A/N: So apparently even when you have the chapter mostly fleshed out, life & the Internet & computer glitches conspire against you! I was really hoping to have this up sooner:P My Canadian comes through with manifold sorrys! Here it is now – I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know. Thank you so much for the interest so far! It makes my day! More exclamation points!

The word 'viridescent' is real - look it up:D Any other errors are mine, all mine:D

As usual you know I don't own!

2. Love

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it. - Alice Walker

The ripest peach is highest on the tree - James Whitcomb Riley

After John woke up, he lay still for a few moments, wrapped in the remnants of a decidedly odd and utterly realistic dream about Sherlock. It had been unsettling and revealing at the same time and he felt he was on the cusp of something life changing. A sensation of unlimited possibilities flooded his senses.

He was also wondering why he was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, questioning the odd, slightly salty, slightly greasy taste in his mouth and the sensation of fullness in his stomach, as if he had already had breakfast, but not a well feeling, more heavy, as if he had consumed something that had disagreed with him. He stretched and clambered out of bed, assuming his odd state of dress had something to do with a manic flatmate. John made his way downstairs where he found said flatmate sitting staring out of the window. A pensive Sherlock, who sat in his sheet. The questions that had been ready to tumble out of his mouth "What the hell happened? How did I wake up in my clothes? Was I drugged last night? Why do I smell bacon? What's going on?" died there as he looked at his friend's stricken face. Instead he kept it simple and brief.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock turned his head and looked at him. He blinked, gave John a look that seemed full of anguish and fear and then stood abruptly and left for his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

The heady feeling within popped like a soap bubble and John stood there decidedly out of sync with the world at the moment, as if gravity had unequivocally shifted and chose not to work properly or as if the poles had reversed.

All was not right in his universe. He just wasn't sure what was wrong.

The whole day was spent like that. He had watched Sherlock stalk back out of his room, clothed now in his sleepwear and dressing gown, throw himself upon the couch and put up an almost palpable wall of silence.

Spending the day cloaked in the attitude that he'd missed something, John tried to keep things normal, more for his own sake. He felt himself lurch forward to begin a conversation only to halt abruptly at the expression on the younger man's face.

John was left wondering if he had simply imagined the look Sherlock had given him this morning. He would have dismissed it outright if he hadn't caught the younger man's eyes following him around the flat all day, hadn't felt the unspoken tension in the air and the hints of something greater roiling beneath the icy exterior of the still form on the couch.

Things were coming to a head late in the day. John knew he must broach the strained silence between them, when Sherlock finally decided to speak. And in typical Sherlockian fashion, he blurted out the thoughts that had been held inside his head and expected him to keep up.

"John, what would you do if you only had one day left? Would you do the one thing you have always wanted to do, no matter the consequences?"

If he was surprised by the question he didn't show it. He looked at Sherlock momentarily, weighed the topic with proper consideration and answered the detective as he usually did, with open, heartfelt honesty. He felt he had to, as if there were more at stake than a flippant answer, which would never reduce Sherlock's anxiety.

"If that one thing made a difference to me or to someone, then yes. I would have nothing to lose, would I? I mean I'd gain something, yeah?"

"What if it was the hardest thing in the world you have ever done?"

"I would probably still do it or try, anyway."

"What if the cost was the possible ending of something you cherished, but the reward was the beginning of the best thing that ever happened to you?"

John stilled. He simply stood and stared at Sherlock. He felt an increase in his heartbeat and respiration. Did Sherlock mean what he thought he meant, or was he simply reading what he wanted to read into his inquiries?

As for Sherlock, he could see that the doctor was perhaps beginning to get an inkling of where his questions might be leading. He saw John step back, straightened his shoulders slightly and then plunged ahead. An odd stray thought floated in the precision of his mind, but not out of place in its organization. Not out of place because John was taking up so much more space now. The thought was simple; John is so brave.

There was more depth than could simply be explained in four words, so many layers in that statement. More words than could fill a thousand libraries to explain the complexity that is John. The simple peace the doctor's presence brought to Sherlock helped to calm him after this morning's revelation.

"Why are you asking these questions?"

"I will tell you if you answer me first."

John looked down at the floor, took a deep breath. He had closed his eyes, the thoughts, almost, but not quite clear on his face. Something indefinable swept across the older man's face; a mixture of emotions, each too brief and quick for even Sherlock to discern. A pause, a wait of calm and then bright blue eyes looked into his, shining with something. Hope, maybe.

"I would say that the thing that is the most unattainable, the thing that makes you the happiest, that is the thing you would want, if it didn't cause hurt or pain or fear, but if it brought you peace and love and joy, then I would say do it, no matter the cost, no matter how hard."

Sherlock blinked. The knowledge he had been given battered inside his head. The new found awareness of how precious life was, with the need to tell John, come clean, quarreled with the tightly wrapped insecurities of a man who had told the world time and again, and had been answered in kind, that he was a sociopath and a freak. He was neither, simply a man who was in reality afraid of being hurt.

He looked at John, the one person who had reached into him and had managed to remove some of those insecurities, open the complication that was Sherlock, someone who had managed to touch him and he knew that this was where he wanted to spend his last moments on earth. With the security and foundation that was John Watson.

He rose in one fluid movement and crossed the floor toward him. He took his hands and placed them on either side of John's face. He raised one eyebrow at the other man, asking permission. John stared back at the taller man, unafraid and determined, the quiver of something on his lips and a rising excitement in his eyes. The corner of his mouth quirked with a 'what are you waiting for?' invitation. Sherlock gently lowered his mouth and touched John's lips with his own. The older man stiffened slightly in shock and realization that this was not a dream and then he tentatively reached his own hands up and placed them upon Sherlock's waist. He melted into the younger man like a sigh or a whisper. Sherlock pulled John closer, moving his hand around to the back of John's head and cupping it. He kept his eyes closed, afraid to open them to see the warmth turn cold, to see him withdraw, to lose their friendship. But when John clutched Sherlock harder and moved his mouth with Sherlock's, soft, yielding, sweet and tender, the hidden depths of passion and yearning both men had been concealing, flared up and drove all other thoughts from their minds.

After a few seconds of eternity, John broke the kiss and smiled his heartbreaking smile at Sherlock. Sherlock, in turn, searched John's eyes as he looked to see if there was any doubt or fear in them. They only held warmth and love, elation and trust. His oh so brave John had given Sherlock everything in that kiss. The younger man held it reverently in his heart, blended it there with his own and marveled at the newborn creature that stirred inside. He felt a flicker of regret that he had waited so long, but now was not the time. Now he would celebrate the wonder that had been born on this day, tomorrow was for mourning.

He wrapped his long arms around John, rested his head on top of his and breathed in, inhaling and bonding with it, transferring his scent permanently into his memory, hoping it would be the one thing he'd take with him into oblivion. He kissed the top of the blond head and then reached down and took John's hand in his own, weaved their fingers together and led him into his bedroom.

He proceeded to kiss and taste and awaken new emotions in both of them, John following in perfect step. Each thrill and touch, each sigh and moan, contined to create and strength the new beginning. The intensity and ecstasy encased them and tied them more firmly together. Sherlock, who had been afraid that perhaps he would be disappointed or jaded, that having John was not the same as wanting John, was left with craving more. And John, John surrendered everything in those moments and gave Sherlock more than his heart.

Afterward, as the doctor lay sleeping in his arms, Sherlock, who wore a bittersweet grin on his lips, ran his hand over John's back, and mapped it on his fingers, mapped deep down to the cellular level. He was relaxed and languid and the feeling of contentment with their lovemaking flowed through his long limbs, limbs that were sheltering the other in a fiercely gentle and wholly possessive embrace. He was equally saddened that their time was not longer. For the first time since he remembered, he worried about someone else's future. Not that he'd ever given much thought to his own, but he regretted that his death might be the breaking of the finest man he ever knew. He could not say he was sorry he had committed to this path with John, however.

At some point in the long night, John stirred and opened blurry eyes as he took in the fact that Sherlock had not slept. After scattering kisses like stars across the pale, moonlit skin, he rested his chin on the detective's chest and spoke, in a voice tinged with a hint of worry, but overflowing with love and trust.

"You're not regretting it, are you?"

Sherlock smiled, eyes locking with John's. He scrunched forward to place an awkward kiss on John's forehead.

"No. Never. Only regretting I waited so long." His voice resonated and rumbled through John's chest as they lay in close contact, joined together so completely, it was only by the shades of skin colour that it could be told where one began and the other finished.

John searched the viridescent eyes, looking for signs that Sherlock was uneasy or regretful. He saw nothing but contentment and love there, although they also contained something that was new, something John couldn't put his finger on. Something that caught his breath and made him question the veracity of the other's statement. Not for the content, but for what he may have left out.

John frowned and began, "Sherlock…"

But the detective answered by rolling John onto his back and silencing him with endless, full kisses, driving further doubts from the doctor's mind. He was content to spend the rest of the night, the rest of his life and into the next with Sherlock's undivided devotion. And while, realistically, he knew Sherlock's attention would waver, not stray to other lovers, but to the required excitement and rush of The Work, he was determined to enjoy these stolen moments while they lasted.

The dawn came, the sun repeated it's ramble across the bedroom floor, but this time found two in a bed formerly occupied by one and the light dappled the two slumbering figures wrapped in each other's arms, caressed and blessed by the new day.