The march to his bedroom was surefooted. Our steps were heavy with the certainty of our purpose and our desires; the path felt like one that we had been destined to tread since our first meeting at St. Bart's. I paused in the centre of the room when his hand let go of mine. The air pulsed with the silence of expectation.

After lighting the oil lamp and taming the flame leaping up from the wick, he drew one curtain until gentle shadows lapped at walls tinged with amber and the moon. Like a child I stood watching him, wriggling the toes of my newly-bare feet into the carpet. I felt timid, shocked by the strength of my need for him, intimidated by the gravity of the situation and by the years of denial which had preceded it. I imagined that my gaze mirrored his, dark and heady in its intensity and yet softened by a shyness that only the other could perceive; a gift, wrapped in years of intimacy.

We continued to regard each other as he sat on the bed to remove his own footwear. When I made motions to begin loosening my tie, he said, 'Would you allow me do that for you?'

I nodded quickly and walked to take the hand with which he beckoned me to sit next to him, where my nerves tingled as he unfastened slowly two buttons of my shirt and parted its fabric so that he could count the steady, heightened thrumming of the pulse at my neck. He stared at this spot for some moments, deducing that the smile on my face was not only a response to his proximity. I was remembering what it felt like to be alive. In that pulse he saw the battlefield. He saw life and death. In that pulse he saw himself.

'You are the third.'

He said nothing in return but instead looked into my eyes, inviting my words. I took his hand and placed it under my shirt, over the naked skin of my chest.

'Can you feel how very alive you make me? Don't say you can't be different degrees of "alive", Sherlock, because you can. Being a soldier makes me alive and being a doctor makes me alive. My heart beats faster because I have a purpose and it's dangerous. You're the third thing to have ever made my heart beat.' We laughed as it thumped with even greater intensity under his palm when he stroked my skin, as if it wished to make its agreement clear. 'That said,' I chuckled, leaning closer to him, 'nothing, absolutely nothing, has ever made me feel like this.'

Inching forwards until he almost closed the gap between our lips, he hummed his agreement and my heart trembled until I was lightheaded with want. 'Your responsiveness has surpassed even my wildest hopes.'

My physician's brain began to muse distractedly about the possibility of coronary issues as a result of the absolute clamour in my chest when our lips met. All coherent thought was soon made impossible, however, when his tongue became familiar with my lower lip. Whimpering, I all but tore open my shirt, wanting more than just one of his hands, wanting everything he had.

I let him lead, wanting the comfortable security of surrender as well as to make a gesture of trust. As he undressed me at length he spoke of this and of that, punctuating his monologue with kisses to each part of my body he revealed. His fingers traced the ghosts of my bruises and he kissed those, too, before he lay me down on my back where I lifted my hips to help him ease off my underwear. Much of the time he had been speaking but he fell silent now that I was finally bare before him, there for him to touch and kiss and look at. I didn't blush under his gaze.

Once he was able to tear his eyes away from my proud erection, he rose and allowed me to watch him undress. He began talking again about nothing in particular, smiling minutely at the sounds I made when he removed each item of clothing, culminating in my first view of the succulent globes of his backside. I was desperate to touch every inch of him, but exercised patience. We had all the time in the world.

He joined me on the bed again and there were a few seconds where all introspection stopped. Everything stopped before everything was to start. I waited, as passive as a lamb, for him to reach out to me, to finally claim what we had wanted for so long. Then time became fluid.

Some seconds felt like days where I could watch at leisure a single droplet of sweat trail its languid path from neck to breastbone, where I would wait for it to reach my waiting tongue. Others were simply a hot, heavy blur of hands and skin and heat and weight and pleasure which made me feel like I was hurtling through echoes of my name in his voice and in his voice my name.

His first name was in my mouth exotically, repeatedly. I curved my lips around its two solid syllables and never wanted to stop tasting them. Saying it felt like a kiss.

'Sherlock,' I smiled, the sibilance like the sea against his cheek.

'Sherlock,' I gasped as I cradled and coaxed our erections within my fist.

'Sherlock', came my half-shout when the pleasure began to build so much that I knew I would not be able to form any more words. If I died now, in this minute, I wanted that to be the last word I ever said. He lay on his back and I almost on top of him, save for where my hand clasped us both. It was a slick, obscene sensation and the only thing more captivating than watching our cocks slide in my fist through my saliva and our commingled pre-ejaculatory fluids was observing him.

Ecstasy made radiant his eyes and wild his breath and wild and radiant and tremulous his naked limbs. My free hand grasped the meeting between his neck and collarbone where pale skin was flushed and sweet with sweat while my eyes roved down his body. His hair was plastered to his forehead and his pupils were dilated as though I were to him the most potent of drugs. I kissed his keening mouth before I indulged myself in watching his hips thrust upwards so that his member pressed against my own and into the ring of my fingers again and again and again –

I could watch no more, squeezing my eyes shut against his temple and listening instead to the sound of him. It sounded like the past, like years, like one of his tragic violin arias which would always cause me to weep silently behind my newspaper mixed with the feral sounds I would make in secret whilst touching myself and wishing it was him.

It raised the hairs along my arms and sent exquisite sparks of pleasure through me until I could take no more, no more, until I was half-dead with need.

'Oh, John, my John, you must look!'

This was the last thing I was able to process, save for the sight which met the opening of my eyes, before everything ceased to exist. Thick white spurts of semen erupted from our cocks and over my hand in pulses, pooling on his belly. I swore and gasped, losing my breath entirely and feeling every muscle become rigid with pleasure. Long spine arching, he pulled me on top of him and we rode the last waves of pleasure by sliding against each other in the hot pool of liquid we'd produced. To kiss him and to clasp him to me was languid and infinite happiness.

'Sherlock,' I whispered, before I told him I loved him.