John Watson stared at Sherlock. He was shocked. Nothing could prepare him for Sherlock Holmes in clothes that made him look like the demonstrator in an S and M sex shop. Then suddenly, the reality of it caused him to erupt into a huge laugh. He rolled side to side giggling hysterically until a fit of coughing took him. Sherlock dropped the whip and rushed over to the bed to see if he was alright. The sight of him up close was almost too much for John and he began to giggle again. Sherlock patted his back to keep him from choking.
Finally John stopped and took deep breaths. Sherlock stared at him with worried eyes. "I take it you don't like the outfit." Sherlock asked, " It doesn't ...turn you on?"
John shook his head smiling slightly, "Sherlock, you look ridiculous. Where did you get those clothes?"
"I bought them." Sherlock said.
"I hope you still have the receipt." John said stifling another giggle. "How did you find them. It's not the sort of thing that they sell at the places that you usually shop."
"I got help from Kate Cooper." Sherlock replied.
"Kate who?" John asked.
"She's an associate of Irene Adler. Lestrade suggested that I might need extreme measures to get your attention."
"Lestrade?"
"Actually Lestrade told me NOT to do anything extreme, and that's how I knew that he thought that that was what might work."
"You talked to Lestrade about us?"
"I was out of my depth. I needed advice on romance. Molly suggested flowers, chocolate and begging, but it isn't really my style, and you don't like chocolate that much..."
"You talked to Molly too? God! This is embarrassing." John said. "Why are you doing this?"
"I thought that it was obvious," Sherlock replied, "Yesterday was not sexually stimulating enough to convince you to stay. Kate said that this would be incredibly stimulating. Do you want to begin?"
"God no Sherlock!" John sighed, "Unstrap me."
"First tell me that you aren't moving." Sherlock demanded.
"I can't do that," John replied.
"Then I can't let you up." Sherlock said standing and walking across the room to retrieve his whip.
John pulled furiously against his straps, "When I get out of here, Sherlock, I'm going to show you how that whip is really used."
"Maybe you just need some time to relax," Sherlock said walking toward the door.
"Wait!" John yelled, "Sherlock!" Sherlock stood, one hand on the doorknob looking away into the living room.
"I'm sorry." John said, "Please close the door and come talk to me."
When Sherlock spoke again, his voice sounded rough and low, "Why?" he asked, "I can tell that you haven't changed your mind."
"Please Sherlock," he implored, " come talk to me."
Sherlock stood stiff for a moment and then, as if a balloon had been deflated his shoulder's dropped and he turned. The bed shook with his weight as he sat down looking at John.
"This IS ridiculous isn't it?" Sherlock said his lips down-turned.
"Yes" John said, "But I must say that you look fetching in that hat."
Sherlock began to laugh, and the two of them guffawed shaking the bed. John and Sherlock stared into each others eyes and smiled. Then Sherlock leaned over and untied John. John rubbed his wrists, and then punched Sherlock on the jaw so that he crashed onto the floor.
Sherlock looked up surprised, but John reached out a hand and pulled Sherlock back up to sit beside him on the edge of the bed. "You deserved that one Sherlock, for drugging me. Whatever possessed you?"
Sherlock took off the cap and placed it on the floor. "It was the logical next step. I had to convince..."
"It was not logical. It was extreme, even for you." John remarked, " This can't have been easy for you. You told me yourself. You despise emotions. You can't stand being out of control. I know that you have virtually no sex drive. Christ! If Irene Adler couldn't get you into bed, and I know she tried, then nobody could. So what's with all this? Why go to such extremes for me?"
Sherlock's head shot up and he stared at John. His lips barely apart. His eyebrows slightly raised. He stared without saying a word.
John stood up and paced across the floor. "I suppose that I should find my pants. Where are they?"
"John." Sherlock began clenching his hands nervously, "I did this because ...if truth be told, I've become quite attached to you. Our partnership is professionally, and personally beneficial to myself, and I thought that you also found it so. And, I discovered that ...just the thought of you leaving me is enough to cause me extreme distress even to the point of physical pain."
John shook his head, "I'm sure that you're exaggerating."
"No, feel it." Sherlock said grabbing John's hand which he placed on his abdomen. John could feel Sherlock's stomach muscles clenching tightly. Only then he noticed that Sherlock had oiled his chest.
"You need to relax," John said sitting down beside Sherlock and rubbing his shoulders., "You're blowing this all out of proportion. You can get on fine without me."
"No I can't." Sherlock said turning away from him.
"Yes you bloody well can!" John said his voice becoming angry, "You left me well enough alone when you did that bloody stunt on the rooftop."
A silence fell. The atmosphere was charged as if a storm cloud had filled the room with negative ions. John glared angrily at Sherlock, finally getting out of his chest the anger that he had harbored since Sherlock had returned.
"John," Sherlock began, "I didn't know you were still angry."
"You didn't?" John snapped getting up to pace the room again, "Oh, so much for the skills of the great detective. So you get a little upset when I speak of leaving you. Your stomach clenches. Perhaps you feel a bit of anxiety about how your work will suffer without your boy Friday around to help you. Oh, how sad for you.
"Where was your concern for me when I thought you were dead? What about my pain? Did you think about how often I woke up in a cold sweat seeing your bloody skull smashed on the pavement? Did you think about how night after night I cried myself to sleep because you were gone and were never coming back? Did you think that when you walked into that door you'd simply erase the months and months of sorrow that I had felt, that YOU let me feel?
"One phone call, just one, a text message even, just some hint that you were alive, it would have given me hope. Stopped me from feeling a pain that I felt would surely kill me.
"You, of all people, should have understood. When Irene faked her death, you were broken up about it. I told her that I would hunt her down if she didn't tell you that she was alive, because I didn't want you to feel the pain of losing her. But you obviously didn't feel concern enough to want to ease my pain. You didn't have any problem living without me then."
Sherlock rushed across the room and grabbed John's hands kneeling on the floor imploring. "John" he said, "I wanted to tell you. Every day I wanted to tell you. I watched you. I knew you were in pain, but others were watching you too. If you acted differently. If you even hinted that I was still alive, then your life would be in danger. Until I had Moran behind bars, I couldn't even give you a hint. I wanted to. You must believe me. You must."
John walked over to Sherlock's bed and threw himself face down on it. He had begun to relive those days when Sherlock was gone. He wanted to blot it all out of his head. He covered his ears and closed his eyes.
Then John felt long-fingered hands tenderly cover his own pulling them away from his ears. The bed shook as Sherlock lay beside him turning John's head toward him so that they were face to face.
Then slowly, Sherlock began to tell him everything that had happened while he was on the rooftop with Moriarty. He had said it before, but this time he added how he felt when he knew that John might die. The despair that he felt when he thought that the angry words of their quarrel might be the last ones between them. And when he realized that Moriarty could call off the killers, he knew that he would do anything, ANYTHING to make sure that John was safe.
"Because," Sherlock confessed looking deeply into John's eyes, "I realized that I didn't want to live in a world without you."
John lay staring at Sherlock. He reached out and touched his cheek that was beginning to redden from John's punch. John examined his dark curly hair, his straight almost expressionless slightly-parted lips, his eyebrows raised, his eyes wide and soft. It was, John realized, an expression of pure love.
Suddenly John remembered that he had seen this face before: In the lab when Sherlock had asked him his opinion on those damned trainers, and again at breakfast in Baskerville. In fact, he had seen Sherlock look at him this way dozens of times.
John remembered when he had first seen that expression. Sherlock had looked at him this way at the end of their very first case together. He had stared across the parking lot at John with that strange neutral expression, and John had thought nothing of it.
But listening to Sherlock talk, looking closely into Sherlock's eyes. His feelings were obvious. Could it have been that all this time, when John had thought that Sherlock was cold and heartless, he had been in love with John?
John was supposed to be the one who saw emotions that Sherlock could not. How could he not have known? How could he have missed this? And suddenly he realized that everyone else had known, absolutely everyone. Even the CIA agents had known that Sherlock loved him. That's why they had threatened John and not Irene Adler.
Suddenly the hard icy core of anger that John had held in his heart because of Sherlock's supposed betrayal melted away. He looked into those eyes and knew that Sherlock had always trusted him, had always wanted to protect him, had always loved him.
"I've been such a fool." John said, and taking Sherlock's face in his two hands he pulled him forward and tenderly kissed him.
John ran his fingers through Sherlock's curls, Then he smiled to see Sherlock's closed eyes as he ran a finger across his quivering lips. John frosted Sherlock's lips with several slow, small kisses before rolling him onto his back and thrusting his tongue deep between Sherlock's teeth.
Sherlock reached up haltingly, hesitatingly and held John who continued to kiss him deeply exploring his mouth with the tip of his tongue. Their two tongues slid past each other while John tickled the roof of Sherlock's mouth until he coaxed a smile out of him.
After several warm, wet kisses, John raised himself up on his elbows and looked down at Sherlock's fragile face. Sherlock was shaking. A tiny tear balanced precariously on the edge of his high cheekbone before sliding down the side of his face.
Then John stopped and looked at where he was. Naked, on top of a half-dressed virgin. Who shivered at his every touch. Sherlock was a man, not a woman, but he loved him and had always loved him since the day that they had met. John knew that the sane thing was to get up off of the bed and put his clothes on, but what would happen to Sherlock then? Sherlock who was so afraid of relationships that he had lived to his thirties without ever having a friend. Sherlock who had loved him for years and never had the courage to tell him so.
If he left him now, Sherlock would close up like a clam. His heart would never be let out again, and he could not grow into the man he should become. John tilted his head to the side examining Sherlock's boyish face, the long smooth line of his neck, the thin figure. He looked up again and saw doubt and fear begin to form on Sherlock's face. John could see loss and pain and hardness pass like clouds across Sherlock's features and he couldn't bear it. He loved Sherlock too much to cause him pain.
Suddenly, John began to cry as he hadn't cried since Sherlock had returned. Sherlock 's expression softened as he forgot himself and reached up with his hands to wipe away the tears. John smiled and pulled Sherlock into his embrace holding him tightly. Clutching for the first time the man who had been the closest thing to his heart for so long.
He held Sherlock tightly letting all of the anger and tears wash out of him. All of the days of regret, and anger, and sorrow passed into nothing, because Sherlock was here in his arms. He was his and had always been his. And always would be his. How could John not have known that a love like this was forever? It was obvious. He could almost hear Sherlock's voice in his head saying 'as ever you see but do not observe.' He laughed and the mixture of tears and laughter shook him, hollowing out his chest until all fear and pain and doubt were gone.
Sherlock held onto John clutching him as though he were a branch that kept Sherlock from sinking. He rode the waves of John's desperate shudders not knowing what to do. Only knowing that for once in his life he was exactly where he wanted to be.
Then John sat up pulling Sherlock with him. John kissed Sherlock's cheek, and smiled at him warmly. Sherlock stared open-mouthed, frozen in a pose of surprise and wonder. John's smile widened.
"Sherlock?" John asked running his finger across Sherlock's brow and down his arm, "Is this what you want to do? Because Jeanette was right, I will do anything for you. And even though I'm not attracted to men, I love you, and if this is really what you want, I'll show this 'virgin' what real lovemaking feels like."
Sherlock's eyes widened. He breathed in deeply and thought. 'I am a man of reason. Feelings mar the intellect. They are distracting. My feelings for John have already caused great upheavals in my life. If I go forward with this act, my feelings for John might become even stronger. But how is that possible? Now I feel so strongly that I am afraid that I will shatter at his touch. That another kiss will cause me to shake apart. I've always felt emotions too deeply, that's why it is better to have none.
'Then again, if John walks out of this room now, what is the chance that such a situation would happen again. The odds are amazingly low, perhaps non-existent. This may be my only chance to experience love with the only person who matters to me.
'Yet I calculate that this will probably not be enough to make John stay. Given John's preference for women, his need to appear manly, and my own general unwillingness to be touched most of the time, I calculate that the statistical probability that John will leave Mary and remain with me is only about 32%.
'Given this probability, and Mary's stated desire for a traditional monogamous marriage, the odds of having another physical encounter are increasingly small. This is the last chance, the only chance. John is a man of his word. If I asked him to stop, he will stop and walk out that door never mentioning this encounter again.
'But this moment, I feel that if he leaves me now the world will crack apart. Even if it means that I will never see John again, even if it means that our relationship will be irreparably changed, I can't let him go. I want John. I want him more than I have ever wanted anyone or anything in my entire life.'
All of these thoughts passed through Sherlock's mind in the time it took for John's perfect eyelashes to blink twice.
"Do you want it Sherlock?" John asked. His voice deep and dripping like honey.
"Yes I do." Sherlock replied, "Oh God yes!" and with that, John leaned forward and kissed him.