John felt slow and dull as Sherlock's words belatedly penetrated his post-orgasmic haze.

"Wait...what did you say?" He pushed himself upon one elbow, his mouth no doubt gaping. "Do you mean...were you just saying you think of — of me when you...touch yourself?"

"Well, of course, John. Who else?"

"But...wha —...since when?"

"Hard to say for certain as it intensified over time, but I suspect it first began when you shot a cabbie for me."

As John continued no doubt to gape at him, Sherlock's brows knitted together, caution entering his pale eyes. He drew up on his elbow as well, his eyes narrowing as he searched John's face. "Not good?"

John felt his mind spinning. "No," he said, and then his heart lurched as Sherlock's expression grew shuttered. "I mean, it's good," he rushed to clarify. "It's — it's a little...overwhelmingly good."

"Oh," Sherlock said, his face easing as he lay back down. "That's all right, then."

John flopped down on his back as well. "Yes. Yes, it is."

"You're saying everything twice," Sherlock observed wryly.

John chuckled weakly. "I'm...a bit surprised, I suppose." He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Are you saying that — that you've wanted...this...pretty much since we met?"

Sherlock tented his fingertips together, slanting John an ironic glance. "What I said, John, was that you have been my primary masturbatory fantasy since we met. It's quite a presumptuous leap to conclude from that information that I desired a relationship."

"Oh," John said. "Right," he nodded. Then he stared up at the ceiling, blinking a few times. "No," he said, more firmly. "Actually, I don't understand in the least."

He sat up. Sherlock opened his mouth to speak and John held a hand up. "Hold on. I have a feeling this might be a long conversation, and I'm a little...sticky...for that right now."

He moved to the en suite, shedding his trousers and pants as he went. Once there he wet two flannels with warm water, throwing one to Sherlock. Sherlock caught it neatly out of the air without even looking. "Show off," John grumbled, rolling his eyes.

John shut the bathroom door, performing his own ablutions, taking a moment to try to collect his racing thoughts. Hard as he tried, he couldn't quite wrap his mind around it. Sherlock had desired him, of all people? For all this time — almost since the day they met? Why had he never said anything, or given even the least sign of it?

Finally, he decided there was no point fretting about it in the loo when the man himself could answer some direct questions. He emerged and, after a moment's hesitation, dressed in pajama bottoms and a vest instead of the t-shirt he had been wearing since Sherlock's arrival. Ridiculous to be self-conscious about his scar now, even though his cheeks heated slightly against his will.

Sherlock looked like he hadn't stirred an inch, lying on his back with his hands still steepled, but he was wearing new pajama bottoms as well. The long, pale expanse of his chest glistened slightly with a sheen of massage oil, and John shivered a bit with both new and remembered arousal just to see it.

He went around to what had become his side of the bed, lying carefully down so he was next to Sherlock, just brushing his side but not pressed up against him. He needed to keep a clear head.

"So," he said finally, trying to choose his words carefully. "What you're saying is that you have been...attracted...to me since I shot Hope?"

Sherlock sighed gustily. "Are we really going to revisit every moment of our acquaintance, John? Because that sounds remarkably tedious."

The rush of annoyance managed to clear John's head considerably. He tamped down on his temper, keeping his voice calm and firm. "We don't have to rehash everything, Sherlock, but yes, this does need some discussion. Because, honestly, I don't have the slightest idea what is going on right now." He turned toward Sherlock, reaching out to hold one thin wrist, rubbing his thumb up and down soothingly over the pulse point. "We need to understand each other," he said more gently.

Some of the petulance faded from Sherlock's expression. He turned toward John as well, and then nodded.

"Right, then," John said. "So. You were attracted to me from the start..."

"From when you shot the cabbie," Sherlock corrected. "Before that you were interesting, but that night — you killed a man, John, killed him for me, and then...you made me laugh." Somehow Sherlock's tone made both events sound equally surprising, as if making him laugh were on par with manslaughter. "You were...fascinating," Sherlock added, his eyes suddenly lit from within with blue-green warmth.

"Oh." John felt himself blinking again, taking all that in, his heart pounding. "So you...thought about me. But..." he hazarded, "You...didn't want to act on it?"

Sherlock shrugged moodily, looking somewhat evasive. "What changed your mind?" John asked, suddenly desperate to know that above all other things.

Sherlock flounced over onto his back, gazing at the ceiling again. "I didn't change my mind," he said, apparently addressing his remarks haughtily to the crack in the plaster. "You changed yours."

"I..."

"You asked me into your bed," Sherlock accused, his voice edgy and aggressive now. "You called me —" He stopped abruptly, pulling his arm free of John's hand. His voice was cold when he began again, but John could hear the tremor underneath. "You — you were drunk. I was...mistaken."

Oh, bloody fuck. It took a moment, but John filled in the unspoken end of his sentence. "I called you love. I didn't think you heard that. You...you never said." He threw his forearm over his eyes, feeling the world spin around him again. He should be panicking, he supposed, and he was, but he also felt suddenly...free. He had been trying so hard to hide this, and he needn't have even bothered. Sherlock had known from the moment he returned.

"As I said...I was mistaken." When John snapped his eyes open Sherlock's face was cold and set, and it was breaking John's heart just to look at it.

"No." John reached out, tangling his hand in Sherlock's hair, tugging urgently to bring his face to his. "You most certainly were not mistaken." He took a deep breath, feeling like he was jumping off a cliff. "I did, I called you love, because...because I love you. I'm not sure when it happened exactly, probably ages before I figured it out, but I finally realized it just before...before you fell. And then I lost you, and I've been lost without you, and then you came back, and I've been trying to hide it from you, but that was stupid, yeah? Because you can't hide anything from Sherlock bloody Holmes and you've known all along, haven't you?"

Sherlock was gazing at him now, openly curious. "Why would you be trying to hide that?"

"I..." John shrugged. "I thought you wouldn't like it. Sentiment, you know. I thought...you'd feel embarrassed for me, that I loved you when you didn't feel the same way about me, and it would be awkward, and you were trapped here until we find Moran, and —"

"But of course I feel the same," Sherlock interrupted, his brows raised, his voice sharp. "Obviously."

"What?" John's heart was thundering, his head buzzing. He swallowed, his throat suddenly impossibly dry. "Sherlock, if you are taking the piss right now I swear..."

"Don't be ridiculous, John," Sherlock snapped. "Why else would I..." He waved his hand in an all-encompassing gesture of frustration. "All of this."

John stared at him in shock, desperately scanning his face for some kind of sign that this was a joke, or a sham, or an experiment — something. Sherlock looked steadily back at him.

"You can't," he found himself saying weakly.

The lines of Sherlock's face suddenly sharpened, making him look cold and yet somehow incredibly fragile. "You think me...incapable of such emotion?" he said, each word like a shard of glass.

"What?" John's heart lurched again. "No, god no, Sherlock." He reeled Sherlock in, pressing their foreheads together, embarrassed by the dampness in the corner of his eyes. "Jesus, that's not what I meant. Just that..."

He took a deep breath, letting it out with a shudder. "I mean just look at you, you're brilliant and posh and dead gorgeous, and what am I? It just doesn't make sense, not like it would with — " God, it hurt to say it, it hurt just to think it, but he couldn't hold the truth inside anymore. " — Irene, or someone like that. Someone always three steps ahead, someone people would do anything to touch."

He kept his eyes shut tight even as he felt Sherlock's right arm wind around him, the long fingers of Sherlock's left hand coming up to brush gently down his cheek.

"Insecurity," Sherlock rumbled with an air of discovery. "Unexpected and...erroneous."

Feeling like a coward, John ducked his face into the crook of Sherlock's neck. That one word for all the complex emotions he had been feeling, insecurity, and he felt like a spotty thirteen-year-old girl. "Just...never mind," he groaned into the skin of Sherlock's neck.

"No." Sherlock drew back, his eyes serious. "You said we have to understand each other, and you were correct. I had not realized..." He trailed off, closing his eyes tight and then opening them again, his gaze boring into John's. "You said to look at me. So, let us look at me. I am a former junkie, by every accounting an arrogant, insufferable individual, with a callousness bordering on sociopathy, black moods that render me incapable of logical thought, and not a friend in the world but for you."

John opened his mouth to protest and found Sherlock's fingers pressing firmly against his lips, holding him mute. "Now let's look at you." Sherlock's eyes were silver fire, razing over John's face, burning his doubts and apprehensions to the ground. "Look at the doctor, quick and decisive. Look at the captain, steady and courageous. Look at the friend, the partner — loyal and strong and endlessly patient." John had never heard such fervency, such sincerity and emotion, in the voice of Sherlock Holmes. "I don't want someone three steps ahead, John, I want someone right at my side, just as you are, always. And I would, I did, do anything to return to you, to have the chance to be able to touch you, even though I was certain that you would never welcome it." Sherlock's arm around John's waist was gripping him so tight it was hurting, the long fingers pressed against John's lips chilled and trembling. "So look at you, John. You are...everything to me. Everything worth having." He pressed his forehead into John's temple, his breath hot against his cheek. "My John," he breathed.

John didn't know which of them moved first but suddenly they were kissing — frantically, desperately. Sherlock's mouth was soft and hot and wet and John devoured it, feeling Sherlock open and yield to him. He poured his feelings into the pressure of tongues and the gentle scrape of teeth — relief and tenderness and giddy, unbelievable joy. They kissed until they were breathless and gasping, clinging together tightly as if the other might be suddenly wrenched away at any moment. Finally John pulled back, pressing his face into Sherlock's neck, breathing him in as he giggled helplessly.

"Sherlock Holmes. You're a bloody romantic."

He could feel the lips pressed against his temple smile. "If you breathe a word of this to Mycroft I'll murder you in your sleep."

John shook his head, finally sobering. "We wasted so much bloody time," he finally said.

"Well, I am not the one who both frequently and vociferously proclaimed himself to be 'not gay'," Sherlock said, the edge back in his voice.

"Hey," John said, sensing the vulnerability behind the anger and nuzzling even closer. "You know I wasn't trying to hurt you, right? I thought — you know, that sex was not your area, married to your work and all that, and it would make you uncomfortable if people were always making insinuations. And as for me, I really didn't know. I mean, I still don't know, honestly. I suppose I'm bisexual by definition now, but, as far as I can tell it's...women, and then you. Just you."

He felt Sherlock's body ease against him. Finally he nodded. "It was unexpected on all counts, I suppose. That we would be each other's exceptions," Sherlock said, a smile back in his voice.

John smiled in return against the skin of Sherlock's neck, feeling himself start to drift a little. Between the sex and the emotional conversation he was as knackered as he had ever been in his life, his head empty and floating with relief and happiness. "Lucky, that."

He felt a hand in his hair as Sherlock curled his long body around him. "Indeed."