JOHN WATSON
It was an hour before the LPD was confident in calling the military base secured. Moriarty, still unconscious and probably concussed, was strapped into a straightjacket and removed in a police helicopter, Moran with him. The hired mercenaries were similarly collected and packed off in bulk for the nearest prison locality. John learned this only later, for he and Sherlock were also taken via helicopter and transferred to St. Bart's with swift immediacy.
At the hospital, John vehemently protested medical assistance, and once the nurses had ascertained that he was mostly just a mess of bruises, they packed some gauze onto the more serious ones and let him alone. It was late, and he was exhausted, but he couldn't sleep without knowing how Sherlock was faring.
Flagging a nurse, he tried not to pester her too much as he inquired into his friend's condition.
"It's really hard to say yet," she told the doctor apologetically. "They're trying to get him stabilized."
John closed his eyes. "How bad is it?"
"I'm afraid it's not good. Are you family?"
"His flatmate."
"Then I'm not sure I can say -"
"Ah, Ms. Drew, I presume?" Mycroft's dulcet tones interrupted her as the politician came around the corner.
"Yes, that's me. And... you are?" the young woman asked, flushing slightly.
"Mycroft Holmes. I have the dubious honor of being Sherlock's older brother."
"Oh. Mr. Holmes, excuse me." She flushed further. "I'm sure you want to know more about your brother. Perhaps we should go somewhere more private?" Her gaze shifted pointedly to John.
Mycroft waved her down. "John is a family friend," he said. "He should hear the news as well."
"Very good, sir." She sighed, spreading hands on her apron. "Sherlock sustained significant blood loss, as well as multiple fractures to the four lower ribs and his right leg. The doctors are setting the breaks and a blood transfusion is already underway. He regained consciousness not long after he arrived, so we've since put him back under. Besides that, your brother has numerous bruises and first degree burns; whatever he was up to, Mr. Holmes, he got in a bit over his head."
"That's not really any of your business," Mycroft said coolly, "but for the record, yes, he did."
"When can we see him?" John asked.
"Not until the doctors have finished. At a guess, I would give it an hour."
The blonde man thanked her and leaned back in his chair, letting the crown of his head rest against the cold wall. Mycroft stood next to him, pulling a small package from his jacket.
"Cigarette?" he asked, offering John the pack.
The doctor looked at him sidelong. "This is a hospital."
"And?"
"And... I don't smoke."
Mycroft shrugged. "Neither do I, but sometimes it is a habit justified by circumstance."
"Kindly take your habit outside."
Oddly enough, the politician did not argue, stepping out onto a balcony down the hall before lighting up. When he returned, smelling faintly of smoke, he chose to stand next to the doctor again, a fact that John found both puzzling and comforting.
"Do you want to sit down?" he asked, gesturing at the chair next to him. Mycroft glanced at it before replying.
"Thank you. No. I can't stand sitting in hospitals. I've done too much of it."
John chose diplomatically to not respond to that last, opting rather to sit silently.
"You saved my life," Mycroft said suddenly. "And Sherlock's. Again."
John raised his eyebrows. "It's what anyone would have done," he said finally.
"No," said Mycroft. "It isn't."
It turned out to be three hours before the hospital staff were willing to admit visitors into the ICU. When finally the doctor came out to brief them, John was on the verge of falling asleep in his chair, but at the first mention of the detective's name he felt wide awake, all traces of weariness gone.
"The anesthesia's worn off, but he's sleeping," the doctor was saying. "I can let you in to see him, but I recommend you let him rest."
Mycroft motioned to John, but the blonde man bit his lip and turned his head.
"Go ahead," he heard himself saying. "I'll give you a minute."
Now that it came down to it, he wasn't sure he could face Sherlock. What if the detective blamed him for what happened? It had been at John's insistence that they had gone after Moriarty in the first place. After Mary's death, he'd been too overwrought to consider a safer course of action, and the detective had suffered for it. What if Sherlock couldn't forgive him? God knew John was having trouble forgiving himself. A single sob, not even half formed, caught in his throat.
The door to the ICU opened and Mycroft came striding back out, looking exasperated.
"Well, he certainly made a mess of himself," the official snorted. "You can sit with him, if you don't mind watching him drool. I'm off."
"You're leaving?" John asked in surprise, standing.
"I have paperwork to attend to. Nothing is served by my staying. He'll recover, and I dare say he'll complain about every minute of it."
Mycroft was most of the way down the hall before John called after him, "You're not fooling me. I know you care about him."
The politician stopped mid-stride. He did not turn around, but after a moment, he said, "Then my showing it would just be redundant."
He left.
John stared after him a moment before hesitantly pushing open the door to Sherlock's room. The detective lay in a hospital bed, a dozen tubes protruding from under the thin sheets. His skin looked fragile under the fluorescents, and next to the black curls lying flaccid against his forehead it seemed likewise too pale. The hollows around his eyes were more sunken than usual, and the burns on his arms stood out in sharp relief. All told, it was an image John had seen too many times, the death mask of one who already had one foot in the ground.
With a shuddering breath, the doctor sank into the visitor's chair left next to the bed. He found the detective's hand under the sheet and held it.
"God, Sherlock, I'm so sorry," he whispered.
"Whatever for?" came the quiet reply.
John started, looking up to find blue-grey eyes focused intently on him.
"You're supposed to be asleep," the blonde man chided.
"What, so you can make misguided pleas of apology by my bedside like I'm a corpse or something?" Sherlock tossed his curls out of his face. "Mmm. No."
"How long have you been awake?"
"Since the anesthetic wore off."
"And Mycroft didn't know?"
The detective smirked. "Unlike you, I can feign sleep."
"Very clever, I'm sure." John too was smiling faintly, though his expression returned to one of seriousness a minute later. "Really, Sherlock, I am sorry."
The detective arched an eyebrow. "For what?"
"I feel like it's my fault that you got hurt."
"What on earth makes you think that?"
John didn't want to explain, feared doing so lest Sherlock see the logic in it and agree that it was the doctor's fault, but the guilt he felt was suffocating.
"If I hadn't been so distraught after Mary died..." he began, "if I had been thinking clearer... I led us both into danger, demanding we go after Moriarty on our own. You could've been killed."
"But I wasn't."
"Four broken ribs and a leg? That's not exactly superficial, Sherlock."
"You do realize," said the detective, giving John's hand a gentle squeeze, "that I could just as easily be giving you this same speech."
The blonde man's brow creased. "How do you mean?"
"I gave you a gun with no bullets in it," the detective reminded him. "You got poisoned, Moriarty's probably scarred you psychologically for life, and the whole reason you lost your wife and home in the first place was because darling Jim was using you to get to me. In a fair universe, I'd get a hell of a lot worse for the trouble I've caused you."
The doctor felt his eyes widening at this retelling.
"So you don't blame me?" he asked, still not quite able to meet Sherlock's gaze.
The detective gave a crooked grin. "Do you remember what I told you in the tower?"
John exhaled slowly, and Sherlock felt the man's pulse jump under his fingers.
"You said you loved me," John said softly.
"And correct me if I'm wrong," smiled the convalescent, "but I was under the impression that when you love someone, you don't care much about getting hurt." He paused for a moment before saying in a smaller, uncertain voice that John was unused to hearing, "You said that you loved me, too."
This time, John was able to meet his eyes. "I did," he confirmed.
"Did you mean it?"
John opened his mouth to respond when something about the way the detective was looking at him gave him pause. He looked nervous. Shy, even. Perhaps, then, the query was not as flippant as Sherlock made it sound.
"The sociopath says he loves me, but you're the one insecure about its being requited?" the doctor asked with a frown.
Sherlock turned his head, embarrassed. "Well, you have been very adamantly insisting for three and a half years that you're not gay, so you'll excuse me if your requital does not seem especially... probable to me."
John cupped the detective's chin, turning his face back toward him.
"I'm not gay," he said simply. "I've never fancied a bloke before in my life. And yet, for whatever reason, when I look at you, I feel like we could do a hell of a sight better than 'fancy'."
With deliberate slowness, Sherlock lifted his hand from under the covers, bringing John's to his mouth. Softly, chastely, he planted a kiss on each of the doctor's knuckles, watching the blonde man's reaction carefully. John, for his part, sat stock still, afraid that if he so much as blinked he might break whatever spell had come over his reserved and unemotional friend.
"You really don't mind," the detective said with mild surprise.
"Sherlock," John said, and he found that his voice had turned absolutely haggard. "If you don't kiss me like that every day for the rest of our lives, I may die."
"Come here," Sherlock murmured.
John slid his chair closer to the detective's headboard and leaned over the side of the bed. For a moment, their faces remained apart, separated by an inch that was also an abyss. Then the detective tilted his chin up, brushing his lips against John's.
The heat in the room seemed to increase. Unsure how much his nominally asexual flatmate was willing to take, John didn't press an advance until Sherlock, with an eye roll that said it ought to have been obvious, ran his hand through the doctor's hair and pulled their lips together. Sherlock tasted like nicotine (John would have to remember to ask about that), sea salt, and a muskiness the blonde man found reminiscent of Scotch. The detective happily surrendered control of his mouth, and John was taking no prisoners. Now that he'd started kissing Sherlock, he didn't know if he could ever stop - until there was an irritated "ahem" from behind him.
Sitting bolt upright, he hastily wiped his mouth while a pair of vaguely amused doctors fiddled with the instruments. One gave the detective another morphine injection, while the other changed the IV bag. John felt himself turning beet red, whereas Sherlock just looked smug.
When they left, assuring John much to his chagrin that "his boyfriend would be fine," the blonde man turned back to the detective.
"Boyfriend." Sherlock turned the word over in his mouth like he wasn't quite sure what to make of it. "What a banal word."
John tilted his head. "We don't have to refer to ourselves that way."
"True. There's always 'partner',"
"That's better, I suppose."
There was a mischievous light in the detective's eyes when he asked, "What about 'lover'?"
The doctor wrinkled his nose. "That just makes it sound like one of us is being unfaithful."
"Fair enough."
John smiled, absently untangling a few of Sherlock's curls. "We don't have to have a label," he pointed out. "You're Sherlock Holmes and I'm John Watson. If that's enough for you, it's enough for me."
The detective sighed sleepily. "That's always been enough for me."
*****
JOHN WATSON
The Following Month
Sherlock spent three days in the Intensive Care Unit. Then he spent two weeks in a different ward of the hospital, and another two shuttling between Baker Street and St. Bart's for physical therapy. John came to see him every day. Sometimes he brought Sheryl, who was getting better at sleeping through the night, and sometimes he left her with Mrs. Hudson. By the end of a month's time, the hospital staff were willing to call the detective sufficiently recovered to move back into 221B permanently.
On the night of his homecoming, John took Sherlock out to dinner. Angelo not only gave them a candle, he gave them close to the entire menu on the house in what he said was a get-well gift for Sherlock but John suspected might actually have been a tacit apology for the arsenic episode. Regardless, the food was both delicious and plentiful. 221B's refrigerator was going to be stuffed with leftovers for a week, provided Sherlock didn't decide to experiment on any of it.
When they returned to their flat, it was in better spirits than either of them had been in for weeks. Laughing, they near-to tripped up up the stairs. John fumbled with the lock and pushed his way into the apartment; he hadn't even made it all the way through the door before Sherlock's hands were on his shoulders, shoving him up against the wallpaper and knocking boxes of pasta to the floor. He kissed John hard, pressing against the doctor's chest with his own. When he pulled back, looking down and straight into John's eyes, the shorter man was breathing considerably harder.
"Sherlock," he protested weakly. "You taste like the garlic from dinner."
"Mmm," the detective agreed. "And you taste like chicken roast with paprika and green beans, but you don't hear me complaining."
"The... leftovers are going to spoil," John told him, edging past Sherlock and retrieving the fallen boxed food.
"I'll brush my teeth, then," Sherlock called after him, "since you seem to object to halitosis. Not that I blame you. Nasty, really."
"Yes, you do that," John smiled, stepping into the kitchen. "And then what?"
"Then I'm going to bend you over the side of the sofa."
John paused, halfway through bending to open the refrigerator.
"Are you?" he asked, ignoring the fact that his voice seemed to have jumped up an octave.
"Is that a problem?"
Somehow, the detective was right behind him. Silently, John cursed whatever power Sherlock had that allowed him to sneak up on people so effortlessly. Deliberately, he transferred the remainder of their dinner to the fridge before turning around. Sherlock closed the gap between them, putting his hands on either side of John against the icebox. His face was expressionless, but the doctor got the impression that the detective was evaluating something. In his own head, John had a myriad questions.
Weren't they taking this a little fast?
Did Sherlock actually want the kind of intimacy he was... intimating?
Did John actually want that?
He opened his mouth to ask the first of these. What came out, a bit breathlessly, was, "Nope, no problem."
That seemed to answer the last question, anyway, he thought. Sherlock stared at him for another minute before apparently deciding that the shorter man was being sincere, at which point he smiled slowly and turned around.
"Right, give me a minute," he said casually, giving John a backhanded wave and leaving the doctor alone in the kitchen to contemplate the biochemicals suddenly awash in his system. Doubtless, Sherlock could tell him what they all were, a thought which shouldn't have been a turn-on but still managed to increase the heat in his cheeks.
Dopamine, he listed to himself. Epinephrine...
From down the hallway, there came the sound of running water. In that moment, it dawned on John just exactly how hopelessly in love he was, had probably been for a long time. The water stopped, and the doctor felt a thrill go through him, knowing what came next.
There was the padding of soft footfalls in the hallway. Sherlock was barefoot, and he'd taken off his dinner jacket (A good call, that, some part of John's mind registered. It was an expensive jacket. No reason to wrinkle it.), which left the detective in black slacks and a cotton button-down that was a pale sky blue. He walked passed the kitchen and into the living room. At the couch, he stopped, turned, and leaned against the wall with a look that was clearly intended as a challenge.
The doctor felt something in his stomach flip over and slosh his insides; Sherlock was trying to be difficult, making John walk to him instead of just dragging him to the settee. John licked his lips, which were suddenly feeling very dry, and made his way purposefully across the green mile of a living room to where his flatmate was standing. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears.
It wasn't that he was frightened of what he was about to do - as a doctor, he certainly wasn't ignorant on the biology of it, and if precedence were anything to go by, he was absolutely going to enjoy the experience. It was that he was frightened by how easily he had agreed to it, as if shagging Sherlock Holmes were the most natural thing in the world.
And then Sherlock was holding him gently, chests apart, almost as if they were dancing.
"Have you done this before?" he murmured.
"Only with women," John said quietly back.
"Well, that still puts you ahead of me, I think."
John blinked. "What, you've never -?"
The detective snorted. "Nope."
"Not even with Janine? I thought you and her were -"
"Janine wanted to," Sherlock said shortly. "I told her no. Gave her some sappy spiel about waiting for marriage and all. She ate it up. Can't imagine why."
"Sentiment."
"Sentiment? Hmm. Well, like I said - there's only so far you can go."
"Uh-huh." Somehow, the understanding that Sherlock had no idea what he was doing eased John's nerves. "And with me?"
"Suffice it to say..." The detective's hands found John's hips. "I'm willing to go a lot farther."
"Thank God for that," the doctor muttered before reaching up to kiss Sherlock again. They stood like that for a long time, John's hands around the detective's neck, Sherlock's arms around the doctor's waist. The blonde man was well-occupied with the darker one's bottom lip when the atmosphere noticably altered. Sherlock's knee brushed against the side of John's leg, and through the fabric of their trousers the point of contact burned with suppressed heat. The air in the apartment electrified.
John looked slowly up at Sherlock, aware of the quiet consent written in his own blown pupils. The detective turned them both and stepped in one motion, so that the back of John's legs were pressed to the arm of the couch. John's hands fell to grab the side of the settee, and Sherlock lifted his leg, bracing his knee against the doctor's side and the arm cushion. Practically straddling John's lap, the detective's hands slid to John's thighs even as the smaller man pressed kisses against the detective's throat, feeling the flutter of Sherlock's breath and relishing the faint tremble there.
"John," the detective said shakily. "Don't know... what... I'm doing."
"Shh," John admonished. "I believe you were planning to bend me back over the couch."
"Mmm. Shirt. Off."
Too aroused for proper sentences, Sherlock pulled at John's jumper, sliding the knit wool over his head. Left in his undershirt, John grabbed a fistful of the detective's clothing and pulled him closer, hastily undoing buttons.
"Why," he nearly growled, "do you always wear these impossible things?"
Sherlock undid the last button and let the cotton shirt fall to the floor, reaching for the doctor's white tee. "For the same reason you wear jumpers - makes me look irresistible."
Tumbling backwards onto the couch, John landed with a jolt underneath the detective.
"Arrogant git," he murmured, biting gently on the spot just below Sherlock's ear.
Theoretically, the detective had a witty reply, but John's touch turned it to so much incomprehensible drivel. Then Sherlock shifted his weight, and the growing friction in John's pants brushed against the detective's. Both men felt their eyes widen at the unexpected contact.
"Oh fu -" John breathed. Sherlock looked startled by the other man's reaction, at which the doctor pulled the detective's face down to his own, cutting off Sherlock's "It's okay if -" with a look. "Sherlock Holmes," said John, "get me out of these trousers."
"Now?"
The doctor looked hard into the sea of blue-grey above him. "Oh, God, yes," he whispered.
Sherlock worked the belt off the waist of his partner, trying not to smirk too much at the noises John made when his fingers brushed skin, before dropping the leather strap to the floor with a thoughtful glance. John grabbed the raven haired man by his pockets and worked the suit pants off him. How well John was actually able to accomplish this was debatable, given his compromised position on the settee, but between him and Sherlock, the black trousers ended up likewise discarded on the carpet. The doctor's hand happened to brush against the bulge in Sherlock's boxers, at which the detective gave an audible gasp and shuddered, his pupils swallowing his irises. It only then occurred to John that no one had ever touched Sherlock in that manner before.
With a sense of great deliberation, he reached up and palmed the detective's erection, watching Sherlock's face flush and his eyelashes brush against his cheeks. With the shadow of a smirk himself, John ran his thumb against the hardness through the fabric. Sherlock's face turned an inventive shade of purple as he spewed nonsensical things that might have been blessings or might have been cursings. It appeared that the cutting detective was actually at a loss for words.
"John..." he managed finally, a tremor in his voice that would have measured an 8.0 on the Richter scale. "If you... keep doing... that... I won't last... much longer."
"First times tend to be like that," John smiled, wriggling himself the rest of the way out of his pants.
"I wouldn't... know."
"No, I suppose not."
He dragged Sherlock down next to him, adjusting so that they lay side by side on the narrow settee.
"Let me show you how much I love you," John said softly, running his thumb down the detective's jaw.
"I thought it was me bending you over the couch," Sherlock replied.
"You did," John reminded him. "Very admirably, too."
For a moment, the detective looked so genuinely undone that John pulled him into half an embrace, nuzzling his shoulder. Sherlock acted so confidant all the time that it was easy to forget that about some things he was just clueless. A moment later, Sherlock's voice in his ear, gruffer than before, said, "People say it's like fireworks. Is it like fireworks?"
John snorted. "Sex is much better than fireworks."
There was a muffled sound that might have been the detective saying "good" into John's hair. Then, a tentative "Show me?"
The doctor felt himself smile tenderly against Sherlock's bare shoulder. John pressed the detective back against the couch, all the while giving careful caressess and quiet reassurances.
With an uncertain quirk of the lips, John asked, "Protection?"
Sherlock waved his hand absently. "I'm clean, and so are you. Don't bother."
"Right."
There was a pause, like the quiet before the storm, where John took a deep breath. In a smooth motion, he pulled off first his own undergarments and then pulled Sherlock's down to the detective's knees. Sherlock's anticipatory shiver drowned out what nervousness John still felt; resting one palm against the sharp ridges of the detective's hipbone, he rubbed the forefinger of his opposite hand down the detective's length. Sherlock shuddered, his back arching into the touch with a small cry.
"Sherlock," John began. "Sherlock..."
The detective's eyes fluttered open. "Please, John," he said hoarsely. "Please. I don't - I can't -"
John pressed a finger to Sherlock's opening, shimmying past the tense muscles. The detective bit back an exclamation, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on the cushions. The doctor waited, letting his partner acclimate to the sensation, but Sherlock shook his head violently.
"More-more-more-more-more-please-John," the detective gasped in a single breath. Carefully, John added a second finger and then a third. Sherlock looked half out of his mind, driven past all point of coherency by the unfamiliar sensations accosting his person. Watching him writhe on the sofa, John too was rapidly losing control. He lost it altogether when the detective glared at him and said, "You are an unholy tease. Take me already."
John did exactly that.
Then again, he usually did what Sherlock told him.
When they reached climax, Sherlock first, but John not far behind, the detective's back arched so far that John was momentarily worried about his ribs cracking again. He didn't shout, but the doctor found he was happier that way. It was nothing short of a personal triumph to know that he had brought the eloquent consulting detective to a point of absolute silence.
Sticky with release but in no mind to get up to shower, John kissed Sherlock gently on the lips. The detective's lust-blown eyes sparkled as he said, "You were right. Much better than fireworks."
"I was what?"
"You heard me."
"I did. But I like hearing it."
"Alright. You were completely," Sherlock began, punctuating every word with a kiss, "absolutely, and unquestionably correct."
"Sherlock Holmes," John sighed, leaning against the chest of his flatmate, "if we don't do this every day for the rest of our lives, I may die."
He could feel the baritone's deep laughter rumbling in the man's diaphragm. "Every day?" Sherlock asked. "When did you get to be a nymphomaniac?"
"Mmm. About twenty minutes ago, I think."
"Twenty-one minutes, thirty-seven seconds," the detective said softly. "Alright. Every day, then, if you like. But I think," Sherlock added, "that next time I get to be on top."
"'Course," John replied.
Across the room, the detective's phone buzzed. John raised his head, but Sherlock pulled him back.
"Leave it," the detective said. "It's just Lestrade, hoping I can check out some cases tomorrow."
As a matter of fact, it was Lestrade. Unread on the mantle, Sherlock's phone read:
8:57 p.m.
SH, priority level urgent. Call ASAP. It's about Moriarty. - GL
Not five minutes later, the mobile vibrated again, to be ignored by the flat's occupants until the next morning over breakfast. The second text was from an unknown number.
9:01 p.m.
Until next time, Sherlock Holmes. - JM
THE END