When John woke up, the first thing he noticed was how artificially warm he was, without body heat, and he found he didn't like it. He looked down to see he was completely dressed, and on the couch. Okay, there were a lot of things strange about that. As John remembered what had happened the night before, he flushed.

He and Sherlock...holy bloody hell. Those were images he really didn't want to get out of his head.

As he attempted, and failed miserably, to collect his thoughts (and possibly censor them), he realized exactly what the night's activities could have meant to Sherlock. John had obviously done something wrong in the time between...that...and the morning, which explained the couch. Sherlock was getting over someone, someone important and valued to him, and he probably thought John had taken advantage of him. Ugh. John put his head in his hands. He'd made a mess, hadn't he?

Well, no use worrying about it, Sherlock would definitely say something about what happened when he came out of his (their) room for breakfast.

John stood up, straightening his clothing and walking into the kitchen. A pot of very cold tea sat on the counter, but John had no idea how it had gotten there. He dumped it out into the sink and filled it with new water, setting the teapot on the stove to heat up. Heat. Bad thing to think about. John shook his head like a dog, trying to clear it. Damn, this was a lot harder than he thought. Hard. Shut up, John, he told himself.

At around 6 am, a tall, sheet-covered body entered the kitchen. His curly hair was messier than usual, and he looked ruffled and like he hadn't gotten much sleep, three hours at most. "Good morning, Sherlock," John said, making his voice as nonchalant as he could. And friendly. Very friendly. He really didn't want to scare Sherlock off.

"John." Sherlock sat down at the table and pulled his sheet tightly around him, like a security blanket. Although, it didn't change the track of John's mind. God, he'd never noticed how Sherlock's suits hid how muscular his arms were, and his legs, mostly his thighs, and John was crossing far too many boundaries. "Do you know what we did last night?"

And the blush was back, in full force. "We...er...engaged each other sexually...and I woke up on the couch. Um..."

"I'm sorry," they both said, eyes widening in surprise as they heard the other.

"You go first," Sherlock blurted, nervously fidgeting with the tablecloth.

"No, you go first," John replied, reaching across the small table to put a hand on the detective's shoulder. He looked Sherlock calmly in the face, knowing that calmness generally helped things like this.

"Alright." He paused. "Last night, I encouraged you to have sex with me, even though our agreement promised we wouldn't be doing anything beyond the grounds of pretending. I broke a promise, and I apologize for that. If you want me to leave, I will."

John stared at the suddenly small-looking detective. He really thinks that, John thought to himself. Sherlock really thought he was in the wrong here. He thought he'd come on strong and John had given in to his seduction. But giving in was easy, easier than anything John had ever done. There was no misunderstanding or awkward pauses, or fumbling for purchase. John had never gotten that in any relationship he'd ever had, and there had been a lot of them. Sherlock was special, so very special that John wondered how the man could have thought he hadn't wanted that just as much as Sherlock did.

Wait, so John wasn't the only one who wanted that? It shot wildfires up his spine.

"No, Sherlock, that's not what I want at all." John slid his chair closer to him, trying to ignore the scritch-scratch sound it made on the kitchen floor.

"Why not? I did break our deal, and I pride myself on keeping my oaths." Sherlock didn't understand, did he? John almost had to smile.

"Darling," Sherlock winced briefly at the endearment, "I wanted it, too. I wanted you, and you wanted me. That's how it works, sometimes." John brushed one of the detective's stray curls away from his face. "You wouldn't be the only one at fault, if there was any fault to place. It was both of our choices to make love, and it will always be both of our choices." He pecked Sherlock's forehead. "If this was a one-time occurrence, that's alright, whatever you're comfortable with, but if not..." John leaned down to softly kiss the detective, this time on the lips. "I want to show you everything."

Sherlock and John looked at each other for an uncountable amount of minutes, Sherlock cataloguing the details and burning them into a new room of his mind palace so he would never forget, and John reading the lines and slopes of his face like they were a never-ending mystery novel. Both men drank the other in as if they needed this to live. And Sherlock did need it, but John didn't know he did too, yet. Just yet.

John pressed his lips against the detective's, slowly slipping his tongue in. Sherlock met him, movement for movement, fingers winding through John's short hair, and pulling their heads closer together. John's hands were laced behind Sherlock's neck, reaching up after a little while to twirl one of the detective's curls around his finger. They didn't take it any further. Besides, neither one of them wanted to do that before eating. Sherlock was hungry, for once.

"Now, what do you want for breakfast?" John asked, standing up to grab the teapot. It was a little colder than he would have liked, but he'd heat it back up.

"I have a certain fondness for your pancakes," Sherlock answered.

The doctor smiled. "Alright. Pancakes it is, then. Would you be totally against waking my sister?"

"No. I find her much more tolerable than many other people. Maybe it's because she's your sister."

John's eyes creased in those laugh lines Sherlock had missed so much. "Are Watsons some sort of special breed of detective-approved human?"

"It appears so." Sherlock stood up and left a small kiss on John's cheek before heading up the stairs to what was apparently Harriet's room.

Harry woke up to the sound of knocking on her bedroom door. "Ah'm cooooommin'," she slurred, shuffling over to the door. When she opened it, her drowsiness immediately went away.

"Holmes."

"Yes, it's me. May I come in?"

Harry made a beckoning gesture, turning to sit on her bed. Sherlock, wearing only a sheet, sat on the chair across from her bed. "Alright, what the hell happened last night? Please explain in detail. I may be an alcoholic, but I'm not stupid."

Sherlock pressed his hands together in a weird praying position under his chin. "After you came home and went to bed, John and I talked for a little while. Talking led to-"

"Doing each other, I know that part."

The detective guy blushed really deep. "I woke up afterwards with every intention to leave, as I broke the promise I made to him the day we found you."

"And what promise was that?"

"I..." He closed his eyes. "I wanted him to pretend to be my boyfriend. I promised that it would be just pretending, nothing serious until I'd gotten over someone."

What the hell? "So, wait. You were using my brother to get over my brother?" Sherlock nodded. "That man last night, the one you kissed, he didn't know about any of this?"

"That was John from a different time. He was sent back to that time and place, as you could probably tell from the Buckingham Palace idea. He's getting his memories back, memories of the time I was a part of his life."

Well, that was a new concept. "Who stole my big bro's memories? He was obviously miserable without you, dead or alive, so we need to get them back."

Sherlock looked almost surprised Harry figured everything out. "A dead man. His name was James Moriarty, and he targeted us many times. But when he killed himself, he knew I'd either jump off the roof and die, hurting everyone I cared about, or live, in which case he would make them forget the person I had become, or in John's case, me. Either way, he got what he wanted."

"You have the strangest enemies," Harry remarked.

Sherlock glared at her. "Proximity is apparently a trigger for the memories to come back, as we learned last night."

"So, my brother will sometimes be thrown back in time-"

"Not literally, of course," Sherlock cut in.

"But he'll get his memories of you back eventually."

The detective nodded. "He will. He'll probably want to hurt me, to leave me, but I deserve it. Especially after last night."

"But you love Johnny! And he's alright with how all of this has been going." Harry crossed her arms. Consulting detectives could be absolute idiots about the simplest things. Jesus.

"I do. But he's only alright with this now. After, he won't want anything to do with me." Seriously? How the fuck could he think that?

"Okay, you need to pull yourself out of that fucking well you dug yourself into. Ever think that maybe my brother is falling in love with you?" Saying it was worth the look on Sherlock face. "He's not just going to throw that away when he remembers exactly who you are. Johnny may not be the best with temper, I'm not either, but he would never do that to you. And even if he isn't in love with you," Harry walked over to him and put a hand on his head, "he feels too much for you as a friend to let you just stroll out of his life."

Harry waited until he looked up at her. "So, I won't have to lose him again?" And God, didn't that make her little alcohol-poisoned heart pitter-patter. He loved her brother so much it made her want to hug him.

"No. You won't have to lose Johnny ever again."

Those two were taking forever. More than half of the pancake batter had been turned into pancakes, and his sister and boyfriend were nowhere near the kitchen. "Hey, you two!" he called up the stairs, after he was sure the new pancakes wouldn't burn. "Breakfast is ready! Your chummy talking can wait till later!"

Sherlock came down first, his sheet not having moved at all. John wondered if he had a clip that he used to hold it in place. Harry looked far more chipper than she usually would be. She was not at all a morning person. "Mornin', Johnny," she said cheerfully, practically skipping to the table.

"Morning," John replied quizzically, looking over at Sherlock. Of course, he was a brick wall when it came to answers. My brick wall, he thought happily. "I'll get out the fixings."

"Chocolate morsels?" Sherlock asked.

"Of course, darling. What're the magic words?"

The detective suddenly stood right next to John's ear. "Let's make love again," he whispered, his voice seeming to drop an octave. Did Sherlock know the complete power that voice had over John? Oh never mind, of course he did.

"Again, the words I was looking for were 'yes, please'." But those other words were very nice as well.

"You seem to respond better to other things," Sherlock said with a smirk. John fake-glared at him and grabbed the chocolate morsels from the cabinet. The detective pounced on them eagerly.

"Well, if you learn the words 'yes, please', then maybe there'll be something in it for you." Sherlock liked this idea, John could tell.

"Perhaps I'll learn them sometime."

"Well, right now, you should be focusing your attention on the food your lovely boyfriend just made you." He pecked Sherlock on the cheek.

John realized how easily this could become his life. Crime-solving, Harry living with them until she had some spot of luck, being with Sherlock all the time. Mostly that. He could fall into this, and never come back. He wouldn't care at all if this was everything he knew for the rest of his life.

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