A/N: My apologies for the long delay. Had a bit of trouble writing the sex scenes. Wrote freely and ended up with 3 pages filled with the description of Sherlock's eyes and skin and that wasn't any good at all. :P One more chapter to go!
John was struck speechless. This was highly unusual, even for his unpredictable friend, to be interested in any human emotion.
He also knew that he could never deny Sherlock anything. Not before and certainly not now, especially when he was behaving this way. It was as if his friend was flirting with him, in his own strange way. He also found it very hard, in more ways than one, to resist the sensations of the nuzzling. For a man who never cared much for human contact, Sherlock was surprisingly good at this new task.
Distractedly, he started.
"Well, before you miraculously came back to life..."
"I was never dead, John. But do go on." Sherlock's voice was muffled by John's neck. Lips ghosted over the skin, earning a shiver and what sounded like a groan.
"Bloody hell! Would you stop interrupting!" John soft voice betrayed his mood. Sherlock placed several well-intentioned kisses along the side of John's neck. John forgot what he was going to say as he felt Sherlock's lips brush lightly the sensitive spot at the back of his ear.
"I apologize, John. Do go on." his tone said otherwise. Sherlock had now progressed to little bites along John's collarbone.
"Anyway. I was about to say that I over the past year, I have had to live without you. And I don't know how to anymore. I was so alone before I met you. I could have continued alone if I hadn't. It is preposterous, isn't it? That all I did was spend a year living with you and I can't function properly on my own. " John rushed through his words, he looked at his feet, unwilling to see the condemnation and rejection that he expected to see on his friend's face.
"John..." Sherlock began.
John continued talking like he hadn't heard him. "I understand that you are married to your work and you don't feel like the rest of us do. The dynamics of our friendship will not change. You will go about your cases while I help you."
"John."
This time, John stopped in his self-conscious tirade. It took him effort, but eventually he looked up, into Sherlock's eyes. Instead of the rejection he had expected to find, he found acceptance and a quiet awe that took his breath away.
"John. I care for you. There is no other person that engage my more human sensibilities than you do. Over the past year, I have not spent a day without thinking about you and what you did. Granted, I had Mycroft's tapes, but it just isn't the same. It isn't the same without you force-feeding me. It isn't the same without you by my side. "
John began to ask about "Mycroft's tapes" as Sherlock had expected him to, but Sherlock raised a hand and gently continued while his face rubbed against the fabric of John's jumper.
"You are my light, John Hamish Watson. Life is more bearable and less dull with you around."
Touched and frankly, surprised, John laid his head on Sherlock's, burying his nose in the soft, dark curls.
'So, this is it, then." he added hesitantly, a blush on his cheeks. With trembling fingers, he cupped Sherlock's face and raised it to his, pressing their lips together lightly. It was not only a kiss. It was also a promise, of things to be and thing to come.
What John did not expect was for Sherlock to deepen the kiss by sliding his tongue against his, in erotic harmony. Somewhere along the line, the detective's fingers were wrapped around the back of John's neck, pulling him closer, with a sudden urgency. And as Sherlock sucked lightly on John's lower lip, he let out a moan.
A torrent of emotion fled the cage that John had locked it in over the past year. The hope, the desperate want and the need to touch, taste and love. His fingers began the dexterous feat of pushing Sherlock's coat from his shoulders and unbuttoning the purple shirt that was secretly John's favourite. John needed to feel, to know, with his most basic senses, that Sherlock was really back, that his Sherlock was really here. As his palm rested against the bare skin of Sherlock's chest, John felt his love shiver deliciously. Sherlock pulled back and looked at him, his eyes were dark and filled with want. He looked like a man who was stuck in the desert for days and John was the first sign of water.
John knew that eventually he will be angry. He will be furious that Sherlock did not give him any sign that he was alive. But right now, all he could think about was the fact that this man, his Sherlock, is alive. And that he was looking at John the way he had pictured in the very few good dreams that he have had over the past year.
Sherlock cradled the back of John's neck and whispered, looking into his eyes.
"Next time, John, I will bring you with me. I promise."
Whatever reservations that John had, they were forgotten for the moment. He straddled his lanky flat-mate and touched brought their lips together. This time, it was not gentle or tender, it was passionate, raw and needy. Tongues wrestled, buttons undone. Fingers and lips, pushing, pulling and tasting. Desperate to bring Sherlock closer, John rocked his hips, earning a simultaneous groan from the both of them. Oh god, that skin.
Sherlock's dexterous fingers traced the doctor's chest and ended on his belt buckle. A wave of need went through John as he came to realization that not only was the usually aloof Sherlock affected by him. Him? Sherlock's fingers were trembling faintly as he undid the buckle and unzipped John. His hands then came up to rest on John's hips and began tugging his jeans off. There were points of color high on both their cheeks now.
"Are you sure you want this, Sherlock?"
"Yes. I am certain."