The first time Sherlock kisses him, it’s up against the lockers in warm, hazy afternoon and John watches it happen in slow motion, the way they say that your life slows before your eyes right when you’re about to die.
John had seen Sherlock around school, of course - as if anyone could miss him - leather jacket and dark styled hair and an attitude that would give the devil himself a run for his money. He’d seen him on his motorcycle showing up late in third period, seen him in his fancy purple racing car, seen him perched on the rails on the stairs, smoking on school property, real casual-like. The devil was in a boy like that, was what John’s Aunt Aggie would have said, but she was miles and miles away, back home someplace John could not call home anymore.
“Don’t you know? That’s Sherlock Holmes,” Molly had said, when John had first asked, in tones that John thought you really ought to save for church. Or Elvis.
John didn’t know. He didn’t know how a person could be like that, talk like that, live and breathe like that. And he would have gone on fine not knowing, lived his whole life not knowing, but the problem was, Sherlock had seen him too.
Sherlock had eyes like the pale blue fire that flared when you first lit a stove. He had eyes like frost on metal pipes in winter. And when he looked at you, he really looked at you, straight through you, straight to the core of you, down to everything that you were and up to everything that you are. Sherlock made John feel like his outsides were glass and his insides were a museum. He made him feel like the plastic anatomy model in Bio lab. He made him feel on display.
He made him feel hot and funny, too, in ways that John definitely didn’t know anything about, but kind of wanted to.
Sherlock caught him looking once. He’d caught John watching himself being watched, and Sherlock, he’d smirked, just a twist of his lips that somehow made something reflexively twist inside John’s body, as if the two could be somehow connected. Sherlock’s lips, John’s body. Oh God. What a connection to make. He’d tingled all the way up to and through last period, and when he got home later, he couldn’t make sense of any of his notes from that day.
Nothing makes any sense at all when Sherlock finds him after practice, school hallways empty and Sherlock’s eyes on him like frost and fire. There’s a look in Sherlock’s eyes that’s like a coyote after a lean winter gone on too long.
And John, he’s never felt so stupid, knees and elbows bruised up from practice, hair wet and flat against his head from his shower, shirt sticking uncomfortably to his skin because he didn’t have the patience to wait to dry properly. He’s parceled out to awkward pieces under that look, indexed down to his smudged glasses and the spot he forgot to wash behind his ear.
When Sherlock hedges close John tenses, knowing much about fighting and what to expect. Growing up small he’d had to learn kids some respect, had himself learned the taste of blood early on in life. He can sidestep a punch easily enough but doesn’t know how to miss this, something else this, hands on his shoulders and his back slammed up against the locker, and time slowing to molasses when Sherlock’s face comes close and then closer and then -
It happens honey-drip slow, John’s eyes bright wide open and watching Sherlock’s face come close the whole time like waiting for the moon to eclipse the sun, going cross-eyed from looking until Sherlock becomes a blur of pale skin and dark hair and Sherlock is closing his eyes and John wonders whether he should close his too and then, contact, then - oh my god, this. For the first time in his life, another person’s mouth is pressed to his.
This.
This is a kiss.
John’s lungs contract with breath stopped and his body tense and stopped and his brain tries to catch up but then that stops, too.
It’s an impossibility, isn’t it, two boys kissing? It doesn’t feel so impossible when Sherlock slips his tongue - soft, wet, hot - right into his mouth. John didn’t even know you could do that, tongue into another person’s mouth, but it doesn’t feel wrong. It feels just fine. Better than fine.
Thinks of Aunt Aggie thumping her Bible, hellfire and damnation.
Brain must be working again.
Stupid brain is broken; Aunt Aggie’s the last person John wants to be thinking about right now. He thankfully doesn’t think of her anymore when Sherlock’s tongue slides against his, Sherlock’s body pressing against him.
Sherlock, with his hands on John’s shoulders. A frantic skitter of a thought: the drop that trickles down the back of John’s neck - is that water or sweat?
It’s too much to process, all at once. The world is spinning around them. He pushes Sherlock off of him, energy uncoiled.
“I’ve never been kissed before,” John admits, breath tumbling out, words pouring out of him like he’s in confession. Realizes how uncool that is to say the moment he’s said it; Sherlock with his eyes that could figure you out and a mouth that could undo a person like tugging out just the right string of a knot.
Has to make up for it, do something cool, and he fists a hand in the lapel of Sherlock’s leather jacket to pull him close. “Do that again,” he says, and his voice only trembles a little.
He’d always imagined a girl, soft and fragrant, holding hands and going steady. Vague ideas of sharing milkshakes and dances, eventually white dress and chapel bells. He’d never imagined this, lips wet with another boy’s saliva and wanting to try it some more, hard body against his, stomach clenching and flipping when he thinks about it. The impossible feeling of his heart flipping like it’s been turned upside down and is now trying to right itself, over and over again until it doesn’t know which way is up. Sherlock’s hand underneath his chin, leaning in to brush their lips together and John’s whole body gone warm and tingling, trying to come alive, and he’s not quite sure which way is up.
There’s silence in the space between them, the space between their breaths. Anything is a possibility in the space between their breaths.
Sherlock says, “No,” against his mouth, and everything in John’s body crashes spectacularly. It’s horrible. It’s unfair. John now knows what it feels like to be kissed. He cannot simply go back to his previous life of being un-kissed, never-kissed, not knowing and not wanting. How did anyone live their lives, really, knowing this feeling and then not wanting?
Sherlock adds, “Not here, where anybody can cast an eyeball at you.” And he smirks, smarmy, infuriating expression, damn him. John wants to rub the smirk off his face. He wants to rub the smirk right off Sherlock’s face with his mouth. Wait. No.
Well, maybe not no. John looks at Sherlock’s mouth. Maybe not such a bad idea.
Sherlock has a smile like the devil himself, all empty promises and temptation. Eyes like hellfire, pale blue blazing in the night.
He holds out his hand, beckoning.
John looks at him, pinned by his gaze as much as he’d been pinned by Sherlock’s body against the lockers. His own breath is hot in his chest, still trying to catch up. Wants to press his fingers to his mouth to see if he can still feel the kiss there, body tingling all over in all the places they’d touched, pressed together.
Sherlock with all the knowledge in the world like he’s holding out a shiny red apple, and just a little taste couldn’t hurt. Just one little taste like the forbidden touch of tongue inside his mouth. The rush in John’s body like running too close to the edge of the cliff, never knowing if the next step is fall or fly.
Sin with joy, sin with abandon.
John takes Sherlock’s hand.
Oooooooooooohhhhhh myyyyyyyyyyyyyyy goooooooooooooooood…. Michi…. I… I….. Thank you so much, holy popsicles… I’ve no words besides jfc this is amazing and I want to smooch you because this is really hot and they’re not doing anything nsfw and I just????? fjghhgfj
