John woke up feeling… dry. Very dry. It was like the gobi desert took a shit in his mouth then, as an encore, reached its arm down his throat and sanded down his esophagus. And yet… he felt amazing. He felt like he was floating just half an inch above himself, his skin glowing with a golden warmth. He curled his arm tighter around the vampire sprawled across him, nudging at the top of his head with his chin.

Sherlock didn't even stir. He hadn't budged since their last bout of feeding roughly… two hours ago. He was sleeping the sleep even the dead only dreamed of sleeping. Every once and awhile, his nose would twitch against his neck. But otherwise, he might as well have been made of wood. Wood that hummed.

Like a… dead tree containing a large bee hive.

It was good, though. Sherlock needed this. He was obviously worn down to the bone and this was probably his first time actually sleeping in weeks. John didn't care how different his biology was, he needed actual sleep occasionally. Everything does.

He moved Sherlock's head to a slightly more comfortable position off his shoulder and onto his chest, flexing his arm to get the blood flowing in it again. As he did, he realized his fingers were still wrapped around the handle of the knife that he'd drawn his own blood with just half an hour before. And a half an hour before that. And five minutes before that. It seemed Sherlock preferred to take his meals one sip at a time. But that was beside the point. The point was… on the knife in John's hand. It was very sharp. He passed the knife to his other, freer, hand to examine it a little closer. His eyes traced the crusts of blood lining every floral whirl of metal, thinking mindlessly how it could possibly be cleaned safely.

Then a thought passed through his head. Just a whim, really. He wondered how much it would take to wake Sherlock. So, without really thinking, John pressed the flat of the cold blade against Sherlock's neck.

"Try it." Sherlock mumbled against John's chest. "I dare you."

John huffed a bewildered laugh. "You want me to kill you?"

"No. But if you were to kill me, I'd prefer it to be now. I'm warm, well-fed, well-rested… There are worse ways to go." Sherlock yawned, plucking the knife out of John's hand and raising it to his lips. "It's not as if you'd do it anyhow."

John waggled his head in agreement, groaning as another flood of mild euphoria washed through his system. "Is it always like this?"

Sherlock hummed a negative as he sucked the dried blood from the many crevices of the blade. "Hasn't been for a long time. Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson do their best for me, but there's just no pleasure in it. Not like the old days, when I half had to beg Victor to keep his fluids in his body. He'd bleed himself dry in a second. Just to keep me warm."

That was a lot of information to take in while inebriated, so John didn't mostly. He just let it glide gently over his head as Sherlock licked at the drained wounds on his shoulder. "Still hungry?"

"It'd be unwise to take any more from you today." He sighed, pushing himself off of John slowly, hesitantly.

John grinned lazily. That's what he said last time. He wound his fingers into Sherlock's curls, dragging him down into something that was similar to a kiss, but just a little too wet.


When John next awoke, he was alone, the vampire-shaped weight on his body mysteriously absent. The saliva pooled in his clavicle was fast on its way to drying, so he guessed that Sherlock had been away for at least fifteen minutes.

Although he felt completely and utterly drained in several ways, his bladder was full to bursting. In the back of his mind he was thankful for that, as otherwise he might never have gotten up the motivation to move from his place on the couch. John slowly sat up, stretching his neck and back as they were both sore from holding one position for so long. Gingerly, like a 90 year old man after a run-in with a bus, he eased his weight onto his feet and moved slowly towards the door. Luckily, once he started moving his muscles gradually began to remember that they were, in fact, functional rather than decorative and began to act as such.

As he was taking what was perhaps the most satisfying piss in all of human history, his nose caught the bacon frying. It occurred to John that he'd forgotten exactly how much time had passed since he last ate. In fact, he just might've forgotten about the existence of food entirely. But none of that mattered, because all he knew now was that the bacon currently cooking smelled so good, he might've blacked out for a second just thinking about it. His mouth watered with perhaps the last ounce of moisture left in his body and he almost forgot to put his penis away in his haste to get to the kitchen.

"John." Sherlock rumbled in greeting, glancing over his shoulder for a brief second before cracking a couple of eggs into the sizzling pan. In that second, he managed to give the doctor the most thorough once-over he'd ever experienced, followed by a self-satisfied smirk. "I tried to wake you, but my efforts were utterly futile. So I assume you were sleeping very well."

"Yeah." John growled, his throat too rough and dry for anything else. He resisted the urge to just shove his mouth under the tap and poured himself a glass of water. A rather troubling thought occurred to him. By his nigh-impeccable sense of time, it should be late evening and Sherlock was making breakfast. "It's not morning, is it?"

"Not sure. Do humans consider 1:15 to be morning? I've always wondered." Sherlock replied as he kept a careful eye on the eggs. "Also, do you like your eggs runny?"

"No. Thank you." John answered, drinking his third glass of water. "May I ask why you're making bacon and eggs at 1:15am?"

"I only ever drank from Victor at night."

John wondered briefly if Sherlock truly wasn't making sense, or if it was his thoroughly addled mind that couldn't make sense of what otherwise would be a perfectly logical sentence. "Sorry, what?"

"I drank from Victor at night. So when he'd come to, it would be early morning and when I offered to cook for him, he'd request bacon and eggs. So I've never learnt to cook anything other than bacon and eggs." Sherlock elaborated slowly as he tipped the eggs onto the same plate that held the bacon and carried the plate to the spot John had officially, unofficially claimed at the kitchen table. "If you ever choose to repeat tonight's events and would prefer something different, I'd be more than happy to have Mrs. Hudson teach it to me."

John responded only by sitting in the chair Sherlock had pulled out for him and staring in shock at the almost picturesque set-up of two fried eggs and three slices of crisp bacon. "Now all I need is two slices of toast and an obnoxious voice-over and I could sell this as an advert."

"I don't make toast." He said sternly, taking a seat at the side of the table adjacent to John, rather than across from him. "There was an incident."

"No toast then." John blinked, munching on a slice of bacon. "Oh, I need a fork."

Before the words had even left his mouth, Sherlock was up, whirling about like a hawk set loose in the house. "Allow me."

He landed, almost by sheer luck, back in his chair. The detective brandished one of their better forks, stabbing at a generous pile of eggs and holding it about mouth level in front of John's face. His eyebrow twitched expectantly.

"Sherlock." John started. "What are you doing."

There was a long moment. Then Sherlock dropped the fork, letting it clatter against the plate as if he was shocked to find himself holding it.

"I'm sorry. Old habits. I… " Sherlock turned a rather flattering shade of pink and looked down at his hands. "No one stays this long."

John sighed into a bite of egg.

"But, of course you live here, so it's not like you have a choice. Just say the word, I'll back off." He swooped back out of his seat, hardly breathing as he ranted on. "Do you… need anything from tesco? I could pick up the shopping. I noticed you're low on eggs. Well, I think you are, I'm not entirely sure what a normal amount of eggs is but-"

"Sherlock. Stop." The world's greatest detective froze with one arm in his coat and the other reaching for his scarf. John sprinkled a little salt over the eggs and continued to chow down. Taking small, careful bites to keep himself from wolfing it down too quickly. "Sit down."

Sherlock sat, with half his coat still hanging off his shoulder. He stared intently, obviously fighting the urge to bite his lip and shrink away like a scolded child.

John set down the fork, the handle pointed in Sherlock's direction. "This is something you need isn't it? Like the special sofa and the special knife and having me cut myself. This is a part of the ritual too."

"Yes." Sherlock mumbled. "Reciprocation, it's very important to us."

"Then go on." John smiled, nodding towards the fork. He tried his best not to feel too weird as Sherlock fed him like a newly-weaned toddler. "And for the record, I prefer my eggs scrambled."