A/N: Yeah – this one is a lot more graphic than I sometimes write, so if that's not your cup of tea, feel free to skip, I won't mind – due to all the naughty words floating in my head. Thank you lovey ladies at Mrs. Hudson's Kitchen Forum, where you can find a list of the words given to me under the thread Word Association. I do believe I used them all, except skin-to-skin which I deed over to JAL! Use it wisely! You all sure know how to give a girl ideas – there is a very wicked grin on my face as I write this. If you enjoyed this chapter please thank johnsarmylady, Ennui Enigma, jack63kids and mattsloved1.

Composed under the influence of Book of Brilliant Things and Don't You Forget About Me - both by Simple Minds (thanks jack!).

When you have finished perusing this chapter slide over to read johnsarmyladys newest story, Never Tear Us Apart. I read it with my mouth hanging open. It is just that amazing.

Intermezzo – Bodies

The pull of the sun's gravity influences the planetary bodies in the system. The earth spins on its axis and moves around the sun. The moon spins around the earth and affects the tides. As the earth turns the sun rises and the moon sets.

John and Sherlock rule and are central to each other, taking turns, as their importance and significance to the situation, to the crisis, to the dealings of the day, to the other, wanes and waxes. Their gravity draws them together; the force of the other's energy impact's on how they react to one another. At night, the moon rules, during the day, the sun.

It's all cosmic games and relations. It's all about sway and exertion. If one is hurt, angry or afraid then the other steps in and picks up and carries the load. If one is happy, loved or full of light, then so is the other. It's all about the impact of words, conditions and emotions.

It's all about the body and it's effect.

Before Sherlock met John, if he had played a word association game, which, frankly, he wouldn't have, and if he were asked what he thought when the word bodies was played, he would have come up with a list of words that would have included the following; death, murder, corpse, autopsy, carcass, bludgeon, stab, mutilate and others of similar ilk.

He might have even come up with the phrases body of evidence or body of lies or knowledge. If hard pushed, bodies of water, but probably only as convenient places to dump a body. He certainly wouldn't have given you a list of famous and familiar bodies of water unless necessary for a case.

Tonight, however, there were no bodies. There were no cases. There was nothing, but unrelenting boredom and with boredom came the relentless thoughts that the Work's distraction's kept at bay. There was too much, an abundance of everything streaming through his head, trying to fill the tediousness. Nothing to release the pressure, nothing to distracted him, nothing to discharge the whirlwind turmoil in his brain. His thoughts were reeling and spinning and not settling. Every piece, every section was on overflow.

Tonight was a bit not good.

Sherlock paced the flat in a continuous circuit, across the coffee table, over to the fireplace, climbed over John's chair, back to the couch to throw himself into it for the space of five seconds, back over the coffee table and start again. Frenetic, frantic, twitchy, mad.

It could have been a danger night.

As luck, fate, karma, chance would have it, John walked through the door.

John understood right away, intrinsically, as natural as breathing. It was better than the first eighteen months he had known him. There had been more nights like this. The time away, dead and disappeared, had matured Sherlock, honed him. He was generally more settled and had fewer bad days where he would call John every name in the book, shout at Mrs. Hudson, and was wild enough to send John out for some peace. But he hadn't had a case in weeks, there were no experiments pending. There had been nothing but unrelenting ennui.

"Sherlock," he said quietly, in a tone lower than he usually spoke, hoping to send the sound through the air to register on a different plane, on a primal level.

"I can't John! I can't. It's too much. There's too much. I'm seeing too much. I'm thinking too much. I can't stop it," he twirled in place and marched over to John and then back around again not even giving John a chance to answer or comment.

John stayed unobtrusive, thoughtful. He knew this had been building, but he hadn't expected it to be this bad.

"What can I do?" he asked, simply, still modulating his tone, trying to think how to prevent wild night.

"Do? Do? There's nothing, nothing! I need to focus on something, anything! I need a distraction dammit!" He picked up a book and threw it across the living room hard. He stopped and scrubbed his hair.

John blinked.

"Sherlock. I can be your distraction."

The soft words seemed to filter through the pulsing chaos and he turned and looked at his partner. John saw Sherlock's pupils dilate so fast, they looked like something from one of those movies where the character is possessed by a certain force, a demon or an alien, the blue-green-grey, morphed to black, like Sherlock's thoughts. Sherlock's mouth twitched at the corner and he shut his eyes for a minute.

A shudder ran through his tall frame.

Then he crossed over to where John was standing, near the door, and pushed him up against it, roughly.

John could see by the agitated unruliness of Sherlock's eyes that this was the only thing that would work, short of Lestrade waltzing in with a triple, locked room homicide.

Sherlock, in the space of movement, had transferred to the other list in his head. The new compilation of words he associated with bodies. After he and John became one, that list rapidly transformed into a catalogue. It continually changed and expanded. It was more comprehensive. These new words all associated with John and the things he liked to do with him.

Things he would like to do to him.

John could read these thoughts in Sherlock's eyes and he felt himself respond. Many of those same ideas lightening flashed through his mind as Sherlock leaned against the door with one arm and the other hand brushed John's cheek, fingers tingled, his touch sent that same electricity shooting through his body. A signal for the forces to build.

Nights like this didn't happen often, but when they did, John gave up control and submerged his sense of self in order to help Sherlock.

"John," Sherlock breathed into the other's ear, "You know what I want, what I need." His voice dropped lower than usual, mimicked the approach John had taken when he first spoke; the sound wrapped around John and drove out any remaining coherent thought. Remembrances of similar nights had his body responding rather quickly.

John had his back against the closed door, his hands pushed against the wood as if to hold him in place, as if he would fall to his knees, without his fingers pressed into the grain. His hair, dark with rain that had teamed down around him while walking home, sparkled in the light from the lamps. The fire had been built up and the glow highlighted the fact that John, who looked up at Sherlock, had pupils blown so wide with desire, just from thinking about what was going to happen, that there was almost no iris, just a hint of colour on the rim. His lip trembled as Sherlock slowly took his free hand and moved down to the top button on John's shirt. He leaned into John's space and captured his lower lip in his mouth and almost feverishly, desperately, latched onto it, tasting John, tasting the desire that rose and flooded both their bodies. At the same time he skillfully, unbuttoned John's shirt. He spread his hand against John's chest and could feel the smaller man's heart rate increase. Sherlock chuckled, darkly, like something untamable. The sound registered through John's frame and hit him directly in the groin. He gasped as Sherlock released his mouth long enough as he brought his hand down and lightly teased his fingers at the top of John's trousers, he hooked his forefinger underneath and followed the edge around with one hand to caress John's lower back, scratching with his nails. He then reached down with the other, to gently, carefully brushed against his groin, to feel John already hard and the moan, drawn from the body in front of him, ached with want and need, matched by the want and need in Sherlock.

John came to his senses enough to begin undoing Sherlock's buttons, with less care. Sherlock grinned a wolf's grin against John's mouth, hungry and feral, as he captured the doctor's clever tongue.

John managed to remove Sherlock's shirt at about the same time Sherlock divested John of his. The detective raised his hands and gripped John's shoulders, the left gently; the other was so firmly clasped it almost hurt. John wrapped his hands around Sherlock's waist, fingers traced up and down along the faded scars from the dark days. It was a reminder that this could have been a dark night.

Sherlock bent his head and attacked John's neck as the doctor tilted his head to give him better access, his fingers moved to knead John's muscular back. He could feel a trickle of sweat as he tracked down John's spine in feather light touches, feeling shock waves travel through the toned, taunt body. He bent and teased the left nipple, already erect from the air in the flat, not gently, without mercy. He then applied the same consideration to the right. John's hand came up and grasped the back of Sherlock's head, fingers ran and tugged through the curls, as he pushed it into his chest.

John's breathing became more ragged and Sherlock heard the chocolate taste of his name caress John's lips. The silky, sweet savor of the sound of his named said in that particular tone.

Sherlock steered and pushed the two of them over to the rug on the hearth, pressed John down, hard, to the floor, all while he kissed, tasted, felt, heard, touched, catalogued. John writhed under him as Sherlock undid his belt, his fingers reached in and stroked the front of John's boxers, more teasing, provocative and coy. John said his name again, a plea, a prayer.

"Soon," he murmured, dark promises in his tone. "You need to distract me, John. I've been in torment all day," he continued huskily, "I intend to return the favour." And he chuckled again. John moaned knowing it was out of his power and he was totally at the whim of his partner, his madman, but it was a madness he would gladly follow and throw himself willingly down the same path.

"I am going to take you apart and put you back together. I will dissect you to your core and taste, and explore your very marrow. I need to deconstruct you," He kissed down to the top of John's trousers', glanced up through half lidded eyes as John's reached out and grabbed Sherlock's hair again. "You are all and everything I want John. You are mine."

The way Sherlock said John's name, the possibilities in a name, a simple common name, almost had John coming, but Sherlock would have none of that. He could make this last and he intended to do just that.

Sherlock tugged on John's trousers and soon they were tossed aside, to be joined by the boxers and socks. He left his own trousers on for the moment and he continued to kiss, savor and bite John's chest as he refused to touch him any place else. When John was almost sobbing out Sherlock's name, the taller man reached up into a drawer in the table and pulled something out. And somehow he managed to remove his trousers without John even being aware.

John's breath became more tattered when he saw the small tube.

"Been anticipating we'd need this, someday, were you?" his own voice sounded strange to his ears as the blood rushed deafeningly in his veins.

Sherlock's eyes lit with unholy glee, but an almost shy smile incongruously crossed his mouth and then was gone so fast John thought he had imagined it. He grabbed John's hands and held them by the wrists with one of his, his long fingers, clenched tightly around John's wrists, trapping them, holding them, as firmly as his violin, denying John the ability to touch Sherlock. And then Sherlock bent his head and John really stopped thinking while Sherlock took him, using his mouth to play John as dexterously as he played the Stradivarius, and sucked and licked, but more slowly this time, slow enough to drive John to the same frenzy Sherlock had been in when he had arrived at the flat, leisurely, as if he were methodically categorizing every response and tremor and gasp.

And then Sherlock reached down between John's legs and teased and taunted at his opening, which was so incredibly tight, slowly, maddeningly he slipped in one finger, soon joined by another. He momentarily let go of John's hands and there was a click as he opened the bottle of lube and spread it over them. Just as John thought he couldn't wait any longer, Sherlock entered in and unhurriedly, tantalizingly, thrust forward only to withdraw again, and he kept it up until there was no sensation except intensity and wetness and lust, slick and hot. John was deconstructed, dissected, taken apart, left scooped out and hollowed. And in that moment when all the darkness was driven out, they both came together crying out. And the madness left and bliss finally, thankfully descended on Sherlock as he slumped forward over John's strong body, strong enough to hold them both together. John ran his fingers through Sherlock's sweat-slicked, drenched hair. He rolled Sherlock onto his side, cleaned them up and threw an afghan from the couch over their prone, naked bodies, his leg over Sherlock's hips, as he burrowed against his chest, entwined his way completely in him, physically, emotionally, heart and mind. Sherlock smiled quietly, sighed peacefully as John languidly stroked the long, lanky back and murmured words of love and rest.

Bodies stilled, cooled after the heat, sated, satisfied, interwoven in the light from the fire, fingers feeling, caressing skin with the feel of moonlight and sunlight. Overhead, beyond the skies of London planetary bodies continued their long trek through the sky, unaware of life on the earth below.