fic: Five Times John Thought Sherlock Was Asking For Trouble, One Time He Definitely Was
Title: Five Times John Thought Sherlock Was Asking For Trouble, One Time He Definitely Was
Author: fengirl88
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mild BDSM content
Disclaimer: I don't own the BBC's version of these characters. I doubt they would get up to this sort of thing. Very mild spoilers for start of The Great Game, but mostly behaves as if the rest of that hasn't happened yet.
Wordcount: ~2500
Summary: He doesn't mean to do it, the first time.
A/N: Written in response to anonymous prompt on sherlockbbcfic: Sherlock being tickled. This is not the same Sherlock/John relationship as in Close Analysis, Unpredictable or Late Arrival. Just another way of imagining things.
1. Accidental
He doesn't mean to do it, the first time. It's really all Sherlock's fault for telling John yet again to get his phone out of his jacket.
Meaning Sherlock's phone. Out of Sherlock's jacket. Which Sherlock is still wearing at the time.
Sherlock yelps with laughter as John's hands fumble for the mobile in his inside pocket. He jerks away, almost knocking over the petri dish he's intent on studying in the process. Just as well the microscope is clamped to the lab bench.
“Get off, you idiot!” Sherlock snaps.
“Get your own fucking phone next time then,” John retorts.
Didn't realize Sherlock was so ticklish. Embarrassing, really, but hardly John's fault. There are some things a grown man should be able to do for himself.
2. Bedside Manner
The second time, Sherlock's running a fever after falling into a duckpond while chasing an international jewel thief (don't ask). As John points out, he really should leave the chasing to Lestrade and the police, who have much better resources for this sort of thing.
Sherlock just coughs and sulks and demands constant nursing: “Where's my medicine? No, not that medicine, my other medicine. I want the window open. I'm cold, I want the window shut. I want chicken soup. Not out of a packet. Well, why is it taking so long?”
John's patience is wearing thin. It's not as if this stuff needs medical expertise: a trained nanny would almost certainly make a better job of it.
“My chest hurts”, Sherlock grumbles.
“If you will go falling into duckponds,” John says, pushing his stethoscope up under Sherlock's t-shirt.
“Cold hands,” Sherlock protests. He starts giggling, which of course just leads to more coughing.
It's like being lumbered with a five-year-old, John thinks crossly.
3. Convalescent
“Your watch? You weren't wearing a watch!” John says.
Sherlock is trying his patience even harder now he's getting well again than he did when he was ill.
“Was too,” Sherlock says. “But I've lost it down the back of the sofa.”
John looks at him, exasperated. Can't believe Sherlock texted him to come downstairs for this, even if he is bored with not being able to do anything much. Sees a familiar glint in Sherlock's eye.
“Sherlock, if this is a wind-up - ”
“No, it's a quartz!” Sherlock crows, and bursts out laughing at John's outraged expression.
“Not funny,” John says.
“Your face was though,” Sherlock says. Still laughing.
“Right,” says John. “So this mythical watch then - ”
He starts poking Sherlock under the arms and in the ribs, making him giggle and squirm. “Maybe it's in here,” John says, or “Under there perhaps.”
By now Sherlock is thrashing around so much that the next thing John knows they're in a tangle on the floor, John still tickling Sherlock and Sherlock saying Stop it and Get off, until he's laughing so hard he can't say anything at all.
“Idiot,” John says eventually, feeling a bit embarrassed that all this rolling around has given him an erection.
Given Sherlock one, too, by the looks of it.
Sherlock's fault, really. He started it.
Messing about like a couple of kids.
4. Distraction
“I'm bored,” Sherlock whinges, for the third time that afternoon. Crime is slow at the moment. He's curled up on the sofa, sulking, rejecting everything John suggests to deal with the problem.
“Look, I've got better things to do -” John begins irritably.
“I doubt that very much,” Sherlock huffs.
John looks at Sherlock, curled up in his blue silk dressing-gown, his hair tousled and in need of a damn good brushing. Sherlock looks in need of a damn good something else as well, he thinks.
Time for a little distraction, before Sherlock starts shooting at the wall again. (“The wall had it coming.”)
John grabs Sherlock's bare foot and tickles it, dodging back as Sherlock kicks out at him. Clambers on top of Sherlock, pinning him down on the sofa and tickling him deliberately, finding the most sensitive spots and returning to them again and again with increasing success. Sherlock's neck, just above the collarbone, good. Under the arms, obviously. Ribs and stomach, quite sensitive there, as you'd expect. Backs of the knees, definitely a winner -
Inside of the thighs. Unexpected choice.
Sherlock suddenly stops thrashing around giggling and fighting for breath. He clamps his thighs together, imprisoning John's hands, and puts his own hands on John's, pushing them down against his erection.
The two of them look at each other, breathing unsteadily.
“Don't you dare get off me now,” Sherlock says.
John doesn't think he could even if he wanted to. Leans in and kisses Sherlock, hard, then softer, then harder again.
Brought it on himself, he thinks, while he can still think at all.
5. Either/Or
What started as just messing around has now got seriously out of hand.
He never thought of himself as someone who'd have sex with another man. Certainly would never have believed that the sex itself would be the least weird and unsettling part of it. Definitely wouldn't have expected to find himself having to read up on bondage, for goodness' sake. But you have to do the research if you're going to stay safe. Otherwise you end up getting hurt, or hurting the other person. And since that time when Sherlock's overexcited flailing around gave John a black eye that took some explaining away, it's seemed safer to keep those long limbs under some kind of control.
He's still pretty embarrassed by how much this stuff turns him on. Not to mention amazed by what it does for Sherlock. He understands the theory that someone who's dominant in everyday life can get off on being dominated in bed, but it's still a lot to get his head around. He tries to behave as if it's all perfectly normal and he knows what he's doing, though.
Seems to work better that way.
Today, he's tied Sherlock's hands to the iron bed-frame with his blue scarf, and is sitting astride his legs so Sherlock can't move. Sherlock's down to his boxer shorts already. His expression is a bit apprehensive and more than a bit excited.
“Right,” says John. “Tell me where you want me to tickle you.”
“What?”
Sherlock's outraged expression says That's not how we play this game.
That's all he knows.
“Come on, stupid,” John says, starting to enjoy himself. “You should be able to work this one out. It's called Either/Or.”
Sherlock fidgets uneasily. John's cock responds predictably to the fidgeting. He does his best to ignore it. Time enough for that later.
“Either you have to pick a spot where you want to be tickled,” John says, “and I tickle you there for two minutes by the kitchen timer. Or I choose where and it's five minutes in the same spot.”
Sherlock looks pretty wild at this new twist on the game. These days, he knows exactly how long being tickled uninterruptedly for two minutes feels, which is longer than you would imagine. But he hasn't done five, not on the same spot, and he looks as if he's not sure he can.
John starts poking him, saying “Here? Or here? Tell me.” Sherlock's wriggling like anything but seems incapable of deciding, possibly because he's already getting breathless from laughing. The wriggling is making John's erection worse.
“OK, double or quits,” John says, groping in his trouser pocket for a pound coin.
“What?”
“Double or quits. If you win the toss, we don't have to play this game at all. If I win, the times go up to four minutes you tell me where or ten minutes I choose.”
Sherlock groans. John feels the erection pressing against his own. Got that right, then.
“Heads or tails?” he says, looking down at Sherlock. Still can't quite believe his luck with this one. Sherlock's already flushed and panting and John's hardly laid a finger on him. Yet.
“Heads,” Sherlock croaks.
It's tails. Though John would have said it was anyway, of course. And Sherlock can't seem to come up with a suggestion. Which means it's ten minutes, John's choice. Those are the rules, after all. No one to blame but himself.
John leans across Sherlock, opens the bedside drawer and takes out the feather he put there earlier, ready for this. Sherlock's eyes widen at the sight of it and he starts struggling.
“Behave,” John says severely.
He sits back across Sherlock's legs and pulls down Sherlock's boxers, enjoying the increasingly familiar sight of Sherlock's straining erection. He knows that Sherlock will have to come at some point in the next ten minutes. There's no way he can hold out against the strokes of the feather on his cock, alternating with John's teasing fingers and maybe his tongue, if John decides to speed things up a bit. So Sherlock isn't going to last ten minutes with this. But then there's the question of what to do with the remaining time. And the fact that, as they both know by now, Sherlock is even more ticklish after he's come than he is beforehand. Which is saying quite a bit.
They've had spectacularly good sex recently after this sort of thing. Stray images and recollections from the last time were still making John blush for days afterwards.
If the next ten minutes goes according to plan - and from the look on Sherlock's face as he waits for the time to start John has every reason to assume it will - this afternoon's session should be equally memorable, for all the right reasons.
1. Felony
“What are you doing with those? Are they Lestrade's?”
John looks at Sherlock, lying on John's bed. Sherlock stripped to his underpants and handcuffed by one hand to the bed frame. Looks around for the key; no sign.
“I pinched them earlier,” Sherlock says. “He was annoying me again.”
Barred him from a crime scene for contaminating evidence. Perfectly reasonable behaviour.
“What have you done with the key?”
“Can't remember,” Sherlock says. An obvious lie and deliberate provocation.
“Hmm,” says John. “Perhaps this will refresh your memory.”
He straddles Sherlock and starts tickling him mercilessly, enjoying the helpless laughter and Sherlock's wild movements underneath him. Every now and then John stops in order to kiss Sherlock till he moans, or to stroke his cock lightly and make him gasp again.
The scene's going well, Sherlock's even more into it than usual and then -
John's phone beeps. Text message.
“Can't you turn that fucking thing off before you come to bed?” Sherlock snaps, his mood ruined.
Never thought he'd live to hear Sherlock say that.
The text says:
Missing police equipment.
Any clues?
L.
Lestrade.
John can't quite believe what he's just thought of. Decides to go with it anyway. Gets off Sherlock, who is swearing quite a lot now.
“Don't blame me,” John says. “I only came up here to get a book. Didn't know I was going to find you half-naked and handcuffed to my bed, did I? Now, where have you put that key?”
“Bottom of the wardrobe,” Sherlock says grumpily. “Get me out of this, will you? Should have known it was a mistake.”
John goes over to the wardrobe, looks at the key lying there. Turns round, looking deliberately blank.
“It's not here,” he says. “You must have left it somewhere else.”
“Fuck off,” Sherlock says, “I know it's there. Stop arsing around and get me out of these.”
“Can't,” says John happily. “Your memory must be going. Now let's try again and see if we can work out where you put that key.”
Sherlock looks at him. Recognizes a new move in the game. Starts to look more cheerful. Then looks furious as John begins texting.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Sherlock yells.
John grins at him, his eyes alight with mischief.
“Think we might need some help solving this one,” he says, showing Sherlock the text he's about to send Lestrade:
Questioning suspect now
221b Baker Street
Your assistance required
if at all possible.
J
“You dare,” Sherlock says.
John raises an eyebrow, looks at Sherlock's wrist in the handcuffs. “Oh, I think I do, don't you?” he says.
Trying to keep it in the game, where Sherlock needs it. Watching it doesn't spill over into something Sherlock can't handle. Still learning how to do all this, including working out where the safe boundaries are and which one's it's OK to push.
Sherlock seems to be struggling between indignation, apprehension and - John hopes he's reading this right - renewed sexual excitement. Maybe John isn't the only one who's been having ideas recently about a possible threesome with Lestrade.
He also really hopes he's guessed right about Lestrade's reaction, because otherwise this could be seriously embarrassing in a way none of them will recover from for quite some time. But he tells himself that Lestrade has fancied the pants off Sherlock for years - which is true - and must still be quite pissed off with Sherlock for pinching the handcuffs. Both of which should help things along.
Lestrade's reply comes back almost as soon as John hits Send:
With you in 15.
Owe you one.
L.
Sounds promising, John thinks. He shows the text to Sherlock, who is wriggling quite a bit but looking actually rather interested now at the prospect of Lestrade's arrival.
“Fifteen minutes,” John says. “Well, I'm sure we can think of something to do while we're waiting for the owner of these fine cuffs to show up.”
He kisses Sherlock again, a slow deep kiss, the kind Sherlock can only really take when he's all tied up like this and weak from laughing too much. Sherlock kisses him back passionately, pulling John in close with his free hand, wrapping his long legs around him and rubbing his cock shamelessly against John's.
John doesn't know why this stuff gets Sherlock in the way it does, why it breaks through all Sherlock's usual boundaries about intimacy and touching. He wonders if he and Sherlock will ever be able to have sex without all this, which he for one would really like. Thinks probably not, and can imagine that there will come a time when this could be a problem. For now, though, with Sherlock this hot and the sex this good, John is not complaining or asking too many questions. He intends to make the most of what they've got. Specifically, on this occasion, to make the most of the time that's left before Lestrade arrives and the game adapts itself to the entry of a new player.
Author: fengirl88
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mild BDSM content
Disclaimer: I don't own the BBC's version of these characters. I doubt they would get up to this sort of thing. Very mild spoilers for start of The Great Game, but mostly behaves as if the rest of that hasn't happened yet.
Wordcount: ~2500
Summary: He doesn't mean to do it, the first time.
A/N: Written in response to anonymous prompt on sherlockbbcfic: Sherlock being tickled. This is not the same Sherlock/John relationship as in Close Analysis, Unpredictable or Late Arrival. Just another way of imagining things.
1. Accidental
He doesn't mean to do it, the first time. It's really all Sherlock's fault for telling John yet again to get his phone out of his jacket.
Meaning Sherlock's phone. Out of Sherlock's jacket. Which Sherlock is still wearing at the time.
Sherlock yelps with laughter as John's hands fumble for the mobile in his inside pocket. He jerks away, almost knocking over the petri dish he's intent on studying in the process. Just as well the microscope is clamped to the lab bench.
“Get off, you idiot!” Sherlock snaps.
“Get your own fucking phone next time then,” John retorts.
Didn't realize Sherlock was so ticklish. Embarrassing, really, but hardly John's fault. There are some things a grown man should be able to do for himself.
2. Bedside Manner
The second time, Sherlock's running a fever after falling into a duckpond while chasing an international jewel thief (don't ask). As John points out, he really should leave the chasing to Lestrade and the police, who have much better resources for this sort of thing.
Sherlock just coughs and sulks and demands constant nursing: “Where's my medicine? No, not that medicine, my other medicine. I want the window open. I'm cold, I want the window shut. I want chicken soup. Not out of a packet. Well, why is it taking so long?”
John's patience is wearing thin. It's not as if this stuff needs medical expertise: a trained nanny would almost certainly make a better job of it.
“My chest hurts”, Sherlock grumbles.
“If you will go falling into duckponds,” John says, pushing his stethoscope up under Sherlock's t-shirt.
“Cold hands,” Sherlock protests. He starts giggling, which of course just leads to more coughing.
It's like being lumbered with a five-year-old, John thinks crossly.
3. Convalescent
“Your watch? You weren't wearing a watch!” John says.
Sherlock is trying his patience even harder now he's getting well again than he did when he was ill.
“Was too,” Sherlock says. “But I've lost it down the back of the sofa.”
John looks at him, exasperated. Can't believe Sherlock texted him to come downstairs for this, even if he is bored with not being able to do anything much. Sees a familiar glint in Sherlock's eye.
“Sherlock, if this is a wind-up - ”
“No, it's a quartz!” Sherlock crows, and bursts out laughing at John's outraged expression.
“Not funny,” John says.
“Your face was though,” Sherlock says. Still laughing.
“Right,” says John. “So this mythical watch then - ”
He starts poking Sherlock under the arms and in the ribs, making him giggle and squirm. “Maybe it's in here,” John says, or “Under there perhaps.”
By now Sherlock is thrashing around so much that the next thing John knows they're in a tangle on the floor, John still tickling Sherlock and Sherlock saying Stop it and Get off, until he's laughing so hard he can't say anything at all.
“Idiot,” John says eventually, feeling a bit embarrassed that all this rolling around has given him an erection.
Given Sherlock one, too, by the looks of it.
Sherlock's fault, really. He started it.
Messing about like a couple of kids.
4. Distraction
“I'm bored,” Sherlock whinges, for the third time that afternoon. Crime is slow at the moment. He's curled up on the sofa, sulking, rejecting everything John suggests to deal with the problem.
“Look, I've got better things to do -” John begins irritably.
“I doubt that very much,” Sherlock huffs.
John looks at Sherlock, curled up in his blue silk dressing-gown, his hair tousled and in need of a damn good brushing. Sherlock looks in need of a damn good something else as well, he thinks.
Time for a little distraction, before Sherlock starts shooting at the wall again. (“The wall had it coming.”)
John grabs Sherlock's bare foot and tickles it, dodging back as Sherlock kicks out at him. Clambers on top of Sherlock, pinning him down on the sofa and tickling him deliberately, finding the most sensitive spots and returning to them again and again with increasing success. Sherlock's neck, just above the collarbone, good. Under the arms, obviously. Ribs and stomach, quite sensitive there, as you'd expect. Backs of the knees, definitely a winner -
Inside of the thighs. Unexpected choice.
Sherlock suddenly stops thrashing around giggling and fighting for breath. He clamps his thighs together, imprisoning John's hands, and puts his own hands on John's, pushing them down against his erection.
The two of them look at each other, breathing unsteadily.
“Don't you dare get off me now,” Sherlock says.
John doesn't think he could even if he wanted to. Leans in and kisses Sherlock, hard, then softer, then harder again.
Brought it on himself, he thinks, while he can still think at all.
5. Either/Or
What started as just messing around has now got seriously out of hand.
He never thought of himself as someone who'd have sex with another man. Certainly would never have believed that the sex itself would be the least weird and unsettling part of it. Definitely wouldn't have expected to find himself having to read up on bondage, for goodness' sake. But you have to do the research if you're going to stay safe. Otherwise you end up getting hurt, or hurting the other person. And since that time when Sherlock's overexcited flailing around gave John a black eye that took some explaining away, it's seemed safer to keep those long limbs under some kind of control.
He's still pretty embarrassed by how much this stuff turns him on. Not to mention amazed by what it does for Sherlock. He understands the theory that someone who's dominant in everyday life can get off on being dominated in bed, but it's still a lot to get his head around. He tries to behave as if it's all perfectly normal and he knows what he's doing, though.
Seems to work better that way.
Today, he's tied Sherlock's hands to the iron bed-frame with his blue scarf, and is sitting astride his legs so Sherlock can't move. Sherlock's down to his boxer shorts already. His expression is a bit apprehensive and more than a bit excited.
“Right,” says John. “Tell me where you want me to tickle you.”
“What?”
Sherlock's outraged expression says That's not how we play this game.
That's all he knows.
“Come on, stupid,” John says, starting to enjoy himself. “You should be able to work this one out. It's called Either/Or.”
Sherlock fidgets uneasily. John's cock responds predictably to the fidgeting. He does his best to ignore it. Time enough for that later.
“Either you have to pick a spot where you want to be tickled,” John says, “and I tickle you there for two minutes by the kitchen timer. Or I choose where and it's five minutes in the same spot.”
Sherlock looks pretty wild at this new twist on the game. These days, he knows exactly how long being tickled uninterruptedly for two minutes feels, which is longer than you would imagine. But he hasn't done five, not on the same spot, and he looks as if he's not sure he can.
John starts poking him, saying “Here? Or here? Tell me.” Sherlock's wriggling like anything but seems incapable of deciding, possibly because he's already getting breathless from laughing. The wriggling is making John's erection worse.
“OK, double or quits,” John says, groping in his trouser pocket for a pound coin.
“What?”
“Double or quits. If you win the toss, we don't have to play this game at all. If I win, the times go up to four minutes you tell me where or ten minutes I choose.”
Sherlock groans. John feels the erection pressing against his own. Got that right, then.
“Heads or tails?” he says, looking down at Sherlock. Still can't quite believe his luck with this one. Sherlock's already flushed and panting and John's hardly laid a finger on him. Yet.
“Heads,” Sherlock croaks.
It's tails. Though John would have said it was anyway, of course. And Sherlock can't seem to come up with a suggestion. Which means it's ten minutes, John's choice. Those are the rules, after all. No one to blame but himself.
John leans across Sherlock, opens the bedside drawer and takes out the feather he put there earlier, ready for this. Sherlock's eyes widen at the sight of it and he starts struggling.
“Behave,” John says severely.
He sits back across Sherlock's legs and pulls down Sherlock's boxers, enjoying the increasingly familiar sight of Sherlock's straining erection. He knows that Sherlock will have to come at some point in the next ten minutes. There's no way he can hold out against the strokes of the feather on his cock, alternating with John's teasing fingers and maybe his tongue, if John decides to speed things up a bit. So Sherlock isn't going to last ten minutes with this. But then there's the question of what to do with the remaining time. And the fact that, as they both know by now, Sherlock is even more ticklish after he's come than he is beforehand. Which is saying quite a bit.
They've had spectacularly good sex recently after this sort of thing. Stray images and recollections from the last time were still making John blush for days afterwards.
If the next ten minutes goes according to plan - and from the look on Sherlock's face as he waits for the time to start John has every reason to assume it will - this afternoon's session should be equally memorable, for all the right reasons.
1. Felony
“What are you doing with those? Are they Lestrade's?”
John looks at Sherlock, lying on John's bed. Sherlock stripped to his underpants and handcuffed by one hand to the bed frame. Looks around for the key; no sign.
“I pinched them earlier,” Sherlock says. “He was annoying me again.”
Barred him from a crime scene for contaminating evidence. Perfectly reasonable behaviour.
“What have you done with the key?”
“Can't remember,” Sherlock says. An obvious lie and deliberate provocation.
“Hmm,” says John. “Perhaps this will refresh your memory.”
He straddles Sherlock and starts tickling him mercilessly, enjoying the helpless laughter and Sherlock's wild movements underneath him. Every now and then John stops in order to kiss Sherlock till he moans, or to stroke his cock lightly and make him gasp again.
The scene's going well, Sherlock's even more into it than usual and then -
John's phone beeps. Text message.
“Can't you turn that fucking thing off before you come to bed?” Sherlock snaps, his mood ruined.
Never thought he'd live to hear Sherlock say that.
The text says:
Missing police equipment.
Any clues?
L.
Lestrade.
John can't quite believe what he's just thought of. Decides to go with it anyway. Gets off Sherlock, who is swearing quite a lot now.
“Don't blame me,” John says. “I only came up here to get a book. Didn't know I was going to find you half-naked and handcuffed to my bed, did I? Now, where have you put that key?”
“Bottom of the wardrobe,” Sherlock says grumpily. “Get me out of this, will you? Should have known it was a mistake.”
John goes over to the wardrobe, looks at the key lying there. Turns round, looking deliberately blank.
“It's not here,” he says. “You must have left it somewhere else.”
“Fuck off,” Sherlock says, “I know it's there. Stop arsing around and get me out of these.”
“Can't,” says John happily. “Your memory must be going. Now let's try again and see if we can work out where you put that key.”
Sherlock looks at him. Recognizes a new move in the game. Starts to look more cheerful. Then looks furious as John begins texting.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Sherlock yells.
John grins at him, his eyes alight with mischief.
“Think we might need some help solving this one,” he says, showing Sherlock the text he's about to send Lestrade:
Questioning suspect now
221b Baker Street
Your assistance required
if at all possible.
J
“You dare,” Sherlock says.
John raises an eyebrow, looks at Sherlock's wrist in the handcuffs. “Oh, I think I do, don't you?” he says.
Trying to keep it in the game, where Sherlock needs it. Watching it doesn't spill over into something Sherlock can't handle. Still learning how to do all this, including working out where the safe boundaries are and which one's it's OK to push.
Sherlock seems to be struggling between indignation, apprehension and - John hopes he's reading this right - renewed sexual excitement. Maybe John isn't the only one who's been having ideas recently about a possible threesome with Lestrade.
He also really hopes he's guessed right about Lestrade's reaction, because otherwise this could be seriously embarrassing in a way none of them will recover from for quite some time. But he tells himself that Lestrade has fancied the pants off Sherlock for years - which is true - and must still be quite pissed off with Sherlock for pinching the handcuffs. Both of which should help things along.
Lestrade's reply comes back almost as soon as John hits Send:
With you in 15.
Owe you one.
L.
Sounds promising, John thinks. He shows the text to Sherlock, who is wriggling quite a bit but looking actually rather interested now at the prospect of Lestrade's arrival.
“Fifteen minutes,” John says. “Well, I'm sure we can think of something to do while we're waiting for the owner of these fine cuffs to show up.”
He kisses Sherlock again, a slow deep kiss, the kind Sherlock can only really take when he's all tied up like this and weak from laughing too much. Sherlock kisses him back passionately, pulling John in close with his free hand, wrapping his long legs around him and rubbing his cock shamelessly against John's.
John doesn't know why this stuff gets Sherlock in the way it does, why it breaks through all Sherlock's usual boundaries about intimacy and touching. He wonders if he and Sherlock will ever be able to have sex without all this, which he for one would really like. Thinks probably not, and can imagine that there will come a time when this could be a problem. For now, though, with Sherlock this hot and the sex this good, John is not complaining or asking too many questions. He intends to make the most of what they've got. Specifically, on this occasion, to make the most of the time that's left before Lestrade arrives and the game adapts itself to the entry of a new player.