Twenty-Two Minutes and Thirty Seconds
"...Hn â Sh'rlock, stop, no moreâ"
"That's not it, John. We agreed on a safeword. If you really want me to stop, say it."
221B, on the sofa against the wall, the two of them side by side. Sherlock had John's jaw in his left hand and two fingers of his right pushed deep into John's mouth, chasing the retreating tongue without hurry. Saliva spilled from the corner of John's lips, ran down his throat, darkened the collar of his shirt.
Half eight in the morning. London was clear that day, the light pouring into the flat, nothing hidden in it â and in that bright room a junkie six years his junior had two fingers in his mouth and was stirring, unhurried, until John was drooling, until his eyes stung.
How, exactly, had it come to this.
He listened to the wet sound of his own mouth fill the room, and, through the blur, began to remember.
The upper deck of the early bus was empty. John covered his face with both hands and groaned, freely, since there was no one to hear it.
They were watching Sherlock in shifts â the people close to him, keeping him away from anything he could get high on. John had six till ten. Lestrade before him. Mycroft, perhaps feeling the family owed something, had sent an overqualified babysitter for Rosie, and John had left her sleeping half an hour ago.
He didn't know what face he was meant to make, seeing Sherlock. Not after yesterday.
Yesterday a storm had gone through everything he was. He'd told Sherlock about the woman, the texts behind Mary's back, and waited for the contempt, and it hadn't come. Sherlock had held him and said he was fine as he was. Then, seven years in, he'd said he'd loved John since the moment they met. John had been too rattled to refuse it clearly. And Sherlock had looked like he wanted to be kissed, so John had kissed him.
He couldn't account for himself. But a sudden swap would put the others out, so here he was, dutiful, on the bus to Baker Street in the clean winter light.
He couldn't make himself open the door, and was pacing the pavement when Lestrade came out looking too well-rested for a man off a night shift. A quick handover, and he was gone to find a cab. Sherlock couldn't be left long. John steeled himself and went up.
Sherlock was in his chair with the paper. John couldn't sit across from him, couldn't sit by the door either, couldn't stand there forever â so he sat across from him, in his own place, which was the thing he couldn't do.
The pages turned. The silence got into his ears. He broke first.
"Sherlock... about yesterday. Thank you. For everything."
Sherlock looked up, surprised.
"Don't. If anything it's the other way round. Thank you for the birthday present, John."
The birthday present was the kiss. John put his face in his hands.
"About that. Yesterday there was â too much of it, and I can't account for all of it, even to myself. Why I cried. Let alone why Iâ"
"The kiss." Sherlock touched his fingertips to his lips. "The third one especially. As you drew back, your tongue caught my lower lipâ"
"Stop. That's what I want to talk about."
"What is it," said Sherlock, put out at losing the memory.
"I'll say it as many times as it takes. I'm not gay."
"I'm not gay. But I want to be with you for the rest of my life."
"I feel exactly the same."
"So yesterday's â present. There's a problem with it. How did you feel about that kiss?"
"I told you. Magnificent. You want it quantitatively? Very well. After the cake, while Molly was answering a work email, I masturbated twice. Then Lestrade took over in the small hours and fell asleep on the sofa, so I shut myself in my room and saw to it another six times. Eight, in total."
John sank his head lower, then braced himself for the sake of a friendship that would, presumably, last the rest of his life.
"Listen. Not being gay means there's no possibility of me â of us. So however much you might want me â or want me to have you, fine â I can't answer it."
Sherlock sighed and shrugged. John knew the gesture. It came out when he couldn't follow the simplest deduction. What always came after it was the explanation, broken down small enough for him.
"One thing at a time, John. Have you ever been aroused by a particular man?"
"Good. Have you ever been aroused by me?"
"...Truly. Never mind. Could you be aroused by me, in future?"
He went to answer and met Sherlock's eyes, and they were on him so directly that the answer didn't come, and the pause went on too long.
"I'm talking about what could happen, John. The past is irrelevant. What becomes of us â from here?"
"It hasn't happened yet. That is not the same as never. As long as the possibility exists, the probability is not zero."
Sophistry. But not nothing, either â he couldn't quite deny it.
"Yesterday's John felt nothing for me. That doesn't bind today's. That is what possibility means."
"Hang on â you're not trying to talk me round, are you?"
"That's unkind, John. â All right, then. Let's run an experiment. On your sexuality. Whether or not you're aroused by me."
"What? What are you on about?"
"A simple one, John. Perfectly fair rules. When it's done, we go back to exactly what we were. Nothing lost. I guarantee it."
"This isn't a thing you run experiments onâ"
"Please, John. Help me. If it isn't you, I shan't want anyone, ever. Would you leave me a virgin for life?"
The look up through the lashes. He knew it for what it was and softened anyway.
"...Fine. Explain the rules. I'll decide after."
Letting Sherlock write the rules settled it half already, but John, rattled, didn't see that.
"A precise experiment requires strict rules." Joy came off him the way it did at a level-ten case, and he began to prowl the room. "Yesterday you hugged me, kissed me three times. Any revulsion?"
"...No. I don't think so."
"Good. That's the premise. â Here it is. I touch you. Hands only. No kissing. And nothing below the neck â direct stimulation there gets a response regardless of orientation, chest included. So: above the neck, only."
John watched him lay out the rules of his own game with something close to resignation.
"Men are simple creatures, John. Arousal shows. The moment it's observed, the experiment ends. Time limit, twenty-two minutes thirty seconds â the average a British person spends on foreplay, per a 2005 survey. Old data. Go past the average with nothing, and our sexualities don't align. Nothing observed inside the limit, and I swear never to touch you again. Sexual contact included."
He threw his hands up towards the ceiling.
"A safeword, too. Anything ordinary. 'Door.' The slightest discomfort, say 'door,' and I stop, and never do it again. As long as either of us lives, I never touch you. We keep a pure friendship, and spend the rest of our lives in it. â That's all of them. Will you help me?"
The rules were fair. He could stop it any moment; the friendship was guaranteed. Sherlock wouldn't hear another word regardless, and a clear result would put it to rest. And John wasn't gay, and even if â in the wildest case â something stirred, he was hardly too old to hold it down. He had experience. Sherlock didn't.
"Settled. Shall we begin, John?"
And so the twenty-two minutes and thirty seconds in which John absolutely must not get hard began, before he could stop it.
Sherlock sat him on the wall sofa, the deep grey leather one he stretched out on for the mind palace. Wide enough for three.
They sat side by side. It had been a while, sitting like this. And what they were about to do â John came to, wanting to hit him and leave, and held it. Too early for the handover.
Sherlock was watching him. Ice-blue in the deep hollows of the lids, the straight nose, the full curve of the mouth. He'd known the face was near a statue's, and still he stared.
"Wow. You really are... good-looking."
It came out before he could stop it. He cleared his throat and looked away.
"Am I? I've never thought about it."
"Completely unaware of it. That's worse."
"It's not important to me. â John."
"Incidentally, I'm already aroused."
He looked down before he could help it. Sherlock's lounging trousers, unmistakably.
"It can't be helped. Physiology, John."
"...Being a virgin at your age. That can't be easy."
"Don't mention it. â What are you going to do about it?"
"I'll deal with it afterwards. Appropriately."
You started it, John thought, and nodded. Sherlock's fingers touched his cheek, brushed up into the fringe that had gone silver-fox over these last years, and moved through it, back and forth, careful, clumsy.
"It's gone a good colour."
Sullen, he shut up. Three lines stood on his irritated brow, cut deeper than the year they met, and Sherlock's finger traced them one at a time, feather-light.
"You're being gentle. We'll be here till dark at this rate."
The banter came easy, out of long practice. He looked back, and Sherlock was staring hard enough to go through him. Pupils blown. Breath quick. He kept swallowing, the pale throat working.
Virgins, John thought, and remembered being a teenager, his head so full of it he could burst. The man in front of him was near forty.
This is going to fail. To a middle-aged man with the experience behind him, being stroked like a bird was only ticklish. He pictured Sherlock sulking at the loss and nearly laughed.
"Very much at ease, John."
"And you very much aren't."
"I'm committing the whole of your face to memory."
The heat of it, the smell, the distance between the eyes, the count of the lines, the blinksâ
"If this is the last time, I want to keep all of you, John."
Said lightly, and it went straight in. Something in John's chest pulled tight, and before it could become anything he shut his eyes.
That was the mistake. With his sight gone, there was only the touch.
"Your lips. They're thinâ"
A husky baritone at his ear. A fingertip traced the shape of his mouth. Upper lip once, back again, a third time. The lower three. Over the dry, closed line of them, again and again.
He didn't wait. The finger came between John's lips, and when they gave a little it went in. Long, elegant, like something sugared â he half wanted to bite it. It nearly tasted sweet.
"Hotter than I expected."
The finger moved over his tongue, into the corners, learning the shape. Then along the teeth, one by one, all twenty-eight. Then, without warning, the underside of the tongue, and something went up his spine.
"The middle finger as well."
He couldn't answer with the finger at the back of his tongue, and Sherlock took the silence and slid in the second.
Getting ahead of himself. The anger lifted its head, and settled â a dozen minutes left, and that other thing, I want all of you kept, came back to him, and he stayed quiet with his eyes shut.
"Softer than mine. Thicker, too. Rough on top, smooth underneath."
The baritone reported the shape of him in detail, and under it came the sound â the wet catch of two fingers against a wet tongue, each time they went in.
Bad. This is getting bad.
He edged back to regroup, and Sherlock caught his jaw with the free hand and held it.
"...Hn â Sh'rlock, stop, no moreâ"
"That's not it, John. Say the safeword."
The word was door. One word and the whole ridiculous thing was over. He went to say it â and the rule came back.
The slightest discomfort, say "door," and I stop, and never do it again. As long as either of us lives, I never touch you.
Door. One word. The fingers went on stirring. The sound wouldn't stop.
As long as either of us lives, I never touch you.
A fair game, safe, nothing to fault in it. Even if the sexualities didn't align, they'd go on â dear friends, no contact, the rest of their lives.
Never touched by him again.
Never these fingers again.
Reason said the word, now. His sexuality refused it.
The aroused voice at his ear, thick with the scent of him. A virgin's graceless want.
He let the last of it go, and every point of contact turned, at once, into something else â the familiar ache spreading low through his hips, and thenâ
"Eighteen minutes, twenty-five seconds, John."
The fingers left his mouth. He felt the loss of them, absurdly, as if they'd always been there. He caught the crown of Sherlock's bowed head, followed it down, andâ
"You have got to be joking."
"Give it up, John. A man can't lie about this. Your sexuality is settled. You are aroused by me. I look forward to our continued association â in private as much as in public."
The lips went to a V, the whole face lit with the win. Beside him John hung his head.
"John. Forgive me for being quick about it, butâ"
"If you're amenable. Shall we continue?"
Low, and the pressure enormous. His head had gone to fog, and he nearly went with it. Whenâ
His phone. A message from Molly.
Think I'll be early. Just left Baker Street station. Molly.
"Molly's coming. I'm leaving â do something about that."
"John. What am I supposed to do?"
He presented, at a loss, the state of himself.
"Sheet over your head in your room, and don't let her find you!"
"That's inadequate, John. Eight times on the kiss alone, yesterday. This is not going down in five minutes."
Five minutes until Molly reached the flat. John's shout went up, hollow, through 221B.
