock presses his face into the sofa cushion and doesn’t speak for a day and a half.
He bollockses up that New Year’s, too, while he’s at it. He’s sure he’s got it this time, but then his vision stops swimming and his head clears, there’s something sweet and crumbly in his mouth and his head is tender, his knuckles bruised. Across the table, John is looking at him with his jaw set, his head cocked in confusion.
He looks down and there’s Mrs Hudson, shaken up and scraped and smelling of antiseptic, but smiling, pressing something into his hand: a hard lump of plastic.
“You left it in the pocket of your second-best dressing gown, you great clot.” She’s laughing at him, but it’s all affection, all pearly maternal warmth. “I managed to sneak it out when they thought I was having a cry.”
But I did this right! He grimaces, fights back the words. Why should I have to do it again when—?
“Shame on you, John Watson,” he recites, voice flat.
“Shame on me?”
“Mrs Hudson leave Baker Street?” An arm around her shoulders, a gentle tug—careful, now—and she is warm and laughing against his side. “England would fall.”
Understanding dawns in John’s eyes and his mouth forms a perfect, silent oh. And now John is just watching, standing there with his hands folded and his eyes gone soft and crinkled, lit from within and glowing with chastised fondness, as if he never before suspected that Sherlock might—
Ah.
That might be why. There’s heat in Sherlock’s chest, the pit of his stomach. His face flushes and his fingers twitch and he tries, tries to think things through.
Later, he’s upstairs fiddling with his violin when John comes in with a drink (or three or four, to be honest; just happening to share space in the same glass, a carpool lane of courage) and a battery of questions about the phone, about his feelings, about Irene Adler. And instead of blocking John out, instead of turning his back, instead of playing Auld Lang Syne to the street below, this time, Sherlock gathers his courage and catches John’s face in his hands and kisses him firmly on the mouth.
John is shocked into stillness for half a second before his lips part sweetly against Sherlock’s. John is kissing him back for nearly four seconds before his palms strike Sherlock’s chest, pushing him back, keeping him at arm’s length, holding him still to peer up into his eyes.
John’s expression darkens with fears confirmed. “You’re using again,” he says, and Sherlock could scream. A doctor—a competent, capable, experienced field surgeon and not one attempt at a differential diagnosis for dilated pupils? It’s almost enough to make him despair of all the times his life has been in John’s hands.
“No, John, I’m not using,” Sherlock spits the words, clenches his hands in exaggerated finger quotes. “Use your head! Can’t you imagine for a moment that I might want to try to—”
“Try?” John shrugs off Sherlock’s hands and takes an angry step back. “She throws you for a loop, gets your feelings hurt, and now you wanna try it on with me? See what it’s like with a normal person?”
Sherlock gives a huff of exasperation. “For God’s sake, stop being an idiot and—”
He reaches for John again, and John’s fist connects with his jaw.
Right, he thinks, of course, and before things can escalate further, he clicks his heels the three times and then it’s that tiny little room where his ears are ringing and his head is aching, the impression of John’s lips still lingering warmly on his.
Handy as it is, it is a truly unfortunate choice of activation signal. Sherlock discovers this at Wellington Barracks when one of the Foot Guards snaps into attention stance and sends him reeling back to the Diogenes, mouth cottony and head achingly, dizzyingly full. Still not having heard whatever it was John wanted to say on that bench, or—as a backup—told him how brilliant and fantastic and gloriously luminous he was saving Bainbridge’s life.
Maybe he ought to rethink the signal, given his choice of companion. He tries to get into the system and change it, but he can’t override the default settings. So Mycroft may have thought about it too. Bastard.
He’s not getting the moments he needs, not managing anything even approaching important. Well...given chaos theory and the principle of sensitive dependence and the butterfly effect model, one might argue that he can’t possibly have any idea what he’s changing, but that’s nonsensical and unproven and he undoes it all anyway with a simple click of his heels, mooting the point quite effectively. But regardless, his equations are correct, he’s sure of it; his recollection of dates and times is nearly without peer, when he chooses to employ it (and when it comes to John Watson, rest assured that he does). He knows it must be an outside factor, must be something else. And suddenly, just like that, he knows what it has to be.
“Well, you can’t honestly have expected that no one would notice.” Across the desk, Mycroft narrows his eyes at Sherlock, folds his hands. “Or that we could let you get away with it, for that matter.”
Sherlock feels the sulk coming on, a hot weight around his temples, dragging downward in his ribs, his stomach.
“Off the diet again?” He narrows his eyes. “You must be; you’ve gained five pounds and otherwise, you’d be too hungry to notice anything.”
“Really, Sherlock.”
Sherlock fights the urge to cross his arms over his chest.
It's a highly sensitive piece of equipment, Mycroft tells him. And, a frivolous use of resources, unintended consequences, the fabric of space-time, and a lot of other bloody nonsense about which Sherlock quite emphatically lacks the time and inclination to hear a single word.
Sherlock waves a hand dismissively, gathering up the self-righteous dribble of Mycroft’s words and banishing them with a little flick. “What exactly am I meant to do, then?”
Mycroft leans across the table, head cocked and smiling smugly. “You might try... talking to him?”
The takeaway is basically tasteless, though John seems to find it spicy—which is odd because his tolerance for spice is usually higher than Sherlock’s, a fact which might, yes, indicate (and the stale echo of turmeric on the back of his tongue confirms) that Sherlock has had a bite or two of rice and likely nothing else.
There’s a pile of DVDs on the coffee table and John is saying something intolerably boring about a man named Indiana when Sherlock can’t take it anymore and rips a puff of naan bread in half and throws it on the table.
“I’ve been trying and trying,” he says, and there’s grease on his fingers, a flutter in his pulse, “but I never seem to get it right. I know that this isn’t my area and that I probably should have enlisted an expert to help, but John, this is us, this is you and me, and besides it’s hardly like anyone we know is particularly literate in the emotional side of things... but you must understand that if I can’t tell you the things I want to say, it’s not for lack of trying. I tried to hear what you said to me outside Wellington Barracks, I did—I tried to take back the awful things I’ve said to you and tell you that you’re important, that I care for you. I tried not to argue with you or lock you in the lab or argue about the bomb, I tried to tell you about Mary and maybe, I don’t know, stop all of that from happening, stop it from coming down to this, but the past resists change, John, and Mycroft was against me, which wouldn’t even matter anyway because you never seem to want to hear me, so—so I need you to sit down and listen.”
The palms of his hands are pressed into the surface of the table. He is breathing hard.
John’s eyes narrow. “Okay,” he says. He sets his takeaway container down, leans forward in the armchair. “Okay. What?”
He has that particular look that means he’s about to check Sherlock’s forehead for a fever, or his pupils for dilation, or—God forbid—take out his phone and—
John shakes his head. “Sherlock, that was all years ago, what are you—”
“I’ve been unbelievably stupid. And you have too, so don’t start with any of that.” John is still staring blankly at him, lips parted and tongue pink. “It’s just that it’s impossible to do these things, it’s impossible to fall in love with someone and it’s impossible to treat them right all the time and to know all the things you’re supposed to do to be good or nice or deserve them or make them love you back, and I can’t change any of that anyway, apparently, and I don’t exactly want to because it’s us and I can’t wish it away like that, but I can’t do all these little things right; all I can do is everything, give you everything if you want it, and maybe that can be enough.”
John is watching him with a look on his face like a mushroom cloud rising in the distance, and Sherlock wonders if his words are hitting, waits for the sonic boom and can’t stand it, for God’s sake, cannot stand to wait—
“And I think you do. Want it.” He’s posturing, stalling for time, hiding his fear behind a wall of words. “I know you chinned me when I kissed you that time, but that I’m sure that wasn’t because you didn’t want it—it was because I surprised you or I said something awful or my timing was wrong—I know my timing is atrocious, but I am never wrong—hardly ever wrong, and never about you, not since…”
John is finally catching up to him, slowly; Sherlock can see the click, click, whirr behind his eyes, but oh, John, come on already—
“Wait,” says John. “Hold on. When did you—” his face scrunches up like a stress ball, “—kiss me?”
Ah. Right.
He picks at the same of his trousers. “It really doesn’t matter.”
“No, was it…” John kneads his lips together. “...my stag night?”
Stag night. Drunk and without inhibitions, divorced from reality—those eight liminal hours between “It’s all fine” and “I do,” and is that where this fits for John? Sherlock feels cold inside.
“Because... I’d really like to have remembered it.”
John’s eyes are glowing like candle flames. His eyelashes, which must tickle against bare skin, which catch the light and flirt with it shamelessly—flutter against his cheek and he licks his lips and there’s heat—hot, molten liquid in Sherlock’s belly, frantic butterfly tickling up high in his chest, the instant before asphyxiation. And—
“C’mere.” John swallows. Sherlock follows, sympathetic reflex. “Or no, no—stay put.”
John is licking his lips again, kneeling up, then, on the sofa cushions so their faces are level; sturdy thighs and rounded knees, eyes kind and dark with wonder to steal Sherlock’s breath as that wool-clad arm reaches out; palm warm and curved against the flat of Sherlock’s cheek. Tilting his face up; not speaking, not breathing, dark eyes focusing down to centre on Sherlock’s lips. Thumb stroking a line, nudging the corner of his mouth, dimpling the skin there.
How very close their faces are now—close enough that Sherlock can feel the heat of John’s skin, feel the hot little rush of his breath when he whispers:
“This is what we’re doing, isn’t it?”
John’s brow is furrowed with worry and Sherlock’s brain is on fire and the words stay put, hot and anchoring, like charcoal in his cheeks, but his mouth falls open and he tastes John, a little, just his finger—feels its weight and shape and salt on the virgin inside of his lip, and John’s breath catches at the same time as the well in his eyes darkens, hungry and black with promise.
“Je-sus.” Hoarse and straining—Sherlock has imagined this voice. “God, I never know what you’re talking about—do that again.”
Without hesitation, Sherlock flicks his tongue out. He tastes John’s fingerprint, trips over the crease of nail and skin, watching John’s eyelids grow heavy as his tongue curls—
John curses breathlessly and then John is kissing him—his thumb clumsy between their mouths—groaning against his lips, and it’s wet and messy and their mouths aren’t quite lining up right, and Sherlock’s gripping at John’s shoulders; he feels his hands shaking, fingers clenching, and he doesn’t know why, doesn’t know anything.
“Easy.” John is cupping his face, gentling him. “Easy…” Thumb tracing a line of wetness along Sherlock’s cheek. Sherlock realises his chest is heaving.
John tilts Sherlock’s head, kisses him once, softly, just his top lip between John’s two thin ones. John kisses him again, firmer and deeper and sweeter, and begins to press his body against Sherlock’s, chest to chest, to bear him down onto his back.
It’s curious how Sherlock’s body instinctively obeys; how his spine gives in and reclines, how his hips open and his thighs spread, how the blood rushes and pools. He can smell John everywhere, he can taste him, take his pulse, feel the shift of his muscles, the sway of his hips, the hard knot of his cock against Sherlock’s hip; taste the stutter of his breath as Sherlock grinds up to meet it.
John doesn’t kiss a thing like he dances, except in how it makes Sherlock want to pull him close and devour him, crawl inside him and latch onto his soul. But that’s true of nearly everything John does, and anyway, none of it, nothing in the world has ever made Sherlock feel remotely like this. He’s been desperate for John before, or so he’d thought then, been half out of his mind with it, but that doesn’t begin to compare to this. This driving, eclipsing need, the fire in his bones that’s making him writhe and jerk and pant, the taste of John’s sweat on his lips, the pressure of John’s hand squirming between their bodies, fumbling at his zip. John cursing as he gets his fingers around Sherlock’s erection through his pants, palm is hot around him and eyes on fire, and Sherlock’s body is its own being now, divorced from his mind, absorbed with twisting and writhing and keening, seeking more. He wants to reciprocate, feel John skin to skin, to touch and take and let John groan and gasp and paint his belly white, his face; wants John to pin him down and drive, cursing, into him. He’s all shaking and abortive, involuntary movements; it’s all he can do to wrap his thighs around John’s legs and thrust upward, it’s a struggle not to bite John’s tongue.
John hisses out a breath, tightens his grip and rubs his thumb over the head and all Sherlock’s air goes out of him like a bellows; his testicles full and throbbing as heat gathers at the base of his spine. John barely has him out of his pants, is the thing, that’s the rub of it; just the barest pressure of index finger and thumb, a ring squeezing through soft cotton, damp and hot, the hands he knows, the hands he’s watched—John panting in his ear, breath hot against his neck, the lips he’s seen licked countless times now pressed to the skin behind his ear, trailing toward his nape, flickers of teeth and pink, pink tongue. John saying his name, telling him he’s brilliant, that he’s perfect, filthy, gorgeous, mine, and it’s not supposed to be like this, he’s sure—he shouldn’t be teetering on the precipice already, feeling flames licking up, feeling heat coil and unfurl, losing control of his hips, his voice, his hands; kicking John in the back of the knee and thrusting up and being dragged, insensate, into glory, flashes of whirlpools and starshine and black holes of lust behind his eyes, rushing through his veins. Explosions, words hoarse and nonsensical, holding onto John for dear life and falling into feeling, glorious, bright and real—
“Sorry,” he’s saying, wetting his parched lips, fighting for more words, “sorry,” and sneaking a hand between their bodies, struggling to come back to himself, needing so strongly to reciprocate, but his limbs are loose and useless, his mind a damp towel, and everything’s close and wet and confusing, and—his gut drops—John is inhaling with a pained hiss and batting his hand away, because Sherlock’s gone and bollocksed this up, too, he can’t—
“No, I—” John licks his lips. “You don’t have to.” His face is flushed and his lips swollen; his eyes alight with some unfathomable mischief that he expects Sherlock to share. “I, uh… took care of myself, too.”
Sherlock can’t quite believe it and his hand flies to check, and now John is giggling, squirming, ticklishly over-sensitive and protesting, but yes, messy and wet and flagging against the pad of his thumb.
“Thought you of all people might’ve noticed.”
“No,” says Sherlock. “ Pity. I’d really have liked to have seen.” And he can’t, of course, not now, but instead he lifts his hand to his lips and tastes, and—oh, this was essential in and of itself, this was data he’d wanted anyway, this bitter tang, this soapy, orange-zest acridity, but he’d have done it just to see the look on John’s face, the way his eyes widen, the way he grabs Sherlock by the shoulders and presses, moaning, against his mouth to suss out whether it was real.
“Jesus...” The way John is looking at him should be illegal—John should be behind bars, the both of them should, and Sherlock feels his face light up with a smile. John is still staring dumbstruck at his lips. “Christ, Sherlock, I… I might manage a do-over, if that’s what you’re asking, just, uh—”
But Sherlock is already in hysterics, doesn’t hear John’s request for a minute, doubled over as he is, and oh, it aches through his whole stomach, his lungs, his chest, but he can’t stop. And John, John who has no idea is laughing too. This emotion is contagious, the two of them—all the ridiculous things they’ve ever done, will do.
“Never,” he says, and pulls John down into a kiss. “Never a do-over; just like this.”