Chapter 1

John jumped awake in his bed, shaken awake from another post-Afghanistan nightmare. He was surprised and a little wary when he saw a familiar dark outline sitting at the edge of his bed.

"Sherlock…what are you doing?" He asked; the detective was sitting so still he could have been in a trance. His body was tense, like a coiled up lion ready the spring.

"You were screaming," he said, his voice cautious. John stared at his back, embarrassed.

"So…?" He asked, curious as to why Sherlock had come into his room, he yelled in his sleep the majority of the time.

"I wouldn't have stopped, you know that." John said as he shifted uncomfortably.

"You stopped when I came in." He told him. John felt heat flare up in his face and was grateful that Sherlock's back was to him and couldn't see it. There was silence.

"…I'll make tea." Sherlock said quietly.

/

He padded into the kitchen in his dressing down, taking out the cups and ingredients, pouring and mixing until he felt it was sufficient. He didn't touch the sugar in the cabinet. He remembered how John was when he found him, curled up, sweating and screaming. He didn't know why he came into the doctor's room in the first place, curiosity maybe, but when he had perched himself on the end of John's bed, the soldier had immediately fallen silent. The space between his eyebrows had smoothed, his body unfurled and the tortured noises flittered away. Sherlock deducted one thing over all; comfort. John, even while sleeping, felt his presence and instantly calmed down. Normally people's reaction to him was the complete opposite. He walked back into John's room, tea in hand. He sat on the side of the bed, handed a cup to the doctor and began to sip his own. Watson began to cough.

"This is bloody awful." John choked, grimacing as he picked bits of tea from his teeth. A smile spread onto both if the men's faces until he was laughing so hard they couldn't catch their breath.

"You can go if you want, I'm not going back to sleep any time soon." John told him through throaty hiccups.

"Me either, I've been awake for hours, the case and all." The detective said, referring back to the triple homicide they were currently working on. There was a pregnant pause,

"You can sit up here if you want…you know, since you're staying and all." John said, gesturing to the spot on the bed next to him. Sherlock hesitated, then slid up beside him and settled against the mahogany headboard, a respectful foot of space separated them.

"What was it about this time?" Sherlock asked his voice un-characteristically quiet. There was another pause

"I had a mate…back in the war, his name was Jeremy." John began,

"He was a rank under me, but a great soldier. Did everything he was asked and then some. He was friendly to everyone and everyone liked him. He had a wife…and a daughter back home." The doctor's voice caught and instinctively Sherlock reached out and grabbed the doctor's hand, long slim fingers covering rough calloused ones.

"One day when we were scouting, we were captured and brought behind enemy lines." Sherlock began to hate himself for asking. He had wanted to know, but knew that John hated talking about the war, that it tore at his very soul and ripped his heart apart at the seams when he spoke of the horrors of being a soldier. And yet, he had asked.

"John, you don't have to…"

"No. I want to. I want you to know." Sherlock felt heat bloom in his stomach. He wasn't normally one to suffer from hard-to-control emotions or really even give them much though at all, but when John said that, that one little sentence, he felt a million different things explode within him. Sherlock Holmes, the man many people said didn't have human emotions, was overwhelmed with them every time he was around John Watson.

"We were only there for four days, but…what they did to him…I saw all of it." The blonde's shoulders began to shake and soft vulnerable noises simmered in the back of his throat. Sherlock thought fast,

"When I was little I had a terribly irrational fear of garden gnomes. I had read this Scottish bedtime story about evil gnomes that came and ate children while they were sleeping so I booby-trapped my entire room. It was a great idea…until I forgot about them the next morning and winded up hanging upside down from my ceiling." He rambled, not regretting for a second that he had told him. John began to laugh, the kind of laugh when his eyes crinkled up in the corners and his head was thrown back and he couldn't catch his breath. Sherlock couldn't stop staring.

"Where the bloody hell did that come from?" He asked through fits of laughter.

"I was attempting to change the subject. I don't know what I would have done if you had started crying." John went quiet and Sherlock began to question if he should have said what he did. John turned to him and stared at him for what felt like a long time. Finally he said,

"I've never had a friend like you before."

"I've never had anyone like you before." The words seemed to slip past Sherlock's lips when he wasn't looking. He wanted to kick himself. He expected John to make a remark about how weird that was or ask him to leave. But he didn't. John looked at Sherlock, really looked at him. Rumpled silk-like curls, pale and lightly muscled body, hard line and angles made up his handsome face and eyes…eyes that he knew he would dream about later they were so beautiful.

He had meant it when he said he had never had a friend like him before, but now…looking at Sherlock…he knew that he didn't just want him as a friend anymore.

Chapter 2

He moved slow, not wanting to scare him. Sherlock's eyes never left John's as the doctor began to move closer to him. The detective's heart seemed to stop when the soldier's face was near his. John reached behind the other man's neck and pulled him closer. Their noses touched. Their heads tilted. When their lips finally made contact it took all John had in him not to shiver. Sherlock's lips were like butter, soft and smooth. He tasted like tea and faintly of cigarettes, making John wonder when the last time the detective had smoked one. John pushed pressure onto Sherlock's top lip…then the bottom one. Sherlock, feeling braver than he had been in a long time, caught John's lower lip with his teeth and lightly tugged on it, making the doctor moan and pull him even closer.

John sat up and slung a leg over Sherlock's waist, straddling and looking down on the detective. He ran the pads of his thumbs over his striking cheekbones, amazed that the man beneath him was so beautiful. He leaned down and placed small sweet kisses all over his mouth, then lightly, placed his tongue on them. Sherlock opened his mouth and John's slipped his tongue into it smoothly. Slowly, he traced around his teeth, and then slid over his. It was hot and slippery and Sherlock couldn't help the moan that climbed out of his throat. Holmes' eyes cracked open when he felt something hard pressing into his erection. He glanced down, it was John's. He smiled into their kiss.

John pulled away and gazed into Sherlock's gorgeous eyes, wondering how the hell he didn't see it before. He was totally, completely and head over heels with this man. He slowly pulled at the tie-string of his dressing gown and pulled it open. All that "not gay" bullshit he had been spouting for so long…it felt pointless. Sherlock's body was a flawless canvas of white skin and hard lines. He had fallen in love with Sherlock the moment he first saw him in that lab. He trailed his tongue down the dark haired man's body, down his throat, then his stomach and stopped between his hips. When John looked up at Sherlock from down his body, the detective physically felt his breath stop. His eyes were bright and his lips were parted and his face was open and lit with a thousand emotions. Sherlock was in awe of the fact that a man that had seen so much, from watching his friends die to looking at horrendous crime scenes, could look at him like that; with so much love and passion and trust.

John's fingers found the band of Sherlock's briefs hooked them under them and began to slide them down. Holmes gave an involuntary jerk at the shock of his cold hands on his warm skin.

John sat up to pull the unnecessary fabric off of Sherlock's long legs. He dipped his head back down, his heavy breathing skating across Holmes' cock. Sherlock couldn't breathe, he could only think of John.

Watson had never been with another man before; romantically or sexually. He didn't care though, he only cared about Sherlock and making him feel as amazing as he felt. He blew lightly on the head of his cock, causing a violent shiver to jerk through the detective's body. He pressed his lips to the head and gave a small lick to the sensitive slit at the top. All of the time they had run the dark streets of London together…all the time they had been there for each other…after all that and he hadn't realized that the person he had been searching so long for had been directly in front of him.

He pulled the head into his mouth, whirling his tongue around it. Sherlock's hand flew to John's head, the short spikes of his hair rubbing against his fingers. John moved his head down, feeling the soft skin fill his mouth. Sherlock's mouth fell open and his eyes went wide. John's hand floated up the detective's thigh and rested on his sharp hipbone, clutching at it. He pushed his cock farther into his mouth, when it entered his throat, he gagged violently. But a quitter he was not. He drew back and attacked it again, shuttering as it flew down his tight throat. His shoulders pitched forward as he attempted to cram Sherlock's entire length inside his mouth.

An indescribable moan ripped from Sherlock's throat and the middle of his back threw up in a hard arch. His long fingers clawed at the stiff sheets beneath him, trying to hold himself together as his legs began to shake. John felt him fumbling around and reached out his hand and threaded his fingers through the detective's.

The intimacy of that alone…almost pushed him over the edge.

John pulled Sherlock's cock out of his mouth with a wet slurp and proceeded to feather kisses down his shaft. He stopped at his balls and licked over them and massaged them with his thumbs. Sherlock's eyes rolled shut as he whimpered. John drew his mouth back up slowly and engulfed his entire penis in one try. The detective gave a strangled cry and tightened his grip on his lover's hand. His breath became short and shallow as John head bobbed faster and faster.

"John- aahh, John…" He tried, but words were not his friend today. When he came, he gave a choked cry and fell limp. John pulled up, only to drag his tired pink tongue up Sherlock's cock, gathering the cum and swallowing it. He went down one last time, practically impaling his throat with his softening cock. Sherlock groaned again, the sound set deep within him.

John moved his lips back up Sherlock's body and rested them lightly on his lips. Sherlock wrapped an arm around the smaller man and pulled him close and John wound his strong ones around the other man's waist. They stayed like that for a long time, not saying anything, just holding each other and listening to their thundering hearts.

"Sherlock…" he began

"I know John, I love you too." John smiled into his lover's chest and closed his eyes.