Chapter Text
John woke wrapped in Sherlock. Literally. Arms and legs draped over him, such a heavy tangle that he could barely breathe and definitely couldn’t move, and his dislocated shoulder was pinned against Sherlock and felt tender and sore, but Sherlock was breathing evenly against him, chest rising and falling and breath on his neck, and John thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world. He kept his eyes closed and focused on the warm bundle of Sherlock, who was still here, who hadn’t just been a dream. He wondered if Sherlock always slept with this little regard for personal space, if John would have to get used to being clung to in this way.
If they were going to sleep together.
Maybe Sherlock, snogging notwithstanding, didn’t mean it the way John meant it. Or maybe he did mean it the way John meant it, and maybe that was even worse. This, John thought, was an ill-timed crisis in a decision about his sexuality he’d thought he’d already made.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop it,” mumbled Sherlock into his neck. John actually felt his lips form the words.
“I thought you were asleep,” John said, because he had.
Sherlock hummed. “I’m not. You’re still thinking it.”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?” asked John, annoyed.
“You woke up and you were happy, and then a thought entered your head, and you got tense. So stop thinking it.”
“That’s rich, coming from you. You never stop thinking. You know that’s not how it works. You can’t just stop a thought,” said John.
“Watch me,” said Sherlock, and sucked on John’s earlobe.
John made a sound like a squeak.
“That’s better,” mumbled Sherlock, and John knew why he said it, because he felt as if he’d turned to liquid, and thoughts had vanished from his head.
Sherlock planted a line of leisurely open-mouth kisses down his neck, and John turned into a quivering mess. Because Sherlock was astonishingly good at this.
“You said that out loud, you know,” said Sherlock, lifting his head.
John tried to blink him into focus. “Did I?”
“No.” Sherlock actually grinned at him and then slid fully onto him, pinning him underneath him, and, for being so whippet thin, he was heavy and solid and felt wonderful. “But I could tell you were thinking it.”
Sherlock looked smug. And delicious. His mouth was begging to be kissed. John looked up at him, head pressed into the thin hospital pillow. And then he said, “Is there a gun under this pillow? Did you have us sleep with a gun under our pillow?”
“There you go with those annoying thoughts again,” said Sherlock, and kissed him. Deeply. Thoroughly. Slowly.
John had thought he’d been kissed by Sherlock yesterday, but he felt as if Sherlock had been merely going through the motions. He was very, very good at kissing. Which made sense, John supposed, fuzzily. Sherlock would be as compelling at kissing as he was at everything else he did.
He had thought, possibly, it would be unbearably strange to kiss a man, and maybe it would have been, to kiss any man who wasn’t Sherlock. But the truth was that kissing Sherlock was the most perfect kissing he had ever experienced, as if he’d been doing it wrong every other time he’d tried it. The urgent flash of his teeth, the persuasive slide of his tongue, even the scratch of his stubble—John fisted a hand in Sherlock’s shirt and held him closer, kissing him back, letting his taste flood through him.
Sherlock drew back, and John lifted his head off the pillow and nipped at his lower lip, which did convince Sherlock back into an earnest kiss, but only for a few seconds before Sherlock drew back again.
Sherlock looked down at him, braced over him, his eyes very dark and his lips parted, and John registered that Sherlock was actually out of breath. “John,” he said, roughly.
“What?” John asked, stupidly.
Sherlock kissed him again, harder and more fiercely and with much less finesse, and then darted away again. He moved so quickly he made John dizzy, his head whirling with him, drunk on him. He closed his eyes, giving up on the effort of making sense of him, of predicting him, in favor of feeling him. Sherlock’s hands were on his chest, and his fingers spanned his ribcage as if measuring, walking slowly upward and stacking over his heart, and he melted underneath him.
“John,” said Sherlock again. His lips were on his chest now, and he kissed and he nipped and felt so generally wonderful that John could barely manage a grunt. “What if I stopped?” said Sherlock.
John translated the words, said, “Oh, God, please don’t.”
Sherlock planted a kiss directly over his heart and stayed there, lingering. “John Watson.” He spoke into the skin over his beating heart. “You have a dislocated shoulder and a slight concussion, and I’m not sure your doctors would advise this activity.” Sherlock’s teeth closed around his nipple and John, not quite of his own volition, arched his hips toward him, feeling light-headed with arousal. “Then again,” said Sherlock, “what do doctors know?”
He moved with the suddenness that John was almost coming to expect, and his hand closed around John with perfect pressure, and John groaned and thrust against his palm before he could stop himself.
Sherlock stroked with teasing, excruciating slowness and kissed him, wet and messy, swallowing John’s gasps. John tried to either deepen the kiss or push Sherlock away, torn between wanting to get a breath and wanting to never breathe again. He made a sound of frustration, and Sherlock said, into his mouth, his voice so heavy and dark with promise that John almost winced with desire for him, “Tell me everything you want.”
The impossibility of that swamped John and swirled into the clearest pinpoint of his entire life. “You,” he said.
Sherlock stilled, pulling back. John took the opportunity to suck breath in, much too scattered to read Sherlock’s silence. Then Sherlock kissed him again, almost sweetly, which was lovely, but John moved restlessly against him, fastened his one good hand into Sherlock’s thick hair and tipped the kiss far beyond any hint of tenderness. Sherlock made a noise of surprise that made pleasure lick at the base of John’s spine, and, wanting him to make it again, he bit at Sherlock’s lip, which made Sherlock growl approvingly, pressing him back against the pillow and shifting to adjust their angle before pulling back. John opened his eyes, treated to the sight of Sherlock, red-lipped and hair-tumbled and looking thoroughly debauched.
“Try not to shout,” Sherlock told him, “there are guards at the door,” and his voice made the sentence the filthiest thing John had ever heard in his life.
He disappeared from John’s vision, which for a moment was annoying, until his mouth closed around John and firmly sucked. John didn’t so much shout as swear, low and urgently, unprepared enough that he arched at him and Sherlock’s hands went to his hips, pushing them back to the mattress. John swore again, reaching blindly with his one good hand, finding Sherlock’s hair and twisting into it helplessly. Sherlock hummed around him, which made John swear again.
Things were going too quickly, John thought, vaguely. Embarrassingly quickly. But pressure built inside of him, and he wanted it too desperately to even attempt to be dignified. “Sherl…” he tried, which he meant to be a warning, but he managed only half of his name before he slammed headlong into the climax.
Sherlock pulled him through it with an expertise that would have been terrifying if it hadn’t also been brilliant, and John sprawled bonelessly in a tangle of hospital sheets and tried to figure out what had just happened.
“Well,” remarked Sherlock, conversationally, “that took care of your tension, didn’t it?”
The sight of him, smug and predatory, calmly wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, was quite possibly the sexiest thing John had ever seen, and John wished he’d thought to look whilst the whole thing had been going on. He settled for gasping, “Bloody…” and then trailing off, uncertain of the appropriate adjective.
Sherlock grinned at him and stalked his way up John’s body. There was no other word for it. He settled over him and said, sounding pleased, “Not bad. For a first time.”
“Not bad?” echoed John, weakly.
“John,” said Sherlock, and now he sounded fond. He kissed him very lightly, which John appreciated, because he’d just realized his lips were tender from the bruising kisses of earlier. “You’ve met me. You really should have made the deduction by now that I’m going to be the most observant lover of your life.”
John tried to wrap his mind around the idea of an orgasm better than the one he’d just had, and, failing, noticed for the first time what Sherlock was wearing. “Where did you get a suit?”
Sherlock chuckled and rolled off him. “You’re not thinking clearly right now, so I won’t be offended that that’s the first coherent sentence you’ve managed to say to me.” Sherlock stretched like a contented cat. “Mycroft stopped by. That’s where the gun came from, too.”
John was confused. He tried to make his brain start working again. “I should…” he suggested, hesitantly, because it was the height of rudeness that it hadn’t even occurred to him until that moment that he really needed to reciprocate in some way.
Sherlock sent him a crooked smile. “Later. You’re not in any state right now.” He practically leaped out of bed, a sudden whirling dervish of energy. “Mycroft didn’t bring you any clothes. I’ll ring him to bring some by for you. And then I’ll ring Mrs. Hudson to get breakfast ready. Are you hungry? I’m famished.”
John blinked at him, watching him pull his suit jacket on and adjust the collar of his shirt, as if nothing interesting had just happened.
“Mycroft brought me Moriarty’s coat,” Sherlock continued, holding it up. “Well, I mean, the coat Moriarty bought for me. He says it’s a trophy, a symbol of my victory.” Sherlock regarded the coat. “I was skeptical last night, but I am feeling rather victorious this morning.” He laid the coat over the back of the chair by the bed and practically beamed at John.
John stared at him.
“Close your mouth, John, it just makes me want to kiss you.”
“I…” said John, unsure how to respond to that.
Sherlock smiled at him.
“If I’d known it was going to have this effect on you,” John found himself saying, “I would have let you do that ages ago.”
Sherlock looked amused. “I would have done it ages ago, only I was waiting for you to come to your senses. You were having all sorts of self-labeling issues in your head.” Sherlock dropped dramatically into the chair he’d just draped his coat on, putting on his shoes. “I won’t deny, it was a bit tiresome waiting for you to work through them.”
John thought of all the times he had denied having any interest in Sherlock other than platonic. All the times he’d done it in Sherlock’s hearing. And had Sherlock always been waiting for him to reach this obvious conclusion, just as Sherlock was always waiting for him to catch up to him? He hadn’t truly realized it until it was too late, how hopelessly in love with him he’d been, what an idiot he’d been about it, and he couldn’t imagine ever having Sherlock dismiss him as nothing but a friend. The thought of it alone made him shudder. “Sherlock,” he said, unsure what to say.
“It’s fine,” Sherlock assured him, cheerfully. “I think we’ve got you mostly past them, now. Not that I didn’t have a moment of fear when you woke up and froze with doubt.”
“How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”
“Actually,” said Sherlock, “with you, it’s mostly lucky guesses. That’s what makes you so fun. Now. How are you feeling? Better?”
“I feel bloody fantastic,” John said, honestly.
“Good.” Sherlock beamed again and stood. “I pronounce you totally cured and able to leave this abysmal place.”
“But I love this place,” John protested. “I love this room. I love this bed.”
Sherlock had been heading toward the door, but he turned and headed back to John at that, leaning over him. “This is a terrible bed,” he said. “Wait. You’ll see.”
“You’re a horrible tease,” John told him. He was honestly so off-balance from this playful side to Sherlock that he didn’t know quite what to make of it.
“Not a bit,” Sherlock protested.
“Don’t ever sleep with a gun under your pillow ever again. Or my pillow. Or in the bed at all. I can’t believe you don’t think you’re irresponsible with guns.”
“You’re saying that just to see if you can get me to kiss you again.”
“No, I’m not,” he said, honestly. “I’m serious. That’s a serious request.”
Sherlock had a look on his face that John interpreted as silly John, he’s so adorable, which was kind of annoying until the moment Sherlock leaned down and kissed him, and then John wasn’t as offended by the look anymore. He twisted his good hand into the fabric of Sherlock’s jacket and tried to pull him down onto the bed.
Sherlock pulled back. “Absolutely not,” he said. “We’re leaving.”
“If I had two good arms,” John called after him, as he was heading briskly to the door.
“We’ll come back here on our anniversary, and you can prove whatever it is you wish to prove with your two good arms,” Sherlock replied, without looking back, as he removed the chair from underneath the room’s doorknob. “Take out your IV so we can be on our way.” He disappeared through the door.
John looked at the IV he’d completely forgot about. Then he looked at the door Sherlock had just walked through. Their anniversary? John stared after him and tried to figure out when they had got an anniversary. John tried to figure out if he had ever supposed Sherlock would be the type to remember their having an anniversary.
John managed to get the IV out, and Sherlock came back in with a set of clothes and a paper cup of coffee.
“Mycroft was efficient,” he said, dropping the clothes on John’s bed.
“When’s our anniversary?” John asked Sherlock.
“The day we met, of course,” said Sherlock, and sipped his coffee.
John looked at him for a second, almost relieved that Sherlock hadn’t bothered to bring him coffee. That was Sherlock to a T.
“Knowing us, we’ll probably spend lots of our anniversaries in hospital,” John remarked.
Sherlock shrugged, unconcerned, and helped John get a shirt on, and he did frown in concern when John flinched with pain, even though John tried not to.
“How badly does it hurt?” Sherlock asked.
“It’s not bad.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if it was bad.”
“I wouldn’t need to tell you. You would know because Sherlock Holmes knows everything.”
“True,” allowed Sherlock, and pulled on the Moriarty coat. He paused, sticking his hands in its pockets and swaying a bit with it.
“Go ahead and twirl,” said John, amused, “you know you want to.”
“I don’t twirl in this coat,” Sherlock sniffed.
“Yes, you do. Let’s go home.”
Mycroft had sent guards and a car and a police escort on top of it all.
“Is it always going to be like this?” John asked Sherlock.
“No. Definitely not. Just until I chase down a few more Moriarty leads. In fact, I’ll have to meet with Mycroft later, but you’ll be taking a nap brought on by the pain medication I’m going to give you shortly, so you won’t mind.”
“Sherlock,” sighed John, and so Sherlock kissed him, which meant that the flush in Sherlock’s cheeks wasn’t entirely homecoming excitement when he finally swept back into 221 Baker Street.
He greeted Mrs. Hudson with a hand on each shoulder and a kiss on both cheeks, and she blushed in pleasure the way she usually did, and he took the steps two at a time, and John followed him a bit more sedately, thinking he might want a second to be alone in the flat. When John did walk in, Sherlock was standing fixedly in the middle of the room, eyes roving over every single surface. It looked exactly as it had when John had last walked out of it, after finishing his catalogue of Sherlock’s belongings, except that Mycroft had sent the violin back and it was sitting on Sherlock’s chair.
“Everything’s exactly in its place,” said Sherlock, clearly pleased by this.
“Except for one sock in your sock index,” John told him.
Sherlock looked at him.
“I couldn’t resist,” he explained.
Sherlock walked over to the windows and pulled at the curtains, flooding the room with light. “Mrs. Hudson!” he shouted. “You really must dust in here at some point!”
“Not your housekeeper,” Mrs. Hudson reminded him, even as she walked in with a platter heaped with the makings of a full breakfast.
John stood in 221B Baker Street and tried to imagine feeling happier than he did at that moment. He failed miserably.
Sherlock leaned over to clear space on the desk and paused, picked something up, then turned slowly toward John. “Did you do this?”
“Do what?” asked John.
“Leave this in the middle of the desk.”
John looked at what Sherlock held out to him. It was a fortune from a fortune cookie, one that Sherlock had received on the first night they had gone to get a Chinese together.
“I found it, when I went through your things.”
“Why were you going through my things?”
“I was cataloguing them,” John said, a bit defensively. “Mycroft said I could. Anyway, you didn’t seem to keep any other fortunes, so it seemed important.”
“Of course it was important, John. It was our anniversary.”
John smiled at Sherlock, and Sherlock smiled at him, and Mrs. Hudson smiled at both of them. Sherlock carefully walked over and attached the fortune to the mirror over the fireplace with a piece of Sellotape, where John saw it every time he walked through the room, never failing to stop and smile at it. It is all just beginning.
THE END