Prompting Part XXXIV

[sherlockbbc_fic]

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Comments

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 3a

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

John clears his throat. ‘Right, then,’ he says, awkward and not without misgivings, but nods briefly (avoids eye contact) before wasting no more time in undoing his zip, again, and reaching inside.


(‘Just get it over with!’ John had growled at him, shirtless and hunched miserably over the washbasin, the two of them crammed into the loo because the lighting was better, and Sherlock had dithered over where best to get a grip on the medical tape without peeling the skin from John’s back in the process. ‘You do realize the antici—


Sherlock’s mind slams back into the present as the head of John’s prick touches his lower lip—warm, skin slightly humid, smells faintly of musk and John—and Sherlock nearly bites his own tongue in the struggle against his instinctive reaction to taste, which he is aware is a bit Not Good. John’s hand, wrapped around himself just below the head (foreskin not retracted, lack of arousal obvious), jerks his penis back, clearly alarmed.


‘Sorry,’ Sherlock mutters weakly, ‘I’m sorry.’ No retreating to his own Mind Palace, then; he can’t trust himself not to be startled by novel stimuli and to avoid seriously injuring John. ‘I just wasn’t expect—sorry.’


‘Jesus,’ John pants. ‘A bloody menace, you are,’ and then he is frowning with determination, ah, no more dithering for either of them. John catches Sherlock under the jaw with his right hand, wedges his thumb between Sherlock’s back molars and oh, that’s clever, is that clever? Better that Sherlock bites John’s thumb, if he’s startled again, than risk biting anything less...resilient. John exerts a little more pressure with his thumb, forcing Sherlock’s mouth wider, and pushes the first few centimeters of his soft prick inside.


Sherlock’s fingers spasm where he clutches his own knees, but he otherwise remains perfectly still. Keeps his tongue flattened as much as possible, tucked behind his bottom incisors, politely out of the way. Rethinks this, based on anecdotal evidence, and as John grimaces (no longer entirely flaccid; well, pure physiology will surely be enough to get John through this, if he simply closes his eyes and thinks of England, or Mary, shouldn’t take much, John’s become accustomed to regular intercourse since meeting Mary, then gone cold turkey after discovering her more unsavoury hobbies), Sherlock repositions his tongue over the sharp edge of his lower teeth.


John inhales sharply, his hips jerking forward another several centimeters, and Sherlock definitely would have bitten him that time, probably, if not for John’s thumb. As it is, Sherlock discovers a critical flaw with this position: namely, the inability to swallow his own saliva.


John compensates by withdrawing completely from Sherlock’s mouth, then, seemingly frustrated with himself (for being as jumpy as Sherlock? for dragging it out?) he plunges back inside, carefully but firmly. His foreskin has begun to retract, and the texture of the slick glans on Sherlock’s tongue is...interesting. John tastes the way he smells, warm and musky.


It is bearable. It’s fine, it’s all fine, and when John...finished, or Magnussen grew bored, or Mycroft finally (finally) got his fat arse here and Sherlock had his witnesses, Magnussen would no longer have leverage over anyone ever again, and he and John would leave this place and not ever speak of it. Assuming Sherlock would be allowed, or even able, to talk to John again, from wherever Mycroft had him detained, after he eliminated Magnussen. “Justifiable homicide,” Sherlock’s mind offers, but Sherlock knows there will be no justification for him, despite the fact he will be doing the whole of England a favour, and several other countries, beside.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 3b

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

John is still struggling with his conscience, evidently. There is a deep furrow creasing the skin of his forehead (consternation, morally-motivated aversion). He pushes approximately half way into Sherlock’s mouth and holds himself there, uneasily, before edging in a bit more.


Magnussen sighs with something that sounds to Sherlock like dissatisfaction, or impatience, and Sherlock belatedly supposes he is being ‘less than helpful,’ as John likes to put it. He should help speed things along, shouldn’t he? How should he...?


Magnussen shifts his weight, as if in preparation to step nearer (if you do no fuck Sherlock’s mouth, I will do it for you).


With a frisson of panic, Sherlock resolves to apply whatever theoretical knowledge of fellatio he can call to mind, and as John moves forward another reluctant inch, Sherlock leans in suddenly to meet him. Overcomes his gag reflex to take John’s prick as deeply as the position of John’s fist around himself will allow. He attempts to keep his lips tucked safely over his teeth, pressing his tongue firmly to the underside where he can feel the throb of John’s pulse in the bulbourethral artery. Tries for as much suction as he can manage, but John’s thumb in place makes it difficult. Saliva drools steadily from the corners of Sherlock’s mouth; disgusting, but hardly worse than the bodily fluids with which he is already saturated.


Above Sherlock’s bent head, John’s breath punches from his lungs. The sound of it is identical to past instances when cornered criminals have made the unwise choice to fight them, rather than flee, and John has received a blow to the solar plexus for his troubles. Sherlock’s heart rate kicks up in some sort of Pavlovian response, and he grips his own thighs viciously to avoid reaching for John. But just as good (better, infinitely better), John lashes out with his left hand (no longer needed to support or guide himself into Sherlock’s mouth, not when his prick is hard as iron against Sherlock’s soft pallet) and fists his fingers in Sherlock’s hair.


Whether intended as a gesture to stay himself or to stay Sherlock, Sherlock doesn’t care, the follicles are so ridiculously sensitive and no one knows this, there is no possible way John can know, but he certainly knows now, as Sherlock’s eyelids flutter closed and the guttural, entirely involuntary whine works its way up his throat, surprising even himself. He isn’t...he doesn’t respond to sexual stimulation, not really, but it feels as if a live current runs from the clench of John’s hand to Sherlock’s coccyx.


It’s terrifying.


John’s cock noticeably enlarges, throbs in his mouth, the spurt of pre-seminal fluid bitter on the back of Sherlock’s tongue, and Sherlock flushes with humiliation. Chokes back the reflexive whimper, which sounds distressed, even to his own ears.


‘Oh,’ Magnussen exclaims softly. ‘That is very interesting information, indeed.’


Sherlock’s eyes snap open, appalled at having forgotten himself (stupid, stupid), and whatever John sees on his face has the other man opening his hand and pulling himself from Sherlock’s mouth so quickly, Sherlock nearly gags.


Shaken, coughing, Sherlock immediately lowers his gaze to the floor. Swallows thickly once, twice, works his jaw at the corners where stiffness has begun to set in and wipes his chin with the back of a hand. The taste of John lingers on his tongue, not particularly pleasant, but not as terrible as it might be.


‘You needn’t have stopped on my account,’ Magnussen insists. ‘Though I suppose the two of you are eager to see this exercise to its conclusion.’

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 3c

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

Magnussen holds up a finger in the universal ‘wait a moment’ gesture and crosses the room to a door just off the hallway. He enters, and there is the click of the light, a metallic clack (metal decoupling—magnet—medicine cabinet—loo, then). The medicine cabinet is closed, the light extinguished. Magnussen reappears to toss something (metallic surface, flatish) to the floor at Sherlock’s knees before continuing across the room to recline leisurely against the white leather “caterpillar style” sofa.


Sherlock glances briefly at the item, against his better judgment, only to find his eyes locked there, his mind stalled in disbelief. Single-use-sized foil packet of personal lubricant, dear Christ.


‘I will spare you the suspense. John, you are going to sodomize Sherlock. You are going to stick your prick up his ass and keep doing it until Sherlock has his “little death,” or I tell you to stop. I am curious, you see, because while my information indicates Sherlock’s taste in pornography falls within perfectly normal limits for a homosexual male, he has never had a sexual partner, and, well, at his age, I wonder if it is because he is simply...incapable.’


Sherlock’s blood runs cold. So this is it, the apogee of Magnussen’s power play. Sherlock wishes he could claim surprise, but he had done his own research, prior to arranging this meeting. Yet he hadn’t wanted to really think...people didn’t actually do things like this in real life, did they? It all seemed like something better suited to the telly screen and one of John’s ridiculous, contrived Bond villains.


John is silent for several moments, a fist clenched near but not touching his rather prominent erection, his body angled away from Magnussen in a futile instinct against exposure.


‘And if I refuse,’ John manages through his teeth, ‘you’ll do it for me, is that right?’


‘Well, of course,’ Magnussen agrees. ‘I would hate for something as trivial as a moral crisis to stand in the way of complete knowledge.’


‘Of course,’ John echoes with deadened voice. ‘Never mind the fact that not all men, not even all gay men, respond favourably to anal penetration.’


‘I suppose you’ll not take my word for it, either?’ Sherlock interjects. ‘If I were to tell you I am. Incapable.’


‘No,’ Magnussen concedes, ‘I would not.’


Well. It had been worth a shot. Dread churns through Sherlock’s intestines, and for a moment he wonders if he will vomit all over Magnussen’s pristine imported marble—almost hopes he will, but then again, better not, and risk worrying John any more than is unavoidable.


And where in the seven hells is Mycroft, he wonders with escalating desperation. Surely he and his goons would be showing up any moment, now?


‘Go on, then. Sooner started, sooner finished.’ Magnussen smirks from his loose-limbed sprawl on the sofa. Sherlock hates the man incandescently.


Reluctance dragging at his every movement, Sherlock inhales deeply through his nose, exhales through his teeth. Slides his hands from where they clutch his knees, white-knuckled, to press them flat to the floor and shifts his weight until he is poised on all fours above his coat. From what he has read, this should be the easiest position for first-time penetration; even if it weren’t, Sherlock can’t stomach the idea of facing John.


Sherlock holds himself steady on one hand while he uses the other to unbutton his suit jacket, to grimly undo his belt, slide down his zip, and then...stops. He is faint with nausea, and he cannot force himself to do more. Please, John, he thinks, hating himself as he does it, but finally, John shakes himself from whatever trance of horror had evidently taken hold of him as he stood there looking down at Sherlock reduced to this. John’s shoes disappear from Sherlock’s field of vision as his friend steps behind him without a word.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 3d

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

John tentatively kneels behind him (comes down a little harder on the left knee than the right, the ‘bad’ leg clearly playing up on him), and his hands hover uncertainly at Sherlock’s hips for a moment before he grasps the waistband of the trousers. John peels them down until they rest around Sherlock’s upper thighs.


The muscles of Sherlock’s shoulders ache with tension, and thankfully John doesn’t draw it out, simply tucks his thumbs beneath the elastic of Sherlock’s boxer-brief style pants and jerks them down, being considerate enough to push his thumbs sufficiently forward to avoid catching uncomfortably on Sherlock’s genitalia.


Sherlock is sick with anxiety. Pulse jackrabbit fast, his hands are clammy.


(Don’t be alarmed; it’s to do with sex.)


He hadn’t been lying. Sex doesn’t alarm him, not in the abstract, and not as an objective third-party witness. As long as it has nothing whatsoever to do with his own person, Sherlock can’t really be arsed to care one way or the other about it, except so far as it goes toward criminal motivation. The joke is on Magnussen, if he thinks Sherlock’s habits of pornographic consumption are indicative of anything other than statistic-gathering experiments or case-related research.


However, Sherlock is forced to admit, being compelled to kneel atop his own coat on all fours and resign himself to imminent violation at the hands of the only man about whose opinion of him Sherlock has ever really cared, is not the least bit abstract.


From the beginning of their acquaintance, Sherlock had made certain to shut down any possible avenues of discussion on his sexuality. Information that was immaterial to a flatshare, then irrelevant in a friendship, would now only be deeply uncomfortable within a one-sided romantic attraction. There was no dignified way to explain something like “asexual, with the theoretical possibility of demisexuality, by which I mean ‘John-sexual.’” Whether John believed Sherlock to be aromantic, asexual, celibate, gay...it hardly mattered, as Sherlock had never intended to act on any of it. As far as Sherlock’s own inclinations went, one did not need attempt repeated sowings to determine a field, fallow for all of known memory, was in actuality barren.


(It’s all about knowledge. Everything is.)


But in this one thing, Sherlock does not want to know. The idea of knowing without a doubt, one way or the other, is utterly terrifying. Far better to salt the earth liberally and conspicuously, than to stand amidst that barren field and leave the opportunity for a single second of consideration upon the question of what ugly, stunted, sterile thing might take root there, but for a single cupped palm of water which would never be given. It isn’t John’s fault that he does not love Sherlock in this way.


There is the rustle of clothing, and John places his coat bunched on the floor, opposite side of Sherlock from Magnussen. Magnussen is silent, so Sherlock has no choice but to assume John has either successfully managed to keep him from seeing the firearm, or Magnussen has seen, and is utterly unconcerned.


‘Should probably take off your jacket,’ John tells him, his left arm moving into Sherlock’s line of sight with an awkward gesture toward the packet of lubricant. ‘The shirt too, while you’re at it.’


‘No, thank you, I think not,’ Sherlock replies crisply, relieved beyond telling at the steadiness of his own voice. He snatches up the foil packet and slaps it into John’s hand. The hand retreats.


‘Suit yourself. If you want to faff about soaked in cold urine, far be it from me to stop you.’

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 3e

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

‘As long as you stick to statistical findings for ejaculation time of the average adult male, this should all be done and over within three minutes, so it hardly seems worth the effort,’ Sherlock snarks back.


‘You forget—this isn’t about me at all. It’s all on you, Sherlock, and I’d hardly accuse you of something so boring as being average.’


With an explosive sigh of annoyance, theatrics intended to distract from the trembling of his hands, Sherlock practically rips the suit jacket from his body, nearly elbowing John in the eye in the process. He makes a show of hurling his jacket down atop John’s, and it allows him to confirm that John’s weapon is indeed wadded inside it, but this is as far as Sherlock will disrobe. He would rather deal with the discomfort and smell of his likely ruined Dolce shirt than remove it at present time, for present audience. Sherlock is not so blind to social conventions (not anymore) that he does not understand what John is trying to do, and part of him is...grateful. This will not damage them, irreparably.


Sherlock returns to his previous position, hands and knees, and his limp penis hangs awkwardly, brushing against the hem of his shirt. So. The obvious tactic here is to take John’s comment as a challenge. Sherlock sincerely doubts he can manage three minutes, even under ideal conditions, but if he really tries, perhaps he can achieve five. Though that does not take into account the unknown variable of anal penetration.


‘Just get on with it,’ he orders, because Magnussen is right of course, sooner started, sooner finished, and as the starting is unavoidable, Sherlock would rather any finishing happen well before his late, late brother arrives.


John lays a palm on Sherlock’s lower back and leaves it there. The warmth of his skin bleeds through the thin fabric of Sherlock’s shirt, and he wants to be comforted, but finds it impossible, knowing what is coming next.


‘Sherlock,’ John sighs, sounding exasperated, and Sherlock cannot imagine what John Watson possibly has to be exasperated at him about. When he speaks again, his voice is pitched low enough for Sherlock’s ears, only.


‘If you really have never done this before, I’m sure as hell not going to just—‘


‘For god’s sake,’ Sherlock snarls under his breath. The apprehension is threatening to bring up his meager lunch. ‘It doesn’t matter, I’m giving you permission, I’m not made of bone china! If you have any regard for me whatsoever, you’ll stop coddling me and do it, because I can’t bear—‘ His jaw snaps shut audibly as he stops himself from completing that sentence. Sherlock struggles to master his brittle voice, to force the words through the irrational lump in his throat and make John understand. ‘The anticipation is worse than the act, John.’


John is quiet for a long moment, so long that Sherlock begins to worry John will fight him on this, or Magnussen will say something horrible but finally, finally, John exhales a tense and audibly unhappy breath from his nose.


‘Fine. Yes, all right, you’re right,’ he says, and the next thing Sherlock hears is the crinkle and rip of the foil packet. There is a brief pause, then John’s fingertip, cool with slick, skims the tightly clenched muscle of his anus.


‘Try to relax,’ John advises, a retreat to doctor-mode as he grasps for some pseudo-professional distance between himself and Sherlock.


Sherlock snorts, nostrils flaring, and makes a conscious effort, despite the creeping, queasy sensation of self-loathing which begins squeeze around his ribs like a vice. And that is familiar, from previous explorations involving his own sexuality and the addition of a second party. Being stone cold sober for the experience is something new, though only serves to confirm Sherlock’s long-held suspicion that sobriety just makes him feel his inadequacy, his freakishness, all the more keenly.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 3f

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

John’s finger carefully pushes in to the first knuckle. Then, when Sherlock says nothing, the second. Sherlock attempts not to vibrate out of his own skin.


‘Okay?’ John asks.


Sherlock lifts his head from between his shoulders enough to give a terse nod. He is not lying, exactly, because by any explanation John would be able to understand, Sherlock is “okay.” He is not in any pain, not in any strictly physical discomfort beyond the mechanics of it.


John slides his finger out until just the tip remains inserted, but Sherlock’s relief is short-lived. The finger returns to lightly palpate his prostate, causing the muscles of his pelvic floor to jump. Sherlock jolts, not having expected that quite so soon in the proceedings.


‘Shh, it’s alright, perfectly normal,’ John assures him, attempting to soothe Sherlock’s skittishness, but the words just serve to drive home to Sherlock how very Not Normal he feels.


Is it? he wants to ask, but won’t, of course, not with Magnussen hovering just out of sight like some great vulture, waiting for the scent of blood. Wouldn’t a normal male be at least the slightest bit stimulated by now? Sherlock wouldn’t know. After his own disappointing experiments, any continued study of others’ apparent ease of success had only felt like salt in the wound.


John takes his silence as permission to continue. Rubs his finger cautiously around the walls of Sherlock’s rectum before returning to his prostate with gentle, indirect pressure. Sherlock takes his lower lip between his teeth, brow furrowed, and stares fixedly at the floor. The sensation is not entirely pleasant, yet still vaguely so, all the same, and Sherlock can’t even begin to determine how he would conceptualize such a thing. John continues to probe at him with that single finger and eventually, Sherlock is able to acclimatize, as long as he considers it part of a mildly distasteful yet regretfully necessary medical procedure. As long as he keeps his mind firmly on his own body without making the mistake of visualizing the unflattering tableau he must present.


Finally, John’s finger slips free of Sherlock’s body and Sherlock inhales slowly, congratulating himself on retaining his equanimity. He’ll never make it to orgasm in five minutes, at this rate, but he will get through this.


After a moment, John’s fingers return. Two this time, cool with added lubricant, and Sherlock hopes John is being economical with it; Magnussen only granted them the one packet.


John circles the rugose skin of his anus, massaging, coaxing, and while not arousing in the least, Sherlock appreciates the clarity of intent behind the touch. Gradually, John insinuates the tips of his fingers and proceeds to work at the outer sphincter, without going deeper quite yet. Sherlock hisses in through his teeth, his hands fisting in the tweed of his Belstaff beneath him. John freezes.


‘It’s fine,’ Sherlock insists. ‘I’m fine, keep going.’ He makes a conscious effort to relax his shoulders from where they’ve begun creeping up around his ears.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 3g

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

After a brief hesitation, John continues. The touch is...tolerable, the combination of the tips of John’s two fingers just inside the rim of his anus, his thumb pressed to the external edge of the muscle, the incidental brush of ring-finger knuckle against Sherlock’s perineum. While Sherlock would have assumed the combination to be stomach-churningly invasive, instead he finds it...grounding, and it helps keep the worst of the panic at bay. Because it is John, doing what needs be done, even if he doesn’t entirely agree with it, but doing it all the same because Sherlock told him to. That, at least, is a comfortably familiar dynamic between them.


John braces his left hand on Sherlock’s hip, and it’s more stimulating than any touch has been until this point. From extremely scattered, not particularly reliable past experiences, Sherlock has ascertained he can enjoy and is exceptionally sensitive to non-sexually-explicit, affectionate touch, as long as it is from an acceptable individual, with acceptable (non-sexual) motives. John’s hand curled around his hip is a sensation which Sherlock is able to quantify as definitively Good, and as such, it has the skin all along Sherlock’s left side tingling, from knee to ribcage.


Distracted by the hand on his flank, Sherlock doesn’t tense up as quickly as he might have done when John slides the fingers of his right into him completely, all the way to the third knuckle. A strangled noise is driven from deep within Sherlock’s chest, incompletely smothered, and John’s left thumb caresses the blade of Sherlock’s ilium, rubs soothing circles along the edge of the bone with firm pressure and it’s perfect, John is perfect, and Sherlock can almost forget about the invasive fingers, can almost pretend, with his eyes squeezed shut, that they’re knelt on the floor of the sitting room at Baker Street, fresh off a fantastic case and John couldn’t wait, wanted this, wanted him, and John understood it wouldn’t be a regular thing, and was fine with it, (It’s all fine), Sherlock had given it to him because he’d wanted to, because he—


The clink of glass on glass (tumbler on table) slams Sherlock back into the reality of the situation. He gasps sharply through his nose, clamping down on John’s fingers reflexively, and the implacableness of them being there, embedded, threatens to send Sherlock into a panic attack. His vision greys worryingly, struck as he is by a feeling of disconnect from his own body. With delayed humiliation he realizes he is nearly half-hard.


‘Sherlock?’ John murmurs over his shoulder, concern evident in his voice. ‘Sherlock,’ he repeats, more firmly, ‘answer me.’


‘What?’ Sherlock bites out, his voice higher and tighter than normal and he hates it, he hates the way his transport always chooses the worst moment to betray him. John may be an idiot when it comes to most things, but not the workings of the body, and while that about him usually fascinates Sherlock, right now he hates that, too, because it just gives his execrable transport one more co-conspirator against him. Sherlock is trembling, his arms barely managing to keep him upright, his heart racing. John is hardly incompetent enough to miss all this, yet Sherlock wishes futilely that he will ignore it, will just...let it be.

Re: FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 3

[(Anonymous)]

What a beautiful description of Sherlock's sexuality. I know it shouldn't make it more painful, but for me it does.

Re: FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 3

[(Anonymous)]

^^-- exactly this. Thank you for summing it up so succinctly, I'd have written a whole paragraph and still not gotten my point across. Great work, author-anon.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 4a

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

‘John, please,’ he murmurs sotto voce. ‘If you would spare me at all...’


‘No. No, Sherlock, stop right there. We’ve tried it your way, and look where it’s gotten us.’ His hand comes down on Sherlock’s shoulder and it takes everything Sherlock has, not to go rigid beneath it and prove John right.


John leans forward slightly, his voice low in Sherlock’s ear, and threaded through with frustration, as if Sherlock should already know what he’s about to say, or at the very least, care. ‘If I can’t see you, I’m going to have a hell of a time telling if I’m hurting you, or going too fast, or, Jesus, if you’re getting at all close to...’ John trails off, and in his peripheral, Sherlock sees him lift his eyebrows significantly and nod in the direction of Sherlock’s lap.


‘John. Is there a problem?’ Magnussen asks. His tone pretends at solicitousness, but it’s hardly convincing, seeing as there is also something rather pointed about it. ‘Do I need to step in to test Sherlock’s limits, myself, after all?’


Sherlock is filled with revulsion for the man with every fiber of his being. (Because he attacks people who are different and preys on their secrets.) Of course he would do anything for John’s sake. Anything. He had just foolishly hoped to get to the end of this Sword of Damocles bit without being expected to do the one thing he had both simultaneously wished and feared John would never, ever ask of him.


‘No,’ John barks, his hand tightening for a fraction of a second on Sherlock’s shoulder before sliding away. ‘No, just...negotiating.’


‘Ah, well, in that case.’ Magnussen stretches out to spread his arms over the back of the sofa. ‘You had better hurry. While I can be an extraordinarily patient man under the right circumstances, I assure you, this is not one of them.’


Sherlock slowly removes his hands from his hair. He often has difficulty maintaining physical arousal, even at the best of times, and there is nothing arousing in the least about the thought of being splayed on his back, Lepidoptera Glossata pinned to a card. John’s well-meaning scruples aside, this is one concession Sherlock will not make.


‘I can’t. In that position,’ he tells John firmly, because John responds more favourably to him saying he can’t do something than he does to Sherlock saying he won’t (deludes himself into thinking it indicates tractability on Sherlock’s part), and if John takes it to mean a mechanical defect of the transport itself, all the better.


‘However...’ Here is where he pauses. He needs a compromise acceptable to both parties, one which will assuage John’s care-taker tendencies, while still allowing Sherlock to maintain the fiction that he is not being forced to submit himself to the one thing he has spent his entire adult life actively avoiding. ‘If I promise to inform you, verbally...’


John snorts indelicately. ‘Chance would be a fine thing. No, I’ll only agree if you swear you will answer me, in words, every time I ask you if you’re all right—every time, Sherlock—and if you’re not honest with me, so help me, I will put you on your back and I will keep you there, do you understand?’


‘Yes,’ Sherlock blurts without thought, pulse skittering, unable to decide if this is the most frightening thing he has ever heard come out of John Watson’s mouth, or the most titillating.


‘Good, okay. Let’s, ah, try this again, then.’


Sherlock nods once, tersely, and returns to his hands and knees, knelt in the center of his greatcoat. He is completely soft once more, unsurprisingly.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 4b

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

John’s hand returns to Sherlock’s hip, squeezes reassuringly. ‘A cold start probably wasn’t the best way to go about it,’ he concedes ruefully (surprisingly apt comparison, considering John’s lack of any truly useful knowledge about computers and technology; too surprising, so, a mechanical metaphor in deference to Sherlock’s habitual use of the term “transport”?), and his thumb slips beneath the hem of Sherlock’s dress shirt to rub again at the blade of his hip. Just rubbing, nothing expectant in the touch. It’s...lovely, or would be, under other circumstances. But these are the circumstances Sherlock has been given, and he doubts there will be any grinning, but he will certainly bear it.


‘How do you prefer to be touched, then?’ John asks with quiet consideration, and there’s that damn nobility again. If John believes Sherlock unable to detect the genuine curiosity behind the question, though, he is sadly mistaken. Meretricious.


How does he prefer to be touched, Sherlock wonders? It is not a subject to which he had given much thought for years, at least not until John, and that case with the Woman, and even that had been more academic, than anything. No, the only time Sherlock had been weak enough, low enough to indulge in something that ludicrously sentimental was during his time away, as a mental exercise in mitigating the effects of torture, initially. Upon his return to London, however, finding John decidedly affianced and himself decidedly unforgiven for leaving in the first place, Sherlock had given up all those “hypotheticals and half-formed would-haves” as impossible, and foolishly masochistic.


Sherlock exhales harshly, filled beyond reckoning with self-loathing. By you, he thinks, but doesn’t dare say. Obviously.


‘I don’t know,’ he replies instead, stiffly. Irritated. He is the limiting reagent in his own chemical reaction, and it is ridiculous. ‘I’ve not much...data,’ he is forced to admit.


‘All right, that’s fine, Sherlock. That’s about what I suspected.’ John’s right hand slides up beneath Sherlock’s shirt to press briefly to his stomach, just above his navel. ‘Though I thought, maybe, with Janine...?’


Sherlock snorts. ‘Please, John. Don’t be dull.’ Hopes the derision in his tone is enough to distract from the trembling of his abdominal muscles beneath John’s touch.


‘Right, okay, apologies for being dull. Do you—look, can I unbutton this, at least?’


Sherlock swallows thickly. ‘Fine.’


Both John’s hands slip beneath his torso, and while Sherlock would have expected quick, efficient movements in the interest of time, John’s fingers work methodically up the placket of his shirt, hem to collar. Sherlock makes an effort to collect himself as John finishes, allowing the damp fabric to fall open.


Starting at the base of his throat, John sweeps a palm down Sherlock’s chest, over clavicle, then sternum, only to stop as his fingers make contact with the freshly healed wound just below Sherlock’s right pectoral. John inhales sharply.


Sherlock had always put John off with some excuse or another, any time John would ask to see it, these past few months as they convalesced at Baker Street (ostensibly, he hadn’t wanted to cause John distress, particularly when it was still in the best interests of John and the baby’s safety to forgive Mary, to keep her close; however, Sherlock could not deny a significant portion of it was also petulance over the fact that he had never been permitted to see John’s scar). But now John’s fingers trace the sensitive edges of it, and this is dangerous territory, Sherlock thinks, because somehow this leaves him feeling even more raw and exposed than John’s fingers between his thighs.


‘John,’ he rasps, but can’t continue, having no idea what he means to say.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 4c

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

Behind him, John finally exhales, and the touch resumes. Both hands now, moving out along Sherlock’s ribs before coming to a rest, anchored to, anchoring, Sherlock’s hips with unexpected force.


‘How about—’ John clears his throat. ‘How about I touch you, and you tell me a simple yes or no: “yes, please, more of that,” or “no, definitely not that,” can you manage that?’


‘Yes, fine,’ Sherlock huffs. Keeps his eyes closed. It will be easier if he can concentrate on the sensations alone, and not on how he must look. Otherwise, he will only become fixated on how horribly awkward and undignified and unattractive it all is, and it will be entirely self-defeating.


John again takes up the circular caress of Sherlock’s iliac crest with his thumbs, both sides this time. Sherlock is uncertain if this is meant to be John’s first step in the no doubt arduous task of chivvying him toward orgasm, or a simple delaying tactic as John considers his options, but Sherlock wants to show he is being cooperative, so he says ‘Yes.’


John’s hands skim up either side of Sherlock’s ribcage, over his shirt, and Sherlock steels himself against the reflexive flinch.


‘No.’ Too ticklish, Sherlock doesn’t say, because just thinking the word is ridiculous enough. Thankfully, John doesn’t press, simply takes Sherlock at his word and continues to his shoulders.


‘Mm,’ Sherlock grunts as strong hands alight on the anxiety-taut muscles of his deltoids, his trapezius, the rhomboid major and minor. ‘Yes. But not exactly...stimulating,’ he adds in the interest of full disclosure. John’s only response to this is to dig his fingers harder into the meat of Sherlock’s upper back.


Sherlock bites down on his lower lip to avoid groaning aloud at the pleasurable pain of it, but John does not relent, and Sherlock gradually, warily, allows himself to be molded by the capable heat of John’s hands, the worst of his tension forcibly pulled from his body. Sherlock’s head drops as John’s hand wraps around the nape of his neck, massaging firmly. A faint tremor shivers down his spine, seemingly sensitizing everything in its wake and oh, perhaps he was too hasty with his previous assessment.


Sherlock’s head lolls even further, following the guidance of John’s hand, helplessly, until John’s fingers crawl into the curls at the base of his skull and rub five points of exquisite pressure against his scalp. Sherlock’s whole body shudders, a moan caught behind his teeth, ‘Yes,’ he whispers, barely audible, but surely it is obvious. John tightens his fist, tugging carefully, and Sherlock begins to feel lightheaded. He is certain his arms are about to buckle beneath him, isn’t entirely clear whether he doesn’t say this aloud, but then John’s hand in his hair is gently yet resolutely directing his head lower and lower, until Sherlock is held up on his forearms, knelt with his forehead pressed to the floor.


John’s left hand remains fisted in his hair, a silent injunction against movement which Sherlock would never dream of defying. The fingers of John’s other hand glide down his spine, John’s touch seeming to burn even through the fabric of his shirt. The fingers cut across Sherlock’s hip, down into the tender slice of skin between thigh and groin, and rest just against the base of Sherlock’s mostly quiescent prick.


‘No,’ Sherlock protests sharply, that sick feeling of wrongness in his own skin threatening to descend, and John’s fingers immediately retreat.


‘All right, okay, that’s fine, Sherlock, it’s okay.’


‘I know it’s okay,’ he retorts defensively, it’s his body, after all. That particular portion, he is well aware, will only perform for him (and even that has always been rather hit-or-miss).

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 4d

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

John’s hand wraps around his hip with an apologetic squeeze, and Sherlock tries to allow himself to be mollified. Tries to relax into the feel of John attentively carding fingers through his curls with one hand and knuckling into the muscles of his lower back with the other, because that is much more pleasant. Especially when John digs the ball of his thumb in tight circles down the length of Sherlock’s sacrum.


‘Mm, that, yes,’ Sherlock grudgingly concedes.


Try as he might, however, he can’t quite recapture his earlier lassitude. John has made a commendable effort, but Sherlock’s body is being predictably recalcitrant, and he’s not certain how much more of this hot-and-cold, start-and-stop he can endure before he’ll be wanting to scream with frustration.


John’s thumb reaches the very apex of the cleft of Sherlock’s arse, then repeats its journey in reverse. ‘If you don’t want me touching your bits, that’s going to have to be your job,’ John points out gently, if extremely obviously. When Sherlock remains mulishly silent, John apparently finds it necessary to let even more asinine words fall from his mouth, unchecked.


‘You’re not going to be able to come from penetration alone,’ he informs Sherlock, as if a few adventurous years in the army and a possible (more data needed) long-running fling with his Ex-commander Sholto made him an expert. As if Sherlock is not perfectly capable of his own edification on the subject of anal sex by spending five minutes on a Google search and finding more explicitly-worded advice blogs written by homosexual males than could ever possibly need to exist.


‘Touching my own bits, yes,’ he acknowledges with a mocking sneer that he hopes John can hear in his voice. Because clearly he owes John equal complicity in his own sexual degradation, but if John insists upon being an idiot, then Sherlock needn’t to be any more pleasant about this than he used to be when John would harangue him about eating and sleeping whilst on a really excellent case.


‘Tell me, Captain Watson, is this how you seduced all your conquests on three separate continents? By nagging them to completion?’ Possibly (likely) an unfair assessment. After all, Sherlock is sure every one of John’s more amorous adventures abroad were at the very least mutually satisfactory, if not imbued with a desperate passion born more of the hovering spectre of mortality than any real--


The forceful crack of John’s palm against his arse shocks every thought from Sherlock’s head, wipes his mind utterly clean.


‘Oh ho!’ Magnussen begins to chortle, loudly, but it is immaterial because John has wrenched Sherlock’s head back in order to make sure he has Sherlock’s attention, and by god, does he.

‘Damnit, Sherlock,’ John hisses in his ear with dangerous calm, ‘I am trying here, I really am. I am trying to be considerate of the fact that you haven’t been touched like this before. I’m trying to be considerate of the fact that the first—who knows, maybe only!—time it happens, it has to be your best mate, in front of the most depraved bastard in all the country, and that you’re obviously terrified out of your great bloody mind, and you’re feeling defensive, and lashing out.’ John adjusts his grip in Sherlock’s hair, breathing heavily. ‘I’ve been trying to be considerate of the fact that you’re still healing from a bullet my wife put through your chest. But you can never listen to anything I say, even when it’s for your own good, can you? You can never make things easier on yourself, just have to be such a bloody hard-touch.’

‘John...’ Sherlock swallows tightly, pants around the words. ‘I...’

Re: FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 4

[(Anonymous)]

Mooooooooore!

Re: FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 4

[(Anonymous)]

I've stayed awake 20 minutes past when I was going to bed, hoping for more. Don't leave me hanging there in mid-sentence, please!

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 4e

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

‘Shut up, Sherlock, because I’m not through,’ John warns him. With a shake of his head, John huffs a humourless laugh. ‘I’ve stood back and followed your lead on dozens of insane cases--because that’s what you do, that’s what you know, and you’re brilliant at it, and I have always, always respected that, even when I didn’t agree with your methods. I’ve never fought you on it, not unless you were being a thick-headed idiot and putting yourself at risk of serious harm. But this...’ John sucks in a breath that sounds pained. ‘This is something you don’t know. And I don’t agree with it, you’re definitely putting yourself at risk of serious harm, but you will have to stop fighting me on this because there is no way in hell I am letting Magnussen put his hands on you.


‘So for once in your life, Sherlock, I am asking you to listen to me when I tell you to stand down and trust me to get you through this. You’re going to stop thinking about anything but putting your hand on your cock and doing exactly as I say, when I say it. “Yes” or “no” answers only. Understood?’


‘Yes,’ Sherlock replies, and it feels as if it comes from the very soles of his feet. Dazed, he shifts his balance on his left forearm, reaches for his prick and gingerly wraps his hand around it. Flushes with shame as he does so. ‘Yes,’ he repeats, unsure if he has said the word, or merely thought it.


No more thinking. He needs to disengage his brain, John says so, and they are only at this point because for every step forward they take, Sherlock’s brain wrestles him two steps back, so the prudent thing to do here is defer to John’s much greater experience.


‘Good,’ John says, and releases Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock curls in on himself just a bit, presses his feverish face against the wool of his Belstaff. His penis twitches in his hand.


‘Hold on,’ John admonishes, ‘not like that. Give me your hand.’


Gentle pressure on his wrist, and John pulls Sherlock’s hand away from his lap, lays a cool stripe of lubricant down the center of his palm.


‘Go on, now,’ John orders. ‘Get that back around your prick, get yourself nice and slick, because you’re going to keep at it until I tell you otherwise.’


Good Christ.


Sherlock does as he’s told. Wraps his own long fingers around his stiffening prick and gives it a few desultory pulls as he waits for John to tell him what to do next.


John’s hands tug at Sherlock’s trousers and pants, lowering them from his thighs to his knees. ‘Budge up,’ John mutters as he taps the inside of Sherlock’s leg with the back of a hand, coaxing his thighs further apart. The knuckles against Sherlock’s inner thigh migrate higher, higher, until they brush against his scrotum, sending a rush of exhilarated terror through him, and he holds his breath.


‘Sherlock. Yes or no.’


He releases his breath noisily, relieved, then irritated at himself for the relief. He knows John will not take any liberties Sherlock himself does not allow, he knows this, why was he behaving like this?


‘No,’ he answers, as steadily as he is able, which isn’t very. ‘But.’ John said yes or no answers only, didn’t he? Perhaps he had better not.


‘But what, Sherlock?’


‘The puh—perineum,’ he mumbles into his coat, mortified by his own brazenness. ‘Yes.’


‘Good, that’s good, Sherlock,’ John assures him. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 4f

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

Sherlock’s initiative is rewarded by John teasing his knuckles over that very spot as he uses his thumb to smear a globule of lubricant across Sherlock’s hole. John plies the muscle with alternating pressure, light and firm, and every so often the tip of his thumb dips inside, and there is no pattern to it Sherlock can discern, but he belatedly supposes that is rather the point.


‘Are you still stroking yourself?’ John wants to know. Which seems a ridiculous question, surely he knows the answer, can see the lack of movement in Sherlock’s shoulder as he simply holds himself, distracted by the—


John’s left hand slaps down hard onto his upturned buttock, and Sherlock involuntarily clenches around John’s thumb, startling a grunt from himself. His prick throbs in his hand. A swipe of his finger confirms that he is beginning to leak, foreskin partially retracted.


Sherlock tugs himself absently from root to tip, his hips jerking once as he briefly concentrates his attention on the frenulum. ‘Yes, John,’ he pants.


John’s left hand goes to his tailbone, massaging unhurried circles there, just above Sherlock’s arsehole. Easing the stretch as he removes his thumb, replaces it with two fingers.


‘Oh, god,’ Sherlock whispers, bucking into his own fist, but John’s hand doesn’t quite follow, and when Sherlock settles back to center himself over his knees again, the movement has him fucking himself on John’s fingers. ‘Oh, god...’


Shut up, shut up, he tells himself furiously, but John hooks his fingers, drags them slowly from Sherlock’s body until the tips catch at his rim, then slides them back into Sherlock. Grinds the knuckle of his third finger into Sherlock’s perineum, and Sherlock feels himself twitch and tighten around John’s fingers.


‘You all right, Sherlock?’


‘Y-yes.’


‘What are you doing with your hand?’ John asks, pointedly.


Sherlock strokes himself obediently, twists his wrist on the upstroke, huffs a breath though his nose as he struggles to remain silent. Another stroke, and this time his hips follow along helplessly, pumping into his hand; when his hips retreat, John’s fingers are there, plunging slow and deep. The sensation is...not objectionable, and Sherlock only hesitates a moment before doing it again, then again, establishing a stilted rhythm between John’s fingers and his own fist.


‘Good, brilliant, you’re doing so well,’ John praises him and, oh, the thrill of John’s earnest approval is a hundred times more disarming, like this. Sherlock feels his whole body flush with embarrassed pleasure.


John’s left hand trails along Sherlock’s skin, smooths over the curve of his buttock, and Sherlock shudders at the sense memory of the sting of his palm. His grip around himself tightens in response, the glide of his hand smooth and easy, now, as he realizes with detached curiosity that he’s leaking freely. Interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the strength of John’s hand when he digs his fingers into the muscle of Sherlock’s arse, as he catches his thumb in the cleft and uses it to spread Sherlock wider, exposing him. A whimper works its way up Sherlock’s throat as his prostate throbs.


John uses his leverage to ensure Sherlock maintains the rhythm of his hips: tiny, languid, rolling motions, forward and back. It’s...good. Sherlock’s knees strain against the fabric of his trousers.


‘Just like that,’ John murmurs. ‘Just like that, fantastic. Do you think you’re ready for another finger?’


Oh, god, Sherlock thinks. I don’t know, Sherlock thinks. But John is proud of him, he is doing so well John says, and Sherlock is fairly certain his body is going to cooperate. Orgasm still seems a good way off at this point, but definitely feels possible. Sherlock has passed the most difficult hurdle, at least. Maybe.


‘Yes,’ Sherlock says.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 5a

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

Sherlock flinches at the taunt before he is able to shutter his face.


Magnussen turns his back on them to return to the sofa, and Sherlock wastes no time. Shifts his weight to reach behind and unlace his brogues so he can slip them off, then twists around to sit facing John, his stocking feet flat on the floor whilst his knees jut out awkwardly in the cramped, shared space afforded by his Belstaff. Sherlock steadfastly refuses to contemplate the alarming slickness between the cheeks of his arse.


Wordlessly, John assists him in removing his pants and trousers. Folds the trousers to add them to the growing pile of clothing beside them. Sherlock appreciates the gesture, though the winter-weight wool is already rumpled beyond salvaging. And then he is sat in his socks and unbuttoned dress shirt with John knelt between his thighs, feeling hideously self-conscious in a way he has never experienced before. Every ounce of his willfully cultivated sexual ignorance weighs down on his chest like a stone, making it difficult to draw a full breath. John adjusts the placement of his own knees on the hem of Sherlock’s coat, leans forward, and with a nauseating sense of fatality Sherlock recognizes this is it, John will swarm in and bear him down, flat on his back, all Sherlock’s efforts to avoid such a humiliating arrangement, for naught.


But John simply reaches past his hip to retrieve the new packet of lubricant.


‘Come on, Sherlock, come here.’ John grasps Sherlock’s upper arm and tugs, maneuvering him astride John’s lap. ‘This is easier, isn’t it? You’ll be able to get off like this?’ John’s hands are warm, one on Sherlock’s hip, the other wrapped around him, supporting his back. It’s almost like an embrace, and it offers the advantage of allowing Sherlock to hook his chin over John’s shoulder to conceal his face. Which Sherlock does, tentatively, his own large hands grasping John’s shoulders with care.


‘Yes,’ Sherlock agrees with more confidence than he feels, unutterably grateful for this one respite.


‘Good. Great. Thank god,’ John mumbles as his arms shift around Sherlock’s body, and Sherlock is uncertain if he imagines the fleeting sensation of John’s lips against the shell of his ear, but greedily (pathetically) files it away in a mental drawer for Wishful Thinking, nonetheless. John fumbles with the fiddly foil sachet. ‘Here we go,’ he informs Sherlock, and then he is carefully pushing three fingers back into Sherlock’s arse.


It’s more than a bit...overwhelming. Sherlock’s fingers tighten on John’s shoulders. John hisses, and Sherlock realizes that his fingers are digging like claws into John’s bad shoulder, it must be excruciating, but John says nothing. Sherlock lets John ease him closer until they are chest-to-chin, and John’s other hand is rubbing wide circles over Sherlock’s back under the fabric of his shirt.


‘You okay?’


‘Yes,’ Sherlock answers, and if it’s a bit wobbly, John doesn’t call him out on it. ‘Yes,’ he repeats, more firmly.


‘Wrap your arms around me,’ John suggests. ‘Hold on to me that way. Christ you’re tense. Try to ease up a bit, hmm?’ John’s hand massages at the base of Sherlock’s spine. ‘You’re like to pull something, if you keep this up.’


Sherlock curls his arms over John’s shoulders, around his neck, and buries his face against his own arm. He makes a conscious effort to release the anxious tension in his muscles, because John is right, Sherlock is already aching all over, and he’s not done anything more strenuous than kneel here and there whilst John pushes perfectly adequately lubricated fingers into him. Clearly it is time to try again at that “being helpful” bit.


Sherlock takes a deep breath that presses his bare chest against the body-warm cotton of John’s shirt. Exhaling slowly, Sherlock gradually relaxes his body, head to toe. He sinks into John, letting the smaller man take his weight, and he may be constitutionally unable to completely let go of himself without chemical intervention, but he is able to loosen the reigns.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 5b

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

‘Oh my god,’ John says, ‘there you are. Isn’t that much better?’


Unlike hands-and-knees, being held in this manner doesn’t enable the detached, pseudo-anonymity for which Sherlock had been striving, out of deference to John’s (tenuous) marital status and, yes, all right, self-preservation, obviously. Unexpectedly, though, Sherlock finds this position an improvement upon the situation, and his body’s ability to accommodate such an intimate intrusion, rather than a deterrent. Perhaps not so unexpected, that John should consider it an improvement, as well.


‘Yes,’ he admits into John’s ear, his voice low and rough, and, oh, John’s faint shiver at that is...gratifying. As is the way his arm tightens around Sherlock’s waist. John’s fingers push into Sherlock as far as they will go, given the current arrangement of limbs, and there is no imagining John’s lips at his ear this time. John’s warm, moist breaths against his skin, not quite steady, send tendrils of molten sensation licking down Sherlock’s vertebrae.


Magnussen shifts on the sofa, leather creaking, projecting an almost palpable aura of impatience. Sherlock’s fingers flex against John’s shoulder blade as he suppresses the urge to grab a fistful of the fabric beneath his hand.


‘Hey.’ John pinches the skin over his lowest rib to ensure he has Sherlock’s attention. ‘Listen to me. If it were up to me, Sherlock, I’d take my time with you, do it right. I’d open you up with four fingers and my mouth, work you nice and loose and wet, until there was no question of you being ready for my cock.’


Sherlock finds himself surprised by John yet again, marvelous John, perfect John, who needn’t even lay a firm hand on Sherlock to succeed in utterly hollowing him out. Never in a thousand years would Sherlock have imagined John saying such words to him. To him. The noise Sherlock makes is unrecognisable as his own.


John tenses briefly in his arms, as though in an extreme effort of will against some word or action Sherlock cannot begin to guess at, then subsides. John’s hand has slid to his arse, gripping firmly, and it takes Sherlock several moments to realise it’s because he has begun to rut against John’s stomach.


‘But we don’t exactly have the luxury of time, or privacy here,’ John pants against his neck, twisting his fingers to graze Sherlock’s prostate. Sherlock’s hips stutter, and he is fairly certain he must be leaking a significant wet patch onto John’s ridiculous plaid flannel shirt.


‘And you’re heavy, for such a scrawny bastard--I don’t know how much longer I can sit like this before my legs go numb. So this is going to be as quick as I can make it for you. It’s going to be pretty uncomfortable, and I’m sorry, Sherlock, you deserve as much time as you need. You deserve a proper shag, especially for a first time, and you’re not going to get it. So I need you to promise me something, all right? I need you to tell me the second you think you might be at risk of actual damage. None of this ignoring what your body is trying to tell you until it’s too late, thinking you’ll just bully through it and damn the consequences, do you understand me?’


‘...Yes, John,’ Sherlock replies, his heart in his throat. Doesn’t add that he doesn’t care a whit about time for his unruly transport to fall in line or ‘a proper shag,’ as long as it is John, only John. A bit Not Good, that, Sherlock suspects.


‘Good, thank you,’ John sighs, and then he is pulling his hands away to tug himself free of his pants, to slick himself up, and Sherlock knows he shouldn’t watch, but he can’t not watch, likely as this is to be something he’ll never see again. Sherlock ducks his head down, forehead wedged into the space between John’s neck and shoulder, and stares at John’s blood-flushed, straining prick, the glistening, winking meatus, the way John strokes perfunctorily with his off hand, readying himself.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 5c

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

Sherlock doesn’t know what on earth possesses him, except for the fact that John is a doctor, and doctors care about these kinds of things (tedious), and John was so angry about the drugs that he finds himself lifting his head and blurting the words without conscious thought. Low and rapid, like a shameful secret.


‘I’m clean. They did blood tests in hospital, probably all of them, after the second surgery. Mycroft undoubtedly insisted.’


John glances up at him, seemingly just as startled by the comment as Sherlock, and meets his eyes for the first time since Sherlock dropped to his knees for him. What Sherlock sees there confuses him, because there’s no reason at all John should look like he’s the one who has willingly cracked open his own ribs and exposed his heart to the flail.


‘I insisted,’ John corrects him. ‘You never took the best care of yourself when we were living together, but in the few months I’d moved out—Jesus, Sherlock. Do you think I didn’t double and triple check all your labs, myself, while you were in there?’ John asks, as if Sherlock is the idiot here. A shadow passes over his face. ‘Had, ah, a few of my own tests run, since there was bugger all to do while I sat guard for weeks to make sure you didn’t pull another runner. Would have been stupid not to. I mean, if my own wife lied to me about being an assassin for hire under a false identity, who almost killed my best friend, there’s no telling what else she’s lied about, is there?’


Sherlock’s mouth opens and closes a few times, soundlessly. He hadn’t entertained even the slightest possibility of such a thing (having John...who would ever, ever dream of being unfaithful?), which in retrospect seems terribly remiss of him. There’s always something.


John’s eyes fall to Sherlock’s mouth, and his tongue darts out to touch the center of his own bottom lip, briefly. Something in Sherlock’s chest wrenches painfully.


Sherlock has never enjoyed kissing, does nothing for him, except impart a mild disgust at the feel of another wet tongue against his own, someone else’s saliva in his mouth, and the unavoidable sense of his own failure to understand what ninety-nine percent of the population can possibly find of worth in the act. He’s not particularly practiced, at any rate, recent dalliance with Janine aside (had striven to keep those encounters as infrequent and closed-mouthed as possible), and wouldn’t want to disappoint John. Disappoint himself. Better to cut off at the knees any well-intentioned but ultimately doomed attempts from John to offer comfort or reassurance in such a manner, so Sherlock quickly tightens his arms around John’s shoulders, pushing himself up enough to give John room to penetrate him.


Don’t think about it, Sherlock reminds himself sternly. He can feel Magnussen’s eyes crawling over him, but refuses to acknowledge the man’s presence. Keeps his eyes trained over John’s shoulder.


‘Do it, then,’ he grits through his teeth. ‘All this dawdling is intolerable.’


With a forceful exhale against his clavicle, John relents, swiping a generous amount of lubricant over Sherlock’s twitching hole.


‘Give me your hand,’ he says, jostling Sherlock’s right arm free of his shoulders and directing Sherlock to reach behind himself. ‘Grab hold of my prick and keep it in place while I help you ease down onto it, all right?’


Sherlock’s fingers curl apprehensively around John and he can’t help the curiosity that has him giving a single, awkward, underhanded stroke, feeling out the dimensions of it, the texture, the smooth slide of foreskin along the shaft. John is going to be working this inside his arse any second now, Sherlock acknowledges, nearly faint with disbelief at the unreality of their situation.


John grunts, his hips giving an aborted jerk into Sherlock’s grasp, butting up against the cleft of Sherlock’s arse where John holds him open, a hand wrapped high around the back of either thigh. ‘Jeeezus,’ John gasps, ‘Sherlock.’


Catching his bottom lip between his teeth, Sherlock presses the tip of John’s prick to his anus.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 5d

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‘Don’t try to lower yourself. Let me support your weight, you just bear down against it, all right? Do you hear me?’


Sherlock hears him (always hears John, even when he isn’t there), but what is he supposed to—‘Oh! Fuck!’ he snarls as the head of John’s cock sinks part way into him, stretching him painfully. His hand spasms around John’s shaft; they’ve hardly begun, and already the urge to tear John’s prick out of him is nearly overwhelming, his fight-or-flight drive fully engaged. ‘John.’


‘Shit, I know love, I know, I’m sorry, but you’re doing brilliantly, you can do this, just bear down, c’mon...’


Sherlock struggles to do as he’s told, and John slides into him another agonizing centimeter or so. His thighs shake, unable to hold him upright, but true to his word, John supports his weight. Concentrating on keeping his breathing deep and even, Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut, slumps forward to press his forehead hard against John’s temple, which is damp with perspiration.


‘There you go, just like that,’ John murmurs to him, his lips catching on Sherlock’s curls. ‘Just a bit longer, Sherlock, and once I’m in far enough that there’s no risk of slipping out again, you’re going to let go of my prick and put your hand back around yours.’


Sherlock huffs, ruffling the hair at John’s temple, and bears down. John pushes in a bit deeper. Sherlock chokes back a whimper.


‘The pain’s made you go a bit soft, I know, but that’s perfectly normal, that’s why you’re going to start pulling yourself off again when I tell you to. You’re going to use those long, lovely fingers of yours and pay plenty of attention to the head of your cock, make sure you stay nice and sensitive, will you do that for me?’


Sherlock nods weakly, beyond words. He would...he could do that, yes. When John told him to, yes. He bears down, and the head of John’s prick slowly sinks the rest of the way into him.


‘Oh, you’re amazing,’ John whispers, ‘absolutely...amazing, fuck.’ Gooseflesh prickles down Sherlock’s flanks at the earnest awe in John’s voice. ‘Yes, you can take your hand back, you did so well. Now use it to make yourself feel good, okay?’ His lips skim over the corner of Sherlock’s jaw in a fleeting kiss, yes, definitely a kiss, and Sherlock exhales shakily.


‘Yes, John,’ he rasps around the lump in his throat.


‘You’ll want to keep bearing down, when you can, until I’m completely inside you,’ John whispers. Sherlock doesn’t think he can speak, but he tightens the arm clinging round John’s shoulders to show him he understands. He contracts his muscles, and John slips another inch deeper.


God, it feels as if he’s being split in two. No one else—he would never, ever do this for anyone but John, Sherlock is firmly decided on that point. The pain is intense, but in a sharp, localized way that makes it easier to compartmentalize. Nothing like, say, being brutalized in a Serbian dungeon.


Sherlock’s erection has flagged significantly, but John says this is normal, so he doesn’t let himself become overly concerned. Doubts he’s going to have much success with revival efforts at the moment, and instead tries to follow John’s instructions to maintain sensitivity, to “make himself feel good.” Sherlock reaches between the press of their bodies to touch himself cautiously, wary of how his genitals may react (or not) under this kind of stress.


He uses his first two fingers and thumb to gently work the sensitive prepuce up over the glans, to massage it there, then ease the fragile skin back, exposing the tip once more, before repeating the whole process. It’s...sufficiently distracting, if only mildly pleasurable, at least in Sherlock’s present frame of mind. Meantime, John pushes into him just a bit more and Sherlock winces, his fingers tightening around the crown of his penis momentarily, an instinctive attempt to redirect the stimulus overload. John immediately leans back in order to see Sherlock’s face.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 6a

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

‘John.’


The word is hardly out of his mouth before John is talking over him, marginally coherent curses of ‘shit, sorry,‘ and ‘wait, don’t—’ and ‘Christ you’re tight.’ John’s fingers flex on his hips as he pants into Sherlock’s mouth. ‘Just...give me a moment,’ John bites out, his every muscle taut with constraint. It sends a heady suffusion of (stupid, nonsensical) proprietary pleasure through Sherlock, to know John is clinging so precariously to self-possession.


It would be so easy like this, Sherlock thinks, recklessly. To lick into John’s gasping mouth, let him catch Sherlock’s lower lip between his teeth. Sherlock is familiar enough with the basic mechanics, can take an educated guess at what John likes, employ an inductive methodology as he goes. Sherlock is nothing, if not a quick study.


And it would be something of a novelty, he privately acknowledges, to be kissed as himself, rather than as an anonymous, vaguely willing and entirely transposable participant. To be kissed because of who he is, rather than in spite of it. It might make a difference—would it make a difference? Why would it make a difference?


Surely, Sherlock attempts to convince himself with pounding heart, any truth is better than infinite doubt?


‘Jo-John,’ he stammers, uncertainly. John isn’t letting him move, isn’t giving Sherlock instruction, and the ceaseless tumult of his higher cognitive processes is threatening to surface.


‘Yes. Fuck. Yes, all right.’ John’s hands constrict around Sherlock’s pelvis, and with the limited range of motion afforded by their position, John pitches his hips in a laborous, inelegant grind, ensuring Sherlock is seated securely in his lap. John gathers Sherlock in closer, smears his mouth down Sherlock’s throat to his suprasternal notch, where John flicks his tongue, sucks wetly at the tender flesh.


Dear lord. The sensation of John’s mouth on his neck is unexpectedly galvanic, and something disturbingly like a moan is shaken loose from Sherlock as he trembles in John’s arms. Sherlock concentrates on this, rather than the unnerving solidity of John’s substantial erection spitting him in place.


Don’t think.


‘Your prick,’ John reminds him, again, and Sherlock slides his hand over himself purposefully. Unhesitating, now. Strives to keep his body occupied with a surfeit of sensual input so his mind will stay quiet, stay out of it, not ruin the tenuous balance of his arousal.


‘That’s it,’ John says as he tugs at Sherlock’s hips, encouraging Sherlock to begin hitching himself against John once more. With Sherlock settled so deeply in his lap, John’s leverage is negligible, but it’s...preferable this way, Sherlock decides. The thought of being held down, being made powerless, profoundly unsettles him. To feel as if he is being robbed of his sense of agency, even by necessity...it’s anathema.


Don’t think.


It takes several long, self-conscious moments, but Sherlock manages to close off all extraneous, unproductive avenues of thought so he can focus his attention on the “now,” and on wresting his body into submission. He relinquishes his death grip on the nape of John’s neck in favor of cradling the dear skull in one large hand, and swallows his irrational terror. This is at least as difficult for John to do, as it is for Sherlock to let him. John doesn’t feel for him in quite the same manner as Sherlock does, John, obviously, but there is a great depth of caring, there, regardless; John will not injure him, will not mock or deride.


Sherlock holds John in place, mouth against Sherlock’s throat, against the wordlessly damning vivace of his pulse. The wet sounds of Sherlock’s hand over his own cock seem unnaturally, humiliatingly loud. John groans softly, the sound unfamiliarly guttural, and Sherlock’s scrotum tightens.


Don’t think.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 6b

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

‘Oh, yes, there you go,’ John soothes him. He bites gently at the underside of Sherlock’s chin, at his Adam’s apple. ‘Stay out of your head, and focus on the words coming out of my mouth, can you do that?’ John surrenders Sherlock’s hips to slide warm, calloused hands up his back, to hook his arms under Sherlock’s in grasping Sherlock’s face in his palms. ‘Sherlock. Can you do that for me?’


‘Yes,’ Sherlock agrees. His skin tingles, sparks, burns in the wake of John’s touch.


John pants into the sweat-damp skin of Sherlock’s throat, scrapes his teeth roughly over Sherlock’s sternocleidomastoid. Sherlock feels himself contract around John’s prick. Bites his lip to keep the resultant noise behind his teeth.


‘Good, oh, god, brilliant.’ John delves his fingers into the curls behind Sherlock’s ears, massages at Sherlock’s scalp. It’s glorious.


‘You’re far too tense, and you’re only going to make this harder on yourself.’ John kisses Sherlock’s eyebrow once, twice, three times. ‘Come on, you can do it. Just let go, I’ve got you.’ John’s fingers tug as he says this, and Sherlock is defenseless to prevent the sudden bowing of his spine, the embarrassing whimper that escapes as he melts by degrees into John’s arms.


Fuck. John.


His grip on the back of John’s head is precarious, now, so Sherlock abandons it to anchor himself with a hand clenched in the fabric of John’s shirt, at the center of his back. John’s hands in Sherlock’s hair have his head tipped back, throat exposed (John likes his neck, never fails to stare blatantly when Sherlock has the first two buttons of his dress shirts undone). Sherlock swipes his fingertips over the head of his prick, almost too sensitized, and notes that he’s unequivocally weeping.


‘Come on. Come for me, Sherlock.’


John has begun to meet the rocking of Sherlock’s hips with desultory, ineffectual thrusts of his own, hampered as he is by the nervy squeeze of Sherlock’s thighs around him, by Sherlock’s not insignificant weight bearing him down.


‘I’m trying,’ Sherlock grits through his teeth, frustrated. He’s right there, but his body won’t follow through. ‘I’m trying.’


‘Shh, it’s all right, let me help...’ John carefully withdraws his hands from Sherlock’s hair, smooths them down Sherlock’s shoulders to splay against his scapulae. Sherlock’s knuckles graze the inside of John’s elbow as he continues to strip his cock desperately. His arm is beginning to cramp painfully, and he grunts a helpless noise against John’s hairline, something between a groan and a sob, why can’t he do this?


‘Oh, love, it’s okay, I’m right here,’ John promises against Sherlock’s cheek. ‘You tried so hard, you were so good, but it’s too much, isn’t it? Let me help you—will you trust me to do that?’


‘Yes, all right, anything,’ Sherlock rasps. He doesn’t have much choice; this is John’s area, not his, Sherlock will freely admit it. Anything to get them out of this room, out from under the watchful, leering eye of Magnussen.


John responds by trailing a hand down to Sherlock’s knee. ‘You need more leverage, that’s all.’ He coaxes Sherlock into unfolding his leg, wraps it around himself. ‘Give yourself something to push against,’ John murmurs as he adjusts his posture with a wince (“bad” leg, return of blood flow), and Sherlock hooks his ankle around John’s calf.


‘Perfect, exactly like that,’ John tells him. ‘Now the other one.’


Oh, god.


Warily, Sherlock settles his full weight atop the slope of John’s thighs, whilst gripping John’s shoulders for balance. Draws up his other leg, and braces this one in the same manner as the first. John sits back fully on his heels once more, locking Sherlock in place. John’s hands slide to Sherlock’s waist.

FILL: Take What We're Given (Just Because You've Forgotten Doesn't Mean You're Forgiven) Part 6c

[soliandxpyne.livejournal.com]

‘All right, good, now just let go, and lower yourself onto your back—is that okay? Sherlock?’


Sucking in a deep breath, Sherlock holds it for a count of five, before exhaling as slowly as possible. He can do this. Magnussen already set the terms for a face-to-face encounter, so Sherlock must do, if he doesn’t want the hateful man to take any retaliatory action.


‘It’s fine,’ he hears himself saying, as if from a distance. Removed. ‘I’m fine, I can...do that.’


Sherlock releases John’s shoulders and uses his abdominal muscles to cautiously lean back, back, until his own shoulders and skull touch the floor. The lower half of his spine is stretched over the length of John’s thighs. He feels idiotic, risible (excruciatingly vulnerable), laid out like this. But not hemmed in, not pinned down, and if anyone is bodily trapped here, it’s John.


Sherlock’s fingers dig into John’s forearms.


‘Okay?’ John asks. His thumbs rub idle (not so idle?) circles on the bony blades of Sherlock’s hips. The new position opens Sherlock up, spreads his thighs that much wider. John’s prick has shifted inside him, and it’s pressing...it’s...


‘Yes,’ Sherlock says, his voice positively sepulchral.


John’s eyes flutter shut—crease between the brows, jaw thrust forward, throat clenching and relaxing around a swallow, or maybe a word or sound John has judged unwise at the last moment—and he nods.


John opens his eyes. Keeps his gaze fixed on his own hands as he tugs Sherlock flush into his lap, rolls his hips at the same time and thrusts.


Oh!


Sherlock’s brain short circuits a bit as it attempts to reconcile the mortifying crudity of the act with the unprecedented pleasure of it. Because it is shocking, disconcerting, deeply unnerving, if he allows himself to think too much into it (Don’t, he reminds himself), but yes, definitely pleasurable. With John.


‘Move with me,’ John tells him hoarsely, as he eases from Sherlock the few inches he’s able, given the hold Sherlock maintains on his arms. ‘Let go, I’ve got you. Go ahead and try again. Touch yourself.’


Sherlock does as he’s told, cedes his hold on John to curl a hand around his prick. Reaches down with the other and paws anxiously at John’s knee as he bullies himself into following John’s direction. To and fro, using the strength of his legs, caught around John’s, to power the movement.


The pace John sets is leisurely, the snap of John’s hips each time he plunges into Sherlock nothing short of maddening. Sherlock throws his arm over his face and fumbles for a moment in trying to match the stroking of his cock with John’s thrusts, the careful, almost indulgent withdraw as Sherlock pushes with his heels planted firmly against the toes of John’s boots, then the far less patient lurch as Sherlock draws himself in with his knees, thighs straining, and John fully seats himself once more, at force.


The angle of Sherlock’s hips means the head of John’s prick regularly drags in torturous proximity to his prostate; enough to tease, but not directly stimulate (difficult to achieve in any way but manually, Sherlock’s research has assured him, and Sherlock accepts this objectively, but that doesn’t keep his physiological response from trembling on edge, desperate for that satisfaction). A deep, insatiate ache blooms between his thighs, only honed by each successive, increasingly smoothly coordinated give-and-take.


‘That’s it, Sherlock, Jesus, shit, oh Christ,’ John hisses under his breath, his hands cinched around the span of Sherlock’s pelvis. ‘Are you close?’ he asks, breathlessly.


‘Close, yes,’ Sherlock huffs. He’s bordering on overstimulated, overwhelmed, not sure how much longer he can endure this.

AO3 link to finished story

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You can now find the cleaned-up version of the complete fic here on AO3: Take What We're Given (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1606838).