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A gun is pointed at John Watson’s heart. It’s completely and utterly thrilling, and it’s completely and utterly Fine.
Sherlock knows, of course, that nothing John wants to do could ever be considered Not Fine, because John is extremely good at right and wrong. But apparently, John has not known this. John has assumed that wanting Sherlock to fuck him with his two longest fingers while aiming a deadly weapon at him is the kind of thing that is Not Fine - even with the safety on and the gun unloaded and Sherlock being very very careful - because John is a doctor and therefore probably thinks he should disapprove of unnecessary risks, and of using army property for something other than its originally intended purpose.
Sherlock had not even considered this particular John brand of Not Fine before (and oh god it’s so very fine), because he has seen red lights hovering on John’s head and over his heart and more recently a gun pointed at the back of his neck in a white room in Belgravia. And he is certain that a gun has been pointed at John from behind sometime before, because John has told him to stay right in front of him when he is holding the gun, and John has never liked being crept up on and kissed from behind, even over the delicious knob of bone at the base of his neck which tastes of hazelnuts. Guns being pointed at John were not on Sherlock’s Not Fine list - though neither were they allowed to be deleted, because they were useful. Because even if no-one is ever again stupid enough to point a gun at them while they are being marvellous (which is unlikely), seeing John shrink even smaller as his eyes turn the colour of skimmed milk is one of the most horrifying things Sherlock has ever seen, and the idea that his kissing in the wrong place in the wrong way might turn John into black granite again for even a second is the kind of horror which makes him wake up cold and shaking. Guns being pointed at John were a thing to be archived and password-protected and not thought about unless absolutely necessary, because guns being pointed at John were disgusting and dreadfully wrong - like breathing quicksand, or crushing a raw egg between one’s fingers.
But this? This is glorious.
John is stretched out on their bed like clean snow, like an assault course, like a blank piece of manuscript paper on which Sherlock is transcribing a concerto of moans and gasps and whimpers with the barrel of the Browning, letting it hover over hipbones and press into belly and follow the endearing curve of his ribs, writing his name over John’s chest in slow swooping cursive, in metal and adrenaline. He’s had two fingers inside John for what feels like hours, but John barely seems to be aware of the lazy rub against his prostate and the slow burning stretch of Sherlock scissoring his fingers. He’s entirely helpless, pressing against the caress of the gun, arching his back as Sherlock slides it up to the hollow in the base of his neck, watches the entrancing flicker of his carotid pulse jumping in response to the smell of oil and steel.
I could do this for years, thinks Sherlock. He’s always had to permit the blood to leave his brain, and usually to force it away, because even when he most desperately wants to fuck someone he has the greatest of difficulties in stopping thinking; even after a particularly spectacular orgasm, he’s lucky if he gets more than seventeen seconds of blessed quiet, and certainly no more than thirty-five during ordinary sex. Before John, being too distracted to get hard was a tremendous disadvantage, but Since John – it’s been fine, it’s been quite perfect. Because John seems happy to kiss him lazily for hours until Sherlock starts to get muddled in spite of himself. John doesn’t seem to mind that right now Sherlock’s still almost entirely unaroused below the neck, because John seems to understand that Sherlock is memorising every tiny whuff of a breath he makes between his teeth, and understands that his insane friend is interested in sex with him, riveted by it, but that Sherlock finds everything about John riveting, and that his brain and his blood are otherwise engaged right now, trying to capture sixty frames a second of John Watson in high definition, hummingbird-wing camera quality. And John doesn’t squirm and look away when Sherlock looks into him, never has, ever since he shifted his weight on his cane in the lab at Barts – meaning, Sherlock is allowed to fuck him with his eyes as well as with his fingers.
Sherlock moves the gun up to the delicate skin of John’s left temple, envisaging the blood flowing two millimetres underneath. He stops watching the line where metal meets skin, and starts to look. Looking into John's eyes is almost as good as opening up his skull and seeing inside; eyes aren’t the windows to the soul, of course, because souls don’t exist and if they did they wouldn’t be physical – that’s the entire point. But they are very clever biological camera lenses and the pixels are nerve endings and so if Sherlock looks into John’s eyes (and he’s used an ophthalmoscope to do that, but he doesn’t need to, not any more) – if Sherlock looks into John’s eyes, he can see inside his head.
John’s pupils are huge and dark now, and he is staring at Sherlock. And Sherlock knows that it’s not really true that the last person people see before they are murdered is burned into their retinas like an angel of death, because that would make finding murderers much easier and there would be considerably less demand for the world’s only consulting detective. But he likes the idea of it, likes the idea that if they died, right now, looking into each other’s eyes, that John would die with Sherlock Holmes written over his skin in traces of oil and sweat, and Sherlock would die with the ghostly afterimage of John Watson burning through his retina and bursting into his occipital lobe like a firework sprayed across his visual cortices.
“Keep your eyes fixed on me,” he murmurs.
John runs his hand up and over the gunstock and onto Sherlock’s fingers slightly shakily, and nods three times without breaking eye contact. This is the prearranged signal; for Sherlock to settle himself straddling John’s waist, letting John stroke him with trembling hands until he is tingling with arousal and achingly hard, until his wrist sags slightly and the tip of the gun rests against the little delicate hollow between John’s nose and mouth, and his eyelids start to droop, in spite of his wanting to watch John watching him watching John in tiny round infinity mirrors.
John’s hand stills just after Sherlock starts to feel the coiling tension in his bollocks, and Sherlock takes a moment to bring himself back from the edge. He thinks of dull things like online shopping and adverts for no-win-no-fee lawyers on daytime television until he is calm enough to continue, to slick up his left hand and push two, scissor, slowly, now three fingers back into John, until John is writhing slowly against the rumpled bedsheet and allowing Sherlock to stare down at him like a hungry cobra with a semi-automatic in place of deadly fangs.
Finally, when John is sobbing aloud whenever Sherlock crooks his fingers, and the sight of this makes Sherlock worry that he’ll come without a hand on himself, he slicks himself up and finally slides into John in a smooth, almost unbearably slow push. At the same time he moves the gun to John’s forehead, pressing the barrel into the skin just hard enough to leave a burgundy circle just above the bridge of his nose, tilting his wrist to rotate the gun ninety degrees, so he doesn’t have to stop watching a single line of John’s face.
John tenses very slightly, not with Sherlock entering him but when he starts to press down firmly into John’s skull, and Sherlock freezes. But then John shivers and makes a breathy sobbing sound, and then goes utterly calm and still, just like when they’re being shot at by deranged smugglers, or when they are kissing and Sherlock bites his lip just hard enough to draw blood. John wraps one hand over Sherlock’s, holding the gun in place, and reaches down with the other to touch himself lazily, relaxing. Until Sherlock is buried deep in him, and can start to fuck him in smooth, slow thrusts.
Sherlock gently removes John's hand from the gun and entwines their free hands, feeling John’s pulse quicken as his breathing starts to shake, moving the gun over his face and under his chin, flicking his gaze from metal on skin to eyes and back again, and John’s pupils should not be so wonderfully expressive, because they’re merely the insides of rings of coloured muscle and it is physiologically impossible for them to do anything more than change size in response to what Sherlock is doing, but he moves the barrel of the gun to hover over John’s left eye so that his eyelashes tremble against it and he watches John’s right pupil twitch open even wider and he’s still not closing his eyes and that’s wonderful. At just that moment Sherlock bumps John’s prostate and John arches back into the pillow, the gun pressing into his cheek, and Sherlock can see the pores of his skin stippled around the circle of metal and – oh. Oh, oh, oh. John has lifted his head and taken the barrel of the gun into his mouth with an expression like he’s been given a sacred duty, been admitted into the innermost temple, and that makes no sense whatsoever because he is trusting Sherlock to point a fucking murder weapon at his head, when he knows very well Sherlock is the kind of high-functioning sociopath who would quite fancy opening up his chest just to see exactly what colour his heart is –
John swallows, and Sherlock can see his Adams’ apple bob in his peripheral vision, and he suddenly realises that he can see John looking almost exactly like he must look with Sherlock’s cock in his mouth, which is something he has obviously never been able to see because the angles are all wrong, and he’s always resented that - much as he loves the swirl of hair at the crown of John’s head, and the scrubby short hairs at the back of his neck, and the muscles in his shoulders tensing when he’s on his knees in front of Sherlock on the stairs or the sofa.
So this – oh, this is new, this is brilliant. John’s eyelids are growing heavy, and Sherlock increases his pace just a little, pushes the gun a little deeper, starts to slide into John’s mouth in that same slow undulation. John smiles around the barrel, staring up at Sherlock like the gun is the only oxygen mask in a vacuum, like it’s a gift, and Sherlock thinks that if there could be an image burned into his retina, it would be this one. John staring up at him, lips stretched tight around his own gun, like Sherlock is some sort of cosmic phenomenon, a combination of black hole and supernova - and then John takes a deep breath through his nose and his cheeks hollow as he sucks, hard, and Sherlock is coming spectacularly, audibly, and he can’t keep his eyes open but he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to see anyway, he’s blind with the force of it, and now ah oh yes he can feel John coming too, clenching around him, warm spurts on his belly, cries slightly muted by the gun pressing down on John's tongue, a hand slick from sweat clinging tight to his own.
Sherlock has just enough presence of mind remaining to remove the gun from John’s now slack mouth and wipe it mostly-dry on the bedsheets, before he slumps forward, right hand on John’s ribcage to feel his heartbeat returning from frantic to steady, breathing dry-throated heavy breaths into the shell of John’s ear.
This time, there is quiet for fifty-three seconds.