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John doesn't consider himself a patient man. He knows how to hold his temper and how to execute a plan - these are different from being patient. If the plan involves waiting, John will wait without complaint, but an aversion toward complaining is still not the same as patience. As for what John has been doing with his flatmate for the past month, this cannot be called patience either. This is savouring. This is coaxing. This is the seduction of Sherlock Holmes and John plans to make it last.
John's largely been winging it so far, an improvisation of skin, but he knows well what progress looks like. It's the outstretched hand of an untouchable man. It's the startled moment when shock becomes pleasure. Sherlock's reactions endlessly amaze. It had taken a week of snogging, gentle and rough both, before John had realized Sherlock knew nothing of ears. A nuzzle and a nip had Sherlock gasping. A lick and a suck had him moaning loud enough to embarrass Mrs. Hudson downstairs, evening soother or not.
John had kept at it, and at it, brushing dark curls aside and tasting, tempting with his tongue. Sherlock's body was taut, almost unmoving, the unrelenting tension of his unstoppable mind forced to a standstill. Only his hands, clenched in cloth and securing John close, seemed capable of motion. The rest of him was too confused, too deliciously astonished to do anything other than twitch toward John's mouth.
"Good?" John had asked, keeps asking. Sherlock's answers are never quite so articulate.
It's always after - at times, very long after - that Sherlock becomes defensive and unsure. Any reference to his inexperience is met with a haughtily raised chin. Any smirk or mark of smugness immediately provokes a cold glare. If Sherlock happens to have any sort of mark on his neck at the time, the first inevitably leads to the second. At those times, John demonstrates his practical knowledge of a strategic retreat. Sherlock can’t stand pity, no, but neither will he see compassion as anything but.
It's the newness of it, the aching stretch of all their boundaries, that has John keeping slow, staying steady. Sherlock hadn't known about wrists or the trembling sensitivity of the forearm, and each new discovery brings something to grow behind his eyes, less like affection and more like wonder. All the same, he stares at John as if at something remarkable, as if at something like himself. It makes John want to find every possibility and give them all to Sherlock, just to see what he would do.
And that, more or less, is what John's mulling over in the shower, wanking slowly, when Sherlock climbs in behind him.
"Sherlock?" John asks, glancing over his shoulder. He keeps his body turned toward the faucet, has to tilt his head a little as the spray strikes him in the face. Which is approximately the moment his eyes take in the full physical reality of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock who is red in the chest before he's red across the cheeks, his bottom lip plump and freshly bitten. There's really not enough space for him in the shower, a free-standing tub with an awkward, rubbery curtain, but that doesn't matter.
"I wanted to," Sherlock says, almost defiant, more than almost. His skin prickles into goose flesh, his arms folded across his chest, his nonexistent chest hair, and two pebbled nipples. The spray from the shower head hits John first, Sherlock second, and droplets gather and fall from only his edges. "It's hardly as if you locked the door." His foot makes a squeak against the bottom of the tub, and that's what finally prompts John to turn around properly, to look and be seen.
Sherlock looks down immediately. It takes him much, much longer to look up again. When he does, his eyes, wide and dark, drop again soon after. Hot water beating at his back, falling over his shoulders, John moves one deliberate hand and resumes his slow wank. Sherlock's face is a morphing portrait of fascination and lust, uniform only in its serious focus.
"You wanted to... watch?" John asks.
Sherlock shivers and nods, sucking in a breath, standing damp, naked, and untouched.
"Would have been warmer in my bed," John says, a vague apology, teasing though it is.
"More difficult to see," Sherlock counters definitively. "Not to mention, you masturbate in the shower in the morning, not your bed."
To hear Sherlock state this with certainty shouldn't make John grin, but oh, it does. He reaches with his unoccupied hand, a wet touch to damp skin, fingers curling against stark collarbone. The rise and fall of Sherlock's chest moves his thin body entire, each anticipatory inch.
John's hand learns its way higher, familiar skin turned to new territory once bared and wet. A few shirtless snogs have nothing on this, Sherlock's wide-eyed dedication to complete observation, to feel each touch in full. Pale folded arms, protective, learn to part and fall. They do so. John's fingers trace up Sherlock's neck, leaving clear, shining paths as they rise, progress made visible.
Sherlock closes his eyes and leans closer, hands fisted, body taut. John knows what he wants, can see it.
He doesn't know why this works so well. He has ideas, of course. It's impossible not to have ideas. Knuckles first, always, brushing across Sherlock's cheek. Then the fingertips, fingers unfurling, a ghosting touch into the hair until his palm settles, warm and secure against the dark beginnings of stubble. Sherlock's lips part, mouth nearly moving, jaw barely shifting against John's hand. Slowly, more slowly than the drip of water from Sherlock's uncertain, empty hands, the taller man softens.
"Amazing," John murmurs, just to see him open his eyes. They're blue-green and hazy. Full. Sherlock turns his face away reflexively and John takes advantage. His hand slips into Sherlock's hair properly, the other rising to his hip. Sherlock's breath startles out over John's lips. Sherlock shifts into the contact, away from the chill of air outside the hot spray, and John shifts back as well, trying to make space where there is no room. He fails. Sherlock shuffles closer all the same. "Careful."
"I'm aware," Sherlock answers, trying to find an angle for kisses without water. "This is more complicated than I'd predicted."
"Do a lot of predicting, then?"
"Yes." A low word, rumbling deep, and Sherlock presses it to John's neck. He presses something else to John's thigh, and John hums approval.
"Any way to actually make this work?" he asks.
"Hm?" Sucking John's earlobe now, apparently still intent on achieving John's destruction this way. If Sherlock keeps pressing at him, it might work.
Because Sherlock's first naked full-body press against him is gratifying, it is, more than. It's wet and firm, if a bit cold in patches, and John would like nothing better than to take two very full handfuls of the man's excellent arse and take matters to their lovely destination. Except Sherlock is doing that bit, the rocking bit with his cock against John's stomach, which is very nice, actually, gets John's cock pleasantly in the mix even before Sherlock steals his idea about arse-grabbing.
John groans at that, between the hands on his arse and the lips on his ear, not to forget, never to forget the cock against his. Then his foot shifts and he remembers what that nagging feeling means. "Sherlock," he says, more breathy than he means it to be. "Sherlock," he says again, louder, more urgently, and Sherlock takes this as a sign that John is close. Sherlock rolls his hips, hard and perfect and, oh, fuck -- please God, don't let him die in a bathtub -- they go down.
Either Sherlock's few sexual instincts include undiscovered depths of clinging or the man's subconscious is convinced that John is a stable feature, but in either case, Sherlock's one-armed hold on him likely keeps the world from being deprived of its only consulting detective. As for John, his shoulder is about to hate him very, very much and the curtain has popped audibly free up top, but it's worth it. One hand on each side of the tub, feet planted beneath the faucet, it's an impressive press-up.
Sherlock's hand not clutching John's back has a death grip on the opposite end of the tub. The man's eyes are wide and huge. The shower keeps spraying, water flying onto the floor through the new and highly noticeable gaps between curtain rod and curtain. Sherlock lets out a noise of utter disgruntlement, the sound of pained-arse'd men everywhere, and John can't help it, simply bursts into giggles and outright laughter. "That was the most ridiculous..." he begins to pant, grinning.
Sherlock isn't quite so amused. Not angry either, regardless of the way he glares. The glare is too quick, too soon to glance away, and the flush in those cheeks is from more than simple exertion.
"Is," John corrects immediately. "Is ridiculous." He lowers himself down, pursues Sherlock into the cramped space, the tub slippery and sticky at once, and he goes after the man's ear first, sets him moaning before whispering, rough and deep, "We're not going to let that stop us, God, no."
John's right hand over Sherlock's shoulder, braced on the tub's lip, and the left doing better, far more important things. His shoulders burn, his knees ache and the water is a bit cold. It's far from the best handjob John's ever given, but, flushed and panting, Sherlock doesn't seem to notice. His hands clutch at John's back, his voice an indistinct mumble of want and growing amusement.
"That's it, that's it," John coaxes. "Best bad sex of your life" -- and Sherlock comes with a strangled laugh.
There's some fumbling after, Sherlock simultaneously attempting to bask in the afterglow and jerk John off at an impossible angle. They shift, try to, and mostly hurt themselves a bit more. When John's back is finally against the tub, there's a bit of a slip, a grab for stability, and that's the curtain down entirely. It's down, off the curtain rod, as down as it can go. It's down over them, right over their heads, and this time, both of them laugh until it hurts, until long after it does.
Later, dried and dressed and bruised, they huddle on the relative safety of the sofa. "And to think," Sherlock muses. He trails off, hand distracted beneath John's shirt.
"Hm?" John hums.
Sherlock looks up at him, a damp fall of frizzing curls across his brow. John sweeps them away. "And to think," Sherlock says, his grin vicious and fond, "everyone says your first time is bound to be terrible."