It all started during the Baskerville case. Of course it did, how could it have started anywhere else? John Watson, brave soldier, loyal companion and most long suffering man in the whole United Kingdom finally saw Sherlock Holmes, pain in the arse extraordinaire, for a real, vulnerable human being; and those types of realizations? Well, they wreak havoc on a person's psyche. When you meet someone new you get a first impression and that first impression can take on several different lives; it can be somewhat correct, "Yeah, he really was as shallow as he seemed", it can be dead wrong, "He looked like a bum, how was I to know he was the company president?" or it can just become downright hilarious. For example, when you first meet someone and they can tell you your whole life story by your stance, you hair and later, your phone and you still decide to move in with them because you're back from Afghanistan and have obviously gone around the bend, it just becomes funny; because with Sherlock Holmes, what you see is what you get if you're John Watson. What John never expected to see, and subsequently get, was the aforementioned more vulnerable and open version of Sherlock he saw during the Baskerville case.
Imagine you're sitting with your giant brain of a best friend who is confident and cocksure on even the smallest of details every day of his arrogant life but something is wrong. He isn't arrogant or confident or cocksure, he's scared and doubtful and shaking because his immaculately kept, exceedingly logical hard drive is betraying him and he just doesn't know how to continue. You may not know what to say other than, "Um, look, Sherlock, we have to be rational about this, okay? Now you, of all people, can't just ..." and reference Star Trek by calling him Spock until you realize that you just asked the most rational man you know to be rational when he doesn't understand what being irrational is like. So what does your brainiac best friend do? He tells you that there's nothing wrong with him and that he doesn't have friends and then you make the epically idiotic decision to leave him there with his unfamiliar and irrational thoughts. However, when you go back to your room and you start thinking about how scared he looked and how you've never seen lines in his face before and that leads you to begin waxing poetic about how beautiful his face is and those damned cheek bones you stop and start to wonder when the hell you began to think about his face and his eyes and his bloody gorgeous lips and you stop dead in your tracks because you are so not ready to start thinking about his lips and why imagining them is sending some of the blood your brain desperately needs to another part of your body that you are just not ready to deal with in that capacity. So you take a hot shower and lay down and hope that when you wake up your brain has worked out why everything went so wonky.
At around two in the morning you wake up and feel a lovely breeze wash over the room, but you remember vividly closing the window before you laid down so why…Ah, Sherlock must be back, but you weren't sharing a room (Sorry we couldn't do a double room for you boys, That's fine we're not…) so he must have come here for a reason. So you look around and you see him sitting in an armchair with his elbows on his knees, his head rested on his hands while he stares out the window as if the answers to every mystery and every cold case in New Scotland Yard were hidden in the view from the room. You notice, for the second time now, how beautiful his face is and how the moonlight just touches enough to hint at the unique lines of his face casting him in an ethereal light. Waxing poetic, again, you think and you start to wonder if anyone has ever touched those cheeks before. Well, obviously people have, Sherlock was a child at one time so someone must have laid a hand on his cheek and told him that everything was fine; but that's not what you mean. You wonder if anyone has caressed that cheek while telling its' owner that he's perfect and beautiful and you're there for him no matter what and that at the end of the day, rational or irrational, case solved or not, he has you so utterly that you would literally follow him to the ends of the Earth and back just to be in his company. And that's when it hits you; all of those warm, tingly feelings that you passed off as your proverbial "light" being relit after losing it when you were invalided home, all of those times he caught you staring and you legitimately thought you were just staring off into space were not coincidences. Instead, they are but two examples of the innumerous moments that led you to the momentous conclusion that you do not just love Sherlock Holmes, you're in love with him and you want to be the one to touch those cheek bones and kiss those bloody fucking wonderful lips and run your hands all over that neck and torso and whisper sweet nothings so that you never have to see that look of fear, vulnerability and self-doubt on that gorgeous face again. So, by some miracle of sleep deprivation, bravery and unadulterated love, you make your way over to that ethereal being perched by the window and look him right in his ever-changing eyes and you convey to him through a look that could make a thousand swoon that you want him to be the object of your desire and with a touch of your hand to that cheek (finally) you lean in and kiss those (bloody wonderful, fucking amazing, unfuckingbelievable) lips and to your shock and awe, they move against yours and there is a hand in your hair and a velvet baritone asking for more and you, John Watson, are one to oblige.
A few moments of passionate snogging end with you straddling Sherlock Holmes in bed while you slowly open his shirt and lave kisses all over the heated, flushed skin that is appearing before your eyes. Those gorgeous eyes are blown wide and heavy lidded simultaneously and you can see your own heated expression reflecting in them and that's when it really hits you that this, this is where it has been headed since you ran into an old friend who introduced you to a mad man who changed your whole life; you were destined to be pulled into his orbit and end being his grounding force. So you slowly, so so slowly, lean down and gently kiss those lips again, stroke his cheek and kiss his jaw and silently ask for permission to do what you only just realized that you've always wanted to do. With a deep moan and a gasp your permission is granted and you quickly divest the beautiful creature writhing under you of its bindings and look at the part of him that has always been hidden from you. Not a shock, really, that his penis is as gorgeous as the rest of him, that the fact that it is long, deeply flushed, leaking and throbbing should not surprise you, but it does. It takes your breath away and to breathe in anything but Sherlock's scent at this point would be a waste of time so you lower your head to the crest of his groin and inhale and he is trembling above you, hips gently thrusting slightly upwards and you can no longer deny him this than you can deny it to yourself. Therefore, you lick the tip slowly, savoring the flavor before engulfing him, all of him and sucking like you have found what you were born to do. And you suck and lick and pull and touch until he is screaming out your name and clutching at your shoulders so hard it hurts. And when you finally realize that listening to Sherlock Holmes come apart at your own ministrations has made you come without ever being touched, he is pulling you up and telling you that you're beautiful and you start laughing because how could HE think I'M beautiful when he's him? He looks puzzled, the affronted and then you pull him close and place your head at the junction of his neck and shoulder and breathe in. You whisper to him to go to sleep and that you'll never leave him and he promises that he'll never leave you and for that moment in time, it was perfect and timeless.
So when John Watson finds himself staring at the cold, black marble letters that do no justice to the man they so shallowly represent, it is with a heavy heart that he asks for one more miracle, just one more chance for Sherlock to live up to his word. And you beg and plead inside your head (because you said you wouldn't leave, Sherlock, you said it, I remember, I said it too) for him to be able to hear you, whether in this world or another. Because you said you wouldn't leave, so you wait because the truth is, you'll wait forever to follow him if you have to. 1,095, 1,094, 1,093, 1,092…