Work Text:
Reaction level's much too high
I can do without the stimuli...
But still the warmth flows through me,
And I sense you know me well...
I am willing - lay your hands on me
I am ready - lay your hands on me
I believe - lay your hands on me, over me...
"Lay Your Hands on Me" - Peter Gabriel
John's hands have disrupted my entire life and being in the most shocking and wonderful ways. John's hands have pulled apart everything I previously believed about myself, strand by strand, brick by brick, and John's hands have rebuilt me, reshaped me into something more human, more resilient, more alive.
I know not precisely how he managed to accomplish these things. I have come to learn that my betrothed has remarkable powers concealed within his rather unremarkable person, many of which I was unaware until our partnership transitioned to the romantic. Perhaps these powers were partly developed by his medical career, which requires him to transact physically with his patients in a way which my own does not. Perhaps his natural inclination towards and enjoyment of the Ritual has also played a role. Whatever combination of factors has caused John to develop such a miraculous gift of touch, I am fortunate enough to be the frequent beneficiary of their effects.
He is rubbing my shoulders now while I slowly return to myself, and his powers are on full display. It is the middle of the night - I know not the precise hour - and I awoke screaming from a nightmare to find John at my bedside. These incidents have slowly decreased in frequency, but they are always disorienting and embarrassing whenever they occur. Before John, the last thing I would have wanted was for anyone to see me thus unmanned, much less to touch me about it, but John somehow makes it all tolerable.
They were John's hands which plucked me forth from the roaring abyss into which I had been plummeting, John's hands which I awoke to find myself grappling with and shaking me by the shoulders, rather than the hands of a demoniacally raving and gibbering Moriarty. They were John's hands which must have helped me to maneuver to the side of the bed where I suddenly found myself sitting, rendered numb and wooden by terror, the horrible rushing of the falls still in my ears.
"Here, love, let's get this off you…" I heard John's voice as if from a distance, felt him draw me gently forward by the back of my neck to begin tugging my nightshirt out from beneath my backside, slipping it up over my head, and the bracing rush of air which washed abruptly over my sweaty body finally began to dissipate the horror of the dream.
The warmth and weight of John's hand on my shoulder was reassuring as he toweled dry my chest, back, and arms, then reminded me that he had given me a towel for my hair and face. I dried those myself, and then found that John's hands were slipping a cigarette between my lips and striking a match so that I could light it. As I took in the first luxurious, calming puffs John was maneuvering himself into place behind me, and there he sits now.
His legs are splayed around my own, his inner thighs gripping my hips, his hands, fingers, and thumbs kneading my neck and shoulders. John's hands are strong, blunt-fingered, and virile, but also soft and warm of skin - they are the hands of a man equally capable of cradling a newborn infant and of setting the stubborn fracture of a long bone. John's hands are somehow both commanding and gentle, quietly preempting any resistance I might ever think to put up; I often become the proverbial putty in them, it pains me to admit.
"Feeling better, love?" he asks after I've crushed out my cigarette end. How casually he uses that word and designates me its personification…
"Mmm," I nod as my body rocks gently with the rhythm of his kneading.
"Good," John says, then pauses my massage to lean forward and place a glancing kiss on my neck, just behind my earlobe, while simultaneously his chest and chest hair briefly kisses my back. A silent little thrill tightens my nipples and causes the flesh on my upper then lower arms to pucker.
Did he do that on purpose? I wonder. I am often unable to determine John's intent with his little physical gestures, partly because so many of the ways that he touches me result in these bursts of confusing, unnerving, but nevertheless thrilling sensations. Touches which seem to barely register for John, which he seems to take smoothly in stride, can completely upend my train of thought and set me to brooding about meaning and intention long after the contact's conclusion.
"I had gotten up to water the flowers and couldn't fall back asleep, so I was awake and reading when I heard you start up. Probably got here in record time. You haven't had one of these in awhile, eh?"
"Mmm…" I flee from the question, escaping into the sensation of being rocked into gentle unwinding by John's soothing hands, falling slowly into myself, into a placid lake of silence I can often find hidden somewhere deep within my chest, while a slow warmth begins pooling in my belly.
"Was it a bad one?" John asks this quietly, sliding his hands down to squeeze my upper arms and biceps, working his fingertips into my deltoids in firm circles.
"Forget about it," I say, very much wanting to do so myself. I had forgotten about Moriarty and the falls halfway through the cigarette and now have other things beginning to take shape in my mind. "Could we sit back, perhaps against the wall? My back is a bit stiff."
"Lie down and I'll rub it."
"In a minute…"
John scoots himself over to the wall and I follow, leaning back against his reassuringly sturdy torso and its soft carpet of crinkly, silken hairs which feel so luxurious against my skin that I snuggle briefly back against him so that I might feel more. Once I am settled in John's hands return to my arms, his fingers rippling over my biceps while his thumbs knead my triceps, while I slowly let myself melt into him, while my head lolls softly against his jaw. Abruptly, as if seized by a minor discomfort, I press my hands down and lift my backside off the mattress, making a slight but precise adjustment of my position which immediately yields helpful data. John makes a soft sighing, grunting sound as I settle back in, and I feel his lips lazily brush against my neck once more.
"Is this better for your back?" John asks, and I almost forget to reply.
My hands are resting upon my thighs, and John's hands move down to begin kneading my forearms - a surprisingly enjoyable phase of these rub-downs. John's knowledgeable fingers deftly dig down between the fine, stringy muscles below my elbow; I marvel at how the pressure being exerted upon my tendons and ligaments causes my wrists and fingers to curl and splay slightly. Without John I might have gone my entire life without experiencing this capacity of my own body, a realization which fills me with a strange sense of terror that I recognize to be panic at the potential loss of data.
"Mmm?" I say, having missed the words that John muttered but having been fully aware of his lips' proximity to my ear.
"I said you've given me an entirely new appreciation for the human figure, you know…" He dips his head down and lazily kisses my collarbone, kneading my wrists between his thumbs and fingers. I don't know what to say to this comment. "The slender male figure, specifically…" He grips my wrists in his hands, then begins to slowly squeeze his way back up my arms while the sensation of his mustache against my neck sends another wave of gooseflesh sizzling down them.
I ignore my first instinct to mock John away from this embarrassing line of thought, because it means that my quiet little plan proceeds accordingly. John's hands have returned to my shoulders, but now his thumbs are rubbing the base of my neck and his fingers are seeking out what flesh there may be on my upper chest, and I know that I shall have to suffer through John's compliments if he is to bring my plans to fruition.
"I always went with bulkier gents before, you know…" John says softly. I wiggle slightly back against him, no longer needing to feign my interest in what he is saying, now both wanting and not wanting to hear whatever will follow. "I always liked the look of a bit of muscle on a man…the first time I clapped eyes on you I thought you were pretty enough -"
I'm incapable of holding back a self-derisive snort at this characterization, as if anything could be pretty about this angular sack of bones, this rickshaw which exists merely to cart around the only thing about my person that's worth a damn - my brain. John pauses to chuckle and nuzzle me with his chin.
"- but figured you to be too scrawny for my taste…I am, after all, a medical man, and have a certain appreciation for anatomy…" John says this very low, deliberately letting his lips and mustache tickle the back of my ear, sending bolts of velvet lightning running along my nerves, affecting other changes which our reclined position made impossible to obscure.
"Then you opened the bathroom door one day to snatch a telegram out of my hands, which you proceeded to read while you stood there dripping wet before me, holding a towel around your hips -"
"It's a pity the details of crime don't similarly capture your attention," I observe pithily.
"Mmm, isn't it though?" John replies, in that infuriating way he has of ignoring me without actually ignoring me. But I am not infuriated because he is now laying his hands flat and warm upon my upper chest and letting them slide, slowly but firmly, over my flesh. "Imagine my surprise to find that, far from being scrawny, you put on quite a display of muscular definition…pectoralis major," John hums, the warm expanse of his palms passing over my nipples again as he dips down to kiss the side of my throat, and I remind myself to bide my time. "…rectus abdomini - those are two of my favorites, you know…" His thumbs pass over the notch at the joining of my ribcage, his fingertips now halfway down my belly, his hands warm and splayed across my midsection.
John's arms are encircled around my own, lightly pinning them to my sides while I sprawl back against him, and I push my hands out to grip handfuls of John's pleasingly thick thigh muscles, the fingertips of my right hand resting upon the slippery edges of his scar.
"…your internal and external abdominal obliques are quite lovely, too," John continues, his hands now covering my entire abdomen while his fingertips tantalize me at the edge of my drawers, which are only half tied and gaping ever so slightly below my navel, and I remind myself once again to bide my time.
"You're being fanciful, as usual," I scoff in my usual way, tipping my head back to say this, making my mouth available, and John doesn't disappoint me. He bends down and presses his lips to mine, and when his tongue darts briefly into my mouth my erect penis makes desperate lurch upwards against my drawers. The kiss ends too soon and I sag back down onto John's chest in frustration, gazing down once more at his hands spread across my abdomen, at his fingertips hovering at the waist of my half-tied drawers.
"No, the obliques only come out in certain, ahem, certain situations, and that is why I'm particularly fond of them…" He has moved his head to hover over my other shoulder and purrs this into my right ear, giving its lobe a little nip that sends tendrils of pleasure slithering along my limbs and pooling hotly into my groin, and I rather desperately wonder when John will finally move things on as I have been subtly inducing him to do.
"You have rather nice legs for a man, as well…" John says. He casually drapes his lower legs over my own, then moves to encircle me with his arms once again. Suddenly I realize that John is cradling my entire body with his own, and when I instinctually relax into this embrace I experience an imagined sensation of immobility which excites me greatly. So aroused do I suddenly become that when John simultaneously places a long, suckling kiss upon my throat I hear a groan escape my lips and feel myself writhe momentarily in his clutches; when he tightens his limbs around me I make an involuntary gasping sigh.
John lifts his head and gives me a knowing little smile. He bends down awkwardly as if to kiss me upside down and I tip my head back to accommodate him, but just before his lips meet mine he pulls his head back and I am left foolishly mouthing air.
"I say, Sherlock," he grins; "I do believe you're in a bit of a state…" John presses his lips to my neck once again and begins a long series of slow, suckling kisses that soon has me squirming in his all-encompassing and gradually tightening embrace. The more I squirm and undulate, the more tightly John's limbs envelope me, and how delicious to come up against his muscular resistance, to strain against his implacable grasp, to feel his carefully restrained and moderated power exerted against me.
My plan had been to provoke John into initiating one of our familiar variants upon the Ritual, but I realize now that I have once again underestimated my betrothed's capacity for innovation - perhaps even genius - when it comes to physical congress. This new configuration is much more pleasurable than whatever I had been imagining; this will do quite nicely, in fact. With the illusion of immobility I am free to surrender myself to John's affections and I abandon myself to him. He is my trusted John, and in his arms, under his hands, I become something simultaneously less alien and yet transcendent of mundane reality.
Our position not being conducive to kissing on the lips, John is lavishing attention on my throat, on the backs of my neck and ears, his legs now crossed and locked together over my own, his arms encircling my arms and chest. My eyes are closed, increasing the intensity of other stimuli, but they fly open again when I feel John moving his right arm and look down to see him lay his hand on my lower belly, to watch his fingertips slip under the waist of my drawers so that my penis is already stirring with anticipatory joy by the time he closes his hand tightly around it, and I'm entirely incapable of suppressing the moan which escapes my lips.
John's hand envelops the end of my penis and he squeezes me rhythmically with gentle, twisting, downwards tugs which quickly reduce me to nothing but awareness and need. Everything becomes a throbbing, pulsing blur as I gasp and thrust shamelessly into John's grip, my body writhing snugly in John's clutches, my head thrown back, shamelessly baring my neck for John's ravenous lips.
He raises his head and I stare blankly up at him on the desperate, trembling edge of the precipice, unable to even compose my face into some kind of communicative expression, my body as taut and quivering as a violin string "Ah - see? There are your obliques," John says, running his left hand down the center of my abdomen and over my left hip to curl his fingers down along my left groin and suddenly I am boiling over into John's hand. I arc and strain in John's embrace even as it tightens around me, and with all other movement constrained I am seething, liquifying, melting, finally reduced to a panting, twitching mass of insensate jelly.
John's left hand rises to curl around the right side of my face, and he tips my head back to kiss me tenderly. Having thus dismantled me, John begins remaking me once again, lifting one of my hands in his own and resting them on the center of my chest, toying with my fingers as he often does and cooing gentle words which remain undifferentiated to my ears. I lay here basking in John's voice, in the warm cradle of his body, being slowly, attentively reconstructed by his hands, and I can think of nothing more a man could want. John's hands have returned me to myself, and I am complete.