This one is definitely an M rated chapter for more than one reason.

Hamish had gone to stay with Mrs Hudson who had again stared at Sherlock like she had seen a ghost and whispered 'I just don't get it.' Hamish had actually cried when he found out he was going to stay with Mrs. Hudson for the better art of the day. He had never done that before, he usually loved staying with Mrs. Hudson who fed him more cakes than was wise and let him play with glue and sprinkles and doted on him like a grandmother. John knew it was a sign that everything that had happened in the last few days had affected Hamish despite his limited understanding. The stranger in their house that he was to call uncle, the fainting of Mrs. Hudson the near shouting match between him and Mycroft. It was all stressful for the little boy who didn;t understand anything except that the adults who usually kept him safe were angry and acting oddly.

There was silence once Hamish left, the flat always seemed a little emptier without him. John picked up the dishes and mugs from breakfast taking them into the kitchen to wash up. Some days it seemed like his life consisted of little more than washing up laundry and hovering. Sherlock followed him slowly in.

"You wash I dry?" John joked knowing that Sherlock had not once done the washing up since they had met. Instead of an answer he felt Sherlock's body all too close to his. Cool lips touched the back of his neck and a hand reached to rest on his stomach pushing the material o his shirt up slightly.

"Sherlock." John said trying to catch his attention as the lips wondered up towards his ear giving little nobbles and licks that John had to admit were actually very nice. Danm, when did Sherlock Holmes get good this? Sherlock's fingers were now tracing small patterns ( Hexagons? Really?) onto John bare skin. John's eyes closed.

"Sherlock No." John said trying to keep a steady voice.

"Why no John? You are already staring to perspire slightly, you're heartbeat has elevated and..." Sherlock's hand suddenly jerked downwards his palm pressing up against the jean fabric covering John's half hard member making him take a sharp intake of breath. "And you are already beginning to respond to me."

John turned around to face Sherlock who was looking down at him with lust blown eyes. How had they gone from Sherlock saying he was broken to a silent breakfast and tearful child to being palmed in the kitchen?

"Why not John?" Sherlock said again leaning in to kiss the side of John's neck.

This time John tried to consider the question (though it was hard with Sherlock's hands wondering down his back) John needed this touch his body was crying out for it. It had been such a long time really, there had been nobody since Sherlock and yes he was somewhat desperate. But wasn;t he supposed to still be angry at Sherlock? He had left him for and entire three years, well almost. Shouldn;t he at least try a little to play hard to get. Short answer, sod it.

Sherlock finally kissed his lips, mouth warm and tasting of coffee. John grabbed the back of his neck and deepened the kiss until it became more like a battle for dominance their tongues pushing against each other fiercely. There body became pushed close and John could feel Sherlock's hard dick against his stomach. Shirt's were tugged and pulled at but it soon became apparent that they were to desperate to really be concerned with more then one part of their bodies.

Sherlock's fingers were undoing John's zipper and John was almost begging for him to hurry up but Sherlock obviously wasn;t in the mood to tease because too seconds later his dick was grasped almost painfully hard and jerked in an almost rough manner. He groaned and let himself go limp against the counter. Just as he was thinking he should probably be helping Sherlock too and remembering what Sherlock's dick looked like, long and pale and perfect Sherlock's fingers suddenly disappeared.

John was about to say something, not that he knew what, when Sherlock dropped to his knees and engulfed John with his warm wet mouth.

John let out a couple of sharp breaths. It felt so good as Sherlock sucked and licked at him and hummed around him. How did he know to do that? John suspected he had researched it. Then he suspected that he didn't actually care in the slightest. Nobody had done this for him in a long time, he suspected not since his early twenties. Why was he thinking so much? This was meant to feel good, it did feel good, i he'd just let himself. He gave a couple of moans in appreciation as Sherlock started a steady back and forth rhythm. Just as John was forgetting how to think Sherlock pulled off.

"It's not fair. I just got a taste of it. What it's like to be close to somebody, to to trust somebody and to love somebody and to be touched."

Sherlock stood back up his fingers still working over him, he leaned in and whispered in John's ear.

"Do you know what it feels like to have you inside me John? The ache, the friction, and that spot, oh... you have to let me show what it feels like at some point because it's indescribable."

John groaned, not at the words he did not think he was ready for Sherlock to be inside him yet but it was the way Sherlock said the words, hushed and passionate and breathless. It sent shots right down to his already sensitive dick.

Sherlock dropped back down his moist lips immediately taking John in. His tongue lapping around the sensitive head making John come undone fast enough to be considered embarrassing. He looked down into Sherlock's bright blue eyes as his head moved back and forth. His hands were splayed on John's hips and as John watched transfixed his hands moved further back to grasp Johns ass.

John couldn't watch any longer spots were appearing behind his eyes and his entire body seemed to tense and shiver and tingle. His fingers searched for something to hold onto. One hand flew out to brace himself against the countertop the other went down to rest in Sherlock's satin curls.

"Sherlock." He gasped as a kind of warning.

His head flung back as the barrier broke and the waves of pleasure drowned him. His hips bucked unwillingly and everything for a few seconds went blank. Then he came back to earth with a crash and he was in his kitchen with Sherlock on he's knees in front of him wiping at his chin with a piece of kitchen towel.

John let out a couple ore panted breathes and put his hand to his head. He felt strangely lightheaded and didn't complain when Sherlock cleaned him up in a way that seemed devoid of any intimacy. John reached down with trembling fingers to do up his flies time wasn't passing in the normal manner.

"Bitter, but I could get used to it." Sherlock said from the other side of the kitchen where he was sipping at a glass of water.

John couldn't reply.

"Do you need to sit down?"

"Don't sound so smug." John groaned. Sherlock put his arm round his waist and they walked into the front room. John turned Sherlock round and pushed him onto the sofa. Sherlock seemed a little more pliant than usual as John moved onto the sofa and laid himself on the sofa with his back pressed against Sherlock's chest.

"Do you always need to be hugged after sexual contact?"

"Shut up." John moaned.

"What do you want John?"

"What?"

"This situation, you and I, Hamish. The flat all of it?"

"Are you actually trying to take my wishes into account."

"When have I ever forced you to do anything, you do it because you really want to, you moan because you wish me to pay a little more attention to your wishes. Though from what I learnt ten minutes ago you also moan when I do."

"I'm ignoring that one."

"Just tell me what you want John." Sherlock sighed.

"I don't know, for us all to be a family. For everything to be just as they were before you faked your own death."

"You didn;t know about Hamish before I faked my death and I'm not sure if we could fit crime solving around day care hours."

"I thought you didn't want to be crime solving again."

"I don't. Maybe I could stick to telling women their husbands are having affairs." Sherlock said bitterly.

"You would hate that, and it's probably more dangerous than crime solving."

Sherlock chuckled lightly.

"Maybe you can be the next Jeremy Kyle, they wouldn't need the lie detectors and DNA tests."

"I'm bored of Jeremy Kyle."

"You've not succeeded you know."

"Succeeded in what exactly?"

"Distracting me from the fact that you told me you were broken and would talk to me about it."

Sherlock's body tensed below him.

John tilted his head slightly so he could kiss Sherlock's jaw feeling the roughness of stubble;e against his lips. Sherlock was quiet for a long time, almost eight minutes (yes he kept secretly glancing at thew clock but Sherlock could do this for hours and he wondered if he would beat his record on this one) but John knew if he just waited it out hen he would be rewarded with that little glimpse into Sherlock's mind that he always desired. Those little glimpses allowed him to say (if only to himself) , Sherlock Holmes, his difficult but I know him better than anybody else and I love him.

"I was passing through a village in Romania. I was on he trail of a man called Zenko. Not one of the worst from Moriarty's web, just your average paid thug. I was going to persuade him to retire."

John wanted to ask exactly how he was going to persuade him but knew that interrupting at that moment might make Sherlock close off again.

"But when i arrived at the village planning to spend the night I found there was a procession going down the street, women wailing and all dressed in black and people looking out their doors all somber expressions. I thought somebody mildly important had died but as I mad emy way to the little hostel I put together that the children in the village had been disappearing, the perpetrator seemed to be escalating having taken three the month previous and now a set of two year old twin boys. Of course the Romania police are rubbish and corrupt as usual so I decided to take the case. After interviewing the people around the village it became clear that children were being taken by somebody they knew. There was no signs of struggle but being a small village that still left a large number of suspects. The fact that they went missing in the open, from farms and whilst at school or going to pick up things from the market meant that it was somebody who passed by unnoticed, a trusted member of the community. Then there was the crypts, they had been closed off twenty years before due to a collapse, except the ground over the top showed no signs of instability and there was another disappearance back then, it had been assumed that the young boy had drowned but I saw that it all added up. Then there were the signs of disturbances in the grave yard, I was told it was wild animals but there were no footprints or signs of scavenging it was all a little too neat. "

Sherlock was speaking strangely. Though he was lying down all the clues for John his voice lacked the usual excitement, it was dull it was unemotional. John could already feel his heartbeat growing faster, his mouth going dry but he still kept quiet clinging onto the arm that Sherlock had wrapped around him. For whose comfort he did not know. Sherlock paused for a moment.

"It was the priest. I waited for night to fall and followed him down into the crypts. The bones were all laid out on top of the clothes the children had been wearing. I found one of the twins, tied up but still alive, he had been molested.I left him to search for the other. As I went further into the crypts I saw some vats, acid from an abandoned industrial site a few miles to the east. He had decanted it into old petrol cans. I thought he couldn't hear me. He was holding the body of a child. As I got closer I saw that he had taken the lid off a stone sarcophagus. He was about to drop the child in. I thought the boy was dead at first but then I noticed his breathing, just unconscious. I tried to rush him, but as I did so he dropped the boy on the floor and threw a petrol can of acid at me I dodged most of it but... "

"It caught your side."

I couldn't get off the floor, I couldn;t see much through the pain. Except I did see the boy being dropped into the acid. And I did see the priest coming towards me." Sherlock took a deep breath. "I killed him. I passed out. I was found in the morning by one of the men, he couldn;t understand why the doors to the crypt that had been locked for twenty years were open. I woke up in the home of one of the women, they had fetched a doctor from a few miles away but there's no plastic surgeon in the area he cleaned the wounds and wrapped them up and kept my fever from the infection down. The police worked out most of what had happened. I think they closed off the church completely. I believe somebody named a dog after me."

"The other twin?"

"Alive."

John nodded. He didn't push further. He felt numb after the story. He couldn;t allow himself to feel anything except numb, he didn't want to think about what it would be like to loose a child because that would take him to thinking about what it would be like to loose Hamish. John took a deep breath.

"The boy, he wasn't Hamish."

"What? I know.."

"No, listen to me Sherlock. You didn;t save that child but you saved his brother and any other child the priest might have taken out in the future. Those children at that chocolate factoy and that boy on the phone that Mortiarty tried to kill you saved them. Those girls, those sex worker immigrants, you saved them. Sherlock, you have saved a lot of people who wouldn't have had anybody to help them if you weren't;t there. Because nobody else can do it. You know that, you always told me that. And just because you couldn't save that one boy doesn't mean that you can't look after Hamish."

"But why should it be me?" Sherlock said angrily pushing John away so tat e could sit up.

"Why do I have to save them? Why can;t I go back to the days when nothing affected me?"

"Those days were not normal Sherlock. But you have me, you have Molly and Greg and Mrs Hudson and Hamish. We're you're family, we'll look after you when the bad things happen but they'll be good things to Sherlock. Now that you've let yourself open up a bit they;ll be good things in your life. Not just cases but real reasons for joy. You said it yourself, you wanted to be close to somebody, to love somebody and be touched by somebody. That's healthy. And you have to save them because there's nobody else like you Sherlock, nobody else who sees the things you see."