"You have to choose it for yourself… and I'm not going to touch you until you do."

Sherlock stared straight ahead, seeing his reflected mouth quirk in appreciation. No easy option. Clever.

They both knew what would happen if John's hands reached out. The hands that invaded Sherlock's thoughts, his dreams... and his body every time he allowed the fantasies to take him. There would be no 'choice' if John's hands asked the question. No hesitation, no decision necessary or even possible at this stage.

As it was, he'd been wavering all evening - ever since Barbara Golding had said, 'You must be terribly proud of him' and he had realised that the woman was right, he did feel proud. He just wasn't sure exactly why...

Mycroft didn't have a John. A cold fish, Mycroft. Far more ruthless than Sherlock would ever be. Caring about very few things but supremely controlling about those that made it onto the list. Sherlock had never quite managed to emulate his brother's detachment - there was always something more… flamboyant in his nature. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but Sherlock would choose the sword every time. Let Mycroft sit at his desk, wielding his power and his might… it hadn't got him a John. There may have been a mental raspberry blown at this stage of Sherlock's deliberations.

It had only been as Albert Golding was advising him to 'hold on to' John that it had occurred to Sherlock to wonder if they might already be in a 'relationship' and that he simply hadn't noticed. It was hardly his area of expertise after all. Perhaps a change in their status would not be quite so radical a shift as he had thought? A field trial seemed to be in order - John had not denied the Goldings' assumption they were a couple, so he would have no choice but to play along.

Sherlock had spent the next part of the evening with a portion of his brain devoted to studying the body language of other couples around them and replicating any actions which did not strike him as being overly nauseating. After a while he had stopped watching the other couples and watched John instead. A while after that, he had realised that he was no longer thinking about it at all, he was just doing it… it being sliding his hand onto John's knee at that particular point, it would seem. Too late to back down, Sherlock had brazened it out. He had not taken in as much of the speeches as he had intended. As soon as they were over, he'd slipped away - if he were to do any actual deducing, it would probably be more effective to do it alone, just this once.

By the time they got home, whatever ridiculously numbered version of Decision One he had reached was dead in the water. He knew that Decision Two would need to be based on a more equal understanding of what was - or wasn't - going on between them, but his planning had not proceeded much beyond the 'poke John and see what happens' stage. And now John, in one of his trademarked 'you may be the smartest man I know, but I can still surprise you' moves, had turned the tables on him brilliantly, offering him the perfect justification but not allowing him to fall into it.

It would be so easy if John would just touch him. Sherlock could feel him standing there, waiting as hours' worth of thoughts were compressed into seconds. Just one touch - he could even pretend it was meant as comfort or reassurance and all Sherlock would have to do would be to let it happen.

But John was far too honourable to do that, of course. He had always been incredibly loyal, worrying about the press turning on Sherlock even before it had happened and not wanting the world to believe he was a fraud once it had. At the time, Sherlock had assumed he was concerned from a personal perspective - afraid that he had been taken in as well - but that had unquestionably been wrong. John had never doubted him, never wavered, never lost faith, not for a moment. John cared simply because Sherlock was his…

Sherlock waited for a word to present itself as the ending to that sentence, but none was forthcoming. In fact, the sentence seemed to feel that it had done its bit, promptly packing up the rest of the letters available and sauntering jauntily off, scooping up the ellipsis as it went and leaving only a full stop behind. Sherlock contemplated the full stop with some dismay. He did not want to belong to anybody! Except that he… His thoughts spun as his mental landscape suddenly tilted and he was oddly reminded of a film he had pretended not to love as a child which had shifted from greyscale to colour part way through. He pushed the memory back down and his world righted itself. More or less.

He started summoning words and laying them over the window in front of him. The negative things: all the reasons and reminders which he had been shouting at himself for the last three weeks. His eyes ran down the list. Several of the items had actually just been wiped out by John's offer. Relationship. Romance. The dreaded word Cuddles, the very sound of which inevitably made him cringe, all of those could be deleted, or… actually deleting them was perhaps a little… he gave them a strike-through instead. Then he went back and deleted Cuddles. No place for that on a list belonging to a Holmes. Definitely not.

What did that leave? He squinted at the list, almost struggling to read the next word. Sex - in extremely small letters. He overlooked the awareness that he'd forced that one in on principle, it being a reversal of a long-standing decision. Loss of control - well there hadn't exactly been an over-abundance of that about the place lately, anyway. Surrender - but only to John, who he trusted completely. Change... was better than boredom. Danger. Sherlock frowned. Surely that was a 'pro' rather than a 'con'? He ignored it. Addiction… was something he'd beaten before. Power… it was true that he would be giving John a great deal of power over him; did he fear that it would be abused? The answer was such a resounding 'No' that he nearly crossed it off completely.

He read on, the list having long since reached the bottom of the pane and started scrolling up, moving faster and faster to keep pace with him, the reasons becoming increasingly tenuous and his justifications for ignoring them ever more inventive. It was as if he were arguing with himself, wanting desperately to say 'Yes', but just unable to take the step.

The words started to blur and Sherlock blinked, focusing again to see the typeface melting away and reforming into a single line across the centre of the glass.

'You can have this.' It looked like John's writing.

Sherlock stared at it.

"I choose this," he said. "You."

His voice sounded odd but the words were clear. He started to turn.

"Wait."

He stilled, hearing John exhale but unable to see his reflection in the window. There were just his own wide eyes and parted lips, an expression which could have been found in an illustrated dictionary next to the word 'anticipation'.

John's hand settled between his shoulder blades and Sherlock jumped. Even through a shirt and a suit jacket, the contact made him jump. He could feel every finger of that hand, resting in a location which it had touched many times before, but this was the first time it had felt like a brand.

"Relax," John told him.

Sherlock managed a half laugh. "That's difficult when I know what you're going to do."

John's hand slid higher, his other joining it, reaching over Sherlock's shoulders to grip the lapels of his jacket. He stretched up, his voice a low murmur in Sherlock's ear as he eased the jacket away. "You have no idea what I'm going to do."

His words were so bright, Sherlock had to close his eyes. Oh, the joy of not knowing…

The jacket was gone. He heard John throw it to a chair.

"Speaking of which, is there anything I shouldn't do?"

A multitude of images flickered through Sherlock's mind like freeze frames from 'Porn: The Highlights', but he didn't see anything which would make him say 'No' to John. He shook his head, then quivered as hands settled on his upper back, their heat blazing through the fine material of his shirt.

"Actually, I find it difficult to imagine you saying 'No' when you're like this," John observed. "You've never been big on boundaries." His thumbs started circling, and Sherlock rolled his shoulders, easing into the deliberate nature of the movement. It felt like an overture... no… before that - like tuning to an 'A' before the concert began. John was giving him the note and Sherlock followed it as it began to travel down his spine.

John spoke quietly. "I'm sure it's obvious but you can say 'No' at any time - either 'stop that' or 'stop completely'."

The movement Sherlock was tracking reached his waist, thumbs sliding from side to side in a holding pattern.

"Tell me you understand."

"I understand," Sherlock confirmed. His voice was getting odder. He reached for his shirt buttons.

"Stop." John stepped right up behind him, his arms stretching around and hands pressing down over Sherlock's own, flattening them against his chest. "I don't think so, do you?"

There was a reproving nip at the back of his shoulder and Sherlock shivered, his reflection displaying puzzlement. "Did you not want to…?"

"Oh, I want to," John promised. "I want to, and I will…" his fingers threaded through Sherlock's own, "...but not just yet."

He started stroking their joined hands slowly down and Sherlock's head fell back, he couldn't help it. John's hands were moving deliberately... purposefully... with complete confidence. This was really happening, John was touching him, John was going to...

"Do you remember what I said to you in the taxi, when we were on our way to see Wiggins?" John asked softly. "I was talking about what constituted a kiss."

Sherlock remembered perfectly well. He remembered everything John said to him. It had been refreshing these past weeks to have new data - the old memories were sadly overused after six months away.

"I said 'You kept your clothes on and I kept my hands out of them'," John continued. "I know you remember, because your reaction was unforgettable." His fingers eased free, hands settling on Sherlock's hips just as they had done a week before. A firm grip, but a perfectly decent one.

"Well, you can keep your clothes on for a little while, this time..." John started.

It was obvious where the sentence was going but Sherlock still held his breath as he waited for the end.

"…but I am not going to keep my hands out of them."

Sherlock's exhale was embarrassingly loud, but John didn't comment on it. He seemed to be following his own train of thought.

"So many times you've asked me to fetch things for you," he murmured. "Things you were too busy or too lazy to get for yourself."

Sherlock had a fleeting… concern - was that the word? - that he was about to be punished in some way, but it soon became clear that John had something entirely different in mind.

"Even retrieving things from your own pockets," he continued, his fingers edging inwards. "Although not usually these ones…" His hands slid into the front pockets of Sherlock's trousers and there was nothing casual about this touch, this wasn't decent, not at all.

Sherlock shuddered, raising one arm to grip the edge of the window frame.

"Next time, maybe I'll check these first," John suggested, with a slight rasp to his voice. "When you're at the lab at Bart's perhaps, watching a crucial reaction through your microscope and you have no hands free."

Sherlock pictured the scene in his mind. Would he be standing, or perched on a lab stool? Standing, he thought. Just as he was now. More or less. He tried not to moan as John's fingers brushed over the front of his thighs through the thin silk of his pocket linings.

"I'd have to be very thorough..."

Thumbs found the lower edge of his boxer shorts and pushed underneath and Sherlock held his breath.

"… be absolutely sure that whatever you'd demanded wasn't in here."

Fingers followed, stroking up along the creases of his groin and the breath was gone, possibly forever.

"You… you wouldn't," he managed; awareness of his surroundings, of background noise, of anything else at all fading out as his entire focus spiralled down to where John was touching him... to where John was going to touch him...

John chuckled, his silk-covered fingers moving back and forth, back and forth… running along the V-shape from Sherlock's hipbones right down to where his torso ended and his legs took over. "No, I wouldn't," he promised, his movements pausing. Then he lowered his voice. "But I could."

Sherlock could feel his body responding; hot, heavy arousal - so strong, so soon. Almost too much.

Not enough.

"And your experiment would take precedence, naturally," John murmured. "You couldn't move away, couldn't use your hands, couldn't do anything to stop me."

The tips of his fingers brushed the sides of an erection which had been building for… years, and Sherlock groaned, shifting his feet wider apart to increase his stability as it became clear that he would soon be having an issue with the concept of 'vertical'.

"I could do whatever I liked," John said, taking advantage of the move to dip one hand down between Sherlock's legs, still through his pocket but inside his underwear, and oh God, this was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent happening. Sherlock raised his other arm to the window frame, resting more of his weight forward as silky material with John's fingers behind it caressed parts of his body which had been neglected for over a decade and seemed to have spent the time growing extra nerve endings, all of which were tuned to whatever frequency was emanating from the man behind him.

"Perhaps you would complain," John suggested.

Sherlock bloody well doubted it.

"You might protest… ask me what I thought I was doing… demand that I took my hands out of your pockets immediately."

Sherlock couldn't remotely imagine doing anything of the kind.

"And I would do so, of course." John pulled his hands free, then stretched up and nipped apologetically at the back of Sherlock's neck. "I might have intended to tease you for longer, but in the end…"

Sherlock sucked in his stomach to leave more room for the fingers at the fastening of his trousers.

"…I would have to strip you."

There was a rustle of fabric as Sherlock was suddenly bared from the waist down, John having managed to drop his boxers at the same time. Sherlock toed off his shoes and socks and kicked everything aside. Then he waited, still leaning forward with both hands against the window frame, realising that he would look fairly normal from outside, with his shirt still on and the lights turned out so that his lower half was obscured by the net curtain. He folded his arms at the elbow and leaned on them instead, resting them on the sash which ran the width of the window. He waited.

"Do not move." John was gone.

Sherlock didn't move. Well… there may have been a certain amount of twitching, but he could hardly be held accountable for that, he'd had very little control over the thing since John had first kissed him. Thus did Sherlock abdicate responsibility for his nether regions and reassign it to John, who seemed to have a much better understanding of what was going on down there anyway.

"Gorgeous." John's voice sounded from the doorway. "Your shirt would normally keep you decent, but that position does wonders for the view."

Sherlock debated whether to lower his arms.

"Don't even think about lowering your arms." John had crossed the room with great speed and Sherlock felt the brush of fingertips at each side of his hips, just below the level of his shirt. Skin to skin for the first time, but not enough… not nearly enough. He pressed his lips together to hold in the observation. Making demands of John at this time seemed extremely inadvisable.

John's fingers started to slide round to the back, following the line of the shirt's hem at first, but quickly abandoning it in favour of a more comprehensive approach.

Sherlock rested his head down in the crook of his elbow and held back a groan. What was he doing? Standing here, virtually naked in his own living room, completely exposed and vulnerable, getting his arse thoroughly groped by his eternally surprising flatmate who... ohhh... Sherlock's thoughts stuttered as John's hands angled inwards, lifting and separating now as they squeezed and Sherlock bit his own arm and tried not to push himself backwards and further into John's hands, wanting to rock until those fingers slid just a little bit further... especially that one... that one was so close now... so very close to where he wanted to feel it...

"Legs apart."

Sherlock must have been too slow because John's hands dropped down to his inner thighs and pushed until his feet had almost a shoulder's width between them and Sherlock tried to remember that breathing, however boring, was not actually an optional activity.

John moved so that he was standing slightly to the side, his right hand sliding interestingly back up to almost... almost where Sherlock wanted it, while his left arm slipped under the shirt, then seemed to hesitate before simply settling around Sherlock's waist.

"You all right?"

Sherlock raised his head long enough to look round and risk a Level Five 'get on with it' stare.

John snorted. "I'm going to take that as a 'yes'." Both hands moved with sudden purpose, one wrapping around from the front and the other dipping down from behind then curving up between Sherlock's legs, and Sherlock made an unholy noise and desperately locked his knees in an attempt to keep himself upright.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh…" he sank his teeth into his forearm again to shut himself up.

John's hands were… amazing… incredible… fantastic… all the words that John had been showering on Sherlock since first they met, he should get back with interest… avid interest… obsessive, compulsive, desperate interest… Sherlock's internal discourse started to break down and he had to free his mouth simply to drag in some air as John worked on him and surely something had changed since the last time he'd experienced anything along these lines, because nothing, nothing in the world had ever… could ever… possibly feel… anything… remotely… as good… as…

John's right hand moved a few inches backwards and Sherlock's knees gave out.

John caught him around the waist and folded down to the floor with him, sitting back on his heels with Sherlock in his lap, and Sherlock was twisting, trying to turn around, wanting to push John flat and crawl all over him but John wouldn't let him, had a fist knotted in the back of his shirt holding him in place, and Sherlock gripped each side of his own collar at the front and pulled as hard as his trembling muscles would allow, which was pretty damned hard because it would be difficult to find someone more motivated at that moment in time. The noise of tearing fabric was loud but Sherlock could still hear his heart beating over it as he took advantage of the surprise and managed to swivel round, sliding onto his knees so that he was facing John and beside him, but then there was a hand gripping the side of his neck and another in his hair and then John was kissing him and everything else stopped.

Kissing John. Being kissed by John. How had he gone a whole week without this? And two weeks before that? And all his adult life before that? It didn't seem feasible. Sherlock was light headed, his mouth opening immediately, hungrily, kissing back. He raised his arms and pulled John closer, the temptation to push him down creeping in again. Sherlock was bigger, he could…

He felt John's hand at the collar of his shirt, beginning to pull it down and away and that was a definite step in the right direction - get his last remaining item of clothing off and then they could make a start on John's, since he was still shockingly overdressed for the situation. Without breaking the kiss, Sherlock dropped his arms and shrugged the shirt off his shoulders, realising as John tugged it down that the cuffs were still fastened and his hands were too big to slip through. He grunted impatiently and brought his wrist forward... tried to bring his wrist forward.

'What the…?' He pulled away and looked round. John had the shirt half way down his back and the sleeves were pinning his arms at the elbow. "Cuffs, John," he almost snapped in his frustration. "I need to unfasten the cuffs."

"Oh, really?"

Sherlock's head whipped back round and John had an entirely new smile on his face. Sherlock's heart kicked his chest so hard that he gasped.

"I think you're forgetting something," John suggested, his hand keeping hold of the bunched shirt so that Sherlock was effectively immobilised.

For a brief, horrible moment, Sherlock was afraid that he was going to come. He squeezed his eyes closed and pictured Molly's Easter jumper, which had fluffy chicks stitched onto it and was simply the most hideous thing he had ever seen.

"Unless you've changed your mind?" John's voice didn't sound very worried.

Sherlock opened his eyes. No: definitely not worried.

"Perhaps you're not enjoying yourself?" John suggested, his free hand reaching out.

Sherlock watched the hand.

"Maybe you don't like being… helpless."

The hand went out of focus just before settling at the base of his throat. Sherlock swallowed.

"If you want me to stop, you only have to say so."

Sherlock pressed his lips together and said nothing - as emphatically as possible.

"Otherwise, I think I shall just carry on touching you…"

There was the lightest brush of a fingertip over his nipple and Sherlock jumped, almost wrenching his shoulder.

"… wherever…"

The other nipple, and a much firmer contact. Sherlock squirmed as the sensation radiated out across his chest.

"… I like."

John's hand moved south, but it didn't wrap around him this time, just stroked a line from base to tip with one finger. Sherlock was no longer able to keep his mouth shut but there was no danger of a 'stop' emerging from it.

The wandering hand returned to cup his jaw, tipping his head back as John knelt up and leaned over him.

"You're so beautiful."

Sherlock stared up into his face.

"I know you know that, but it's not something I would normally tell you, so I think it's worth mentioning."

John's hand smoothed the hair off his forehead, stroking through the curls, his eyes briefly distant. He spoke almost to himself.

"I missed you so much."

Any reply that Sherlock may have worked up to making was forestalled as John bent and kissed him. Sherlock decided to try and answer that way instead - it had worked the first time they had kissed and he'd learned so much about how John had felt during their separation.

He pictured himself in a succession of grotty rooms, his words trailing off as he looked up and remembered that he was alone, always alone these days. He recalled the constant sensation of eyes on his back because the only eyes he trusted were no longer watching it. He saw again the room in which he had killed Moran, but this was a few days earlier and it was Sherlock who was sitting on the crate, smoking one cigarette after another as he watched John through the window of 221B and tried to tell himself that the sick and empty feeling in his stomach was a combination of nicotine poisoning and poor nutrition.

He kissed John back and thought about being on his own.

John pulled sharply away.

Sherlock blinked in surprise, trying to clear his vision. "What's wrong?" Truly, his voice was getting odder by the minute.

John was staring at his own fingers, which had been stroking over Sherlock's face a moment before. His eyes moved back to Sherlock's and widened even further. "You're asking me that?"

Sherlock shrugged, wishing they could get back to the kissing.

"What were you just thinking about?"

"I…" Sherlock looked away but John brought both hands to cup his face and turned it back around. Sherlock resisted the temptation to shrug off the ruined shirt while he had the chance. He hesitated over his words, but then told himself to stop being ridiculous. "ThatImissedyoutoo." All right, so that had sounded a bit ridiculous, but at least he'd said it - and without having to perform some peculiar dance at a crime scene, or whatever John had suggested on that fateful taxi ride.

It took John a moment, but he got there. "Get that shirt off." He already had half his own buttons undone and was reaching over his shoulder as he sprang to his feet.

Sherlock watched as he pulled both the shirt and one of the T-shirts he obsessively wore underneath everything straight over his head.

"Shirt. Now!" John barked and Sherlock jumped, then started to wriggle free as he was abruptly faced, in a very literal sense, with the evidence of an extremely aroused Captain John Watson, formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. Sherlock had never seen anyone disrobe so quickly, or to such impressive effect. The evidence could only be described as compelling. He realised that his mouth was hanging open and wondered if John might take advantage of that fact.

John, however, clearly had his own ideas in mind. Sherlock had only just wrenched his hand free of the last sleeve, having decided that there was no point worrying about those buttons since the others had already been fired like shotgun pellets across the room, when John took him down. Straight down, in fact, flat onto his back on the floor, although even then John controlled it, one hand cupping the back of Sherlock's head as they landed and the breath rushed out of him.

Almost immediately he was forced to revise an earlier opinion, since he had previously assumed that there was no method by which the experience of kissing John could be improved, it already being so very, very, vastly, enormously, radically, superlatively better than the experience of kissing anyone who wasn't John. Clearly he had theorised ahead of his data because it was now extremely apparent that kissing John while they were both naked added an entirely new dimension, taking the whole thing from 'who is this man and what is he doing to me?' to 'who am I and why aren't we shagging already?'

Recalling that his arms were now free Sherlock put them to use, attempting to pull John down more fully as he was still half kneeling rather than lying flat, which meant that certain key areas were not in contact and Sherlock felt strongly that contact between said areas would very definitely end up being classified as a 'good thing'.

John nipped at his bottom lip, then scooped an arm around his lower back and lifted, which seemed a strange way of going about things but certainly did the job. Sherlock moaned and pressed up further.

John nipped him again. "Legs."

Sherlock was so used to contorting himself into odd positions that he had barely noticed the pull on his thigh muscles, but it was true that his legs were still folded underneath him. He managed to straighten them out and John lay down fully on top of him. Sherlock folded his legs up again - this time around John. And oh, that felt… so much better than 'good'. He wriggled a little and John rocked his hips and Sherlock turned his head to the side, embarrassed to think about what his face must look like.

This seemed to be taken as an invitation to kiss the side of his neck. Maybe it had been an invitation, Sherlock had no idea, but by this point he assumed that John's thoughts on this topic were generally good ones. He arched into the touch, stroking his hands down John's back until he was impeded by his own legs, which he tightened reflexively, not entirely sure whether he was trying to push himself up or to pull John down, but either way it was working - and not just for him judging from the kisses on his neck, which were developing teeth.

John propped himself up on one elbow and slid the other hand down Sherlock's side. All the way down, from the top right down to the… his bottom and Sherlock curved his arms around John's shoulders and held on and… waited.

Never his strong suit. "Are you going to fuck me?"

He got a passing stroke from one finger and immediately imagined two. Or three. Or that squirmy tongue which he must see poking out at least twenty times a day. He suppressed the thought at once - it wasn't helping with his already dubious self-control. The finger returned and he whimpered; but he didn't beg. That was very important. He wasn't going to beg, not for anyone. There was a circling movement and Sherlock remembered John saying after The Experiment kiss that he didn't particularly want him to beg. He tried to work out if that put the begging option back on the table, but it was extremely difficult to concentrate.

John's hand moved away, reaching behind his own back and unlocking Sherlock's ankles. "Legs down," he instructed.

Sherlock considered his options. John raised an eyebrow. Sherlock lowered his legs - unhurriedly, to indicate his displeasure. John ignored the petulance and shifted his own legs to the outside, then sat up and reached across to his trousers, producing a sachet from the pocket. Sherlock frowned at it - it didn't look like a condom. His eyes went from the sachet, which John was tearing open, to his face, which wore an extremely suggestive grin, then back to the sachet, the contents of which John was now squeezing out onto his hand.

"Put your arms up over your head."

"Why?"

"Because I want to see you like that, stretched out and vulnerable."

Sherlock stared at him, the picture already clear in his mind. John bent forward and licked across his nipple.

"I want you to lay back and let me do this to you. I want to give it and I want you to take it."

Sherlock's pupils must have been enormous and he shuddered as John's tongue flicked out again before he sat back up.

"You're not going to…?"

"Not this time, no."

Slowly, Sherlock raised his arms, stretching himself out just as John wanted him. A slick hand wrapped around him and he arched his back as it started to move. Oh God... John was so horribly good at this, better than him, it didn't feel anything like this when he did it... Oh, bloody hell...

John's weight shifted to one side and he tapped Sherlock's opposite thigh. "Up." There was nothing unhurried about Sherlock's obedience this time; he bent his leg at the knee and angled it out to the side as well, just so there was no doubt at all about his profound approval for this plan.

It quickly became apparent that there had been ample lube in the sachet because John's middle finger was right there, circling and then slowly, finally pushing in and Sherlock cried out with the sudden pleasure of it - not just the physical sensation, although that would quickly follow at the rate John was going, but simply the fact of it, the feeling of being stretched and invaded and owned by someone he trusted, someone he could let go with, someone he… ohhh… and that was exactly the right place and Sherlock was going to be chanting to some unspecified deity again in a minute and he put the foot of his bent leg down flat on the floor so that he could push up against it, and…

"John..." Was that even his voice? It sounded as if he were being strangled.

"You really like that." There was pleased approval in John's tone and Sherlock forced his eyes open, wondering when they had closed.

"Told you we were…" he broke off with a moan as John added a second finger, "… compatible," he managed to finish before his head was tipping back again and then there were no more words, they had gone, fled the scene, leaving only noises which would have embarrassed him at any other time but which at least stopped him from blurting out any of the things he hadn't even admitted to himself and certainly wasn't ready to face. And John's other hand was still moving and Sherlock shook and trembled and didn't know what to do with himself or where to focus or what to think about or how to cope with so much... so much... and lasted for around two minutes before his entire body arched up off the floor as he was overtaken by an orgasm which left all those that he'd experienced previously seem unworthy of sharing the same name.

It took him considerably longer than two minutes to recover.

He was vaguely aware of John attending to his own needs and tried to help but he was woefully uncoordinated and John shushed him, so he settled back down, absently recording John's sounds to review later as he drifted, his mind wonderfullly blank and serene.

When he came round, John was kneeling at his side and cleaning him with a damp cloth.

Sherlock watched him, not protesting at some of the more intimate movements, just letting him get on with it.

John looked up at his face. "You all right?" he asked gently. He had his trousers back on, but was still shirtless.

Sherlock nodded.

"I've got your dressing gown. Do you want to...?"

"I think I'll go to bed."

"Come on, then." John offered him a hand and Sherlock took it without protest, accepting also the arm around his waist and then assistance into his pyjamas and into bed.

"Are you... do you want me to stay with you for a while?" John's voice sounded uncertain for the first time in over an hour as he clicked off the light.

Sherlock frowned into the darkness, confused by the answer he wanted to give. He was fine, he was clean and he was almost asleep.

"Why would I want you to stay?"

He felt a hand stroke over his hair as his awareness faded, then John's voice sounded quietly from the door.

"No reason at all."

Artwork for this chapter (Link on my profile page):

Put your arms up over your head, by daysofstorm