The Longest Date

The Longest Date John has ever taken part in span's a vast amount of time and crime.

Plot is mine, but that is all.

John watched the film; he was neither enthralled nor bored in the centre of a busy cinema theatre by the action film that currently screened in front of him. Instead he was calculating his next move.

Alisha was a good catch; she was a good person with a laugh that reminded John of summer days in the park. He allowed a glance toward his date before turning back to the film. She was very pretty, a little young for him though. So far, every conversation that he had started with "Do you remember-?" had landed heavily in the air as Alisha often didn't; The A Team, The Professionals and even Rocky were seemingly unheard of by the young woman, this made the Doctor feel a lot older than he really is. John sighed inwardly as he realised what this might mean. Alisha might be 'using' a man of his…stature, to secure a future. Lots of women assumed that a soldier / doctor was wealthy beyond belief, and he had just purchased them a three course meal at The Kitchin before paying for rear seating in an up-market cinema.

John glanced toward her again; the light from the large screen illuminated the prominent cheek bones and delicate lips. He could see her large eyes as grey as they were, they were beautiful. Alisha turned to John with a sweet smile, moving toward him minutely. John returned the smile as he realised that he was receiving the right signals, just for tonight, thinking be damned. Leaning forward another inch, John smiled wider as Alisha mimicked him.

Without warning there was a loud explosion from the cinema speakers as a helicopter crashed in the film; John and Alisha jumped and turned toward each other in shock, following it quickly with a shared laugh. Moving toward Alisha again, the two resumed their previous positions, ready for the kiss.

Alas, the kiss was never to come. John watched on as a long and slender hand came between the two of them from the row behind, the doctor continued to stare in sudden horror as the hand made contact with Alisha's face and pushed her away.

"These films are terribly predictable, don't you think?" Came the low and smooth tones of one Consulting Detective. Alisha's muffled 'hurmph' was seemingly unnoticed by both men as John turned toward the back row in surprise.

"Sherlock!" John hissed angrily.

"John, I am surprised that you are watching this rubbish. X factor was bad enough, and god forbid you put that British Bake Off programme on again, but this? Really." Sherlock continued, removing his hand and sitting back in his seat, raising his feet to the top of John's chair.

"Sherlock! Go home, I am busy" John said angrily once more, completely flabbergasted at his flatmates' behaviour.

"I see that, but I cannot go home, we have a case, therefore I need my assistant." Sherlock mused, earning a 'shh!' from the couples on the left.

"John!" Alisha almost yelped in surprise.

John turned toward Alisha with an apologetic expression.

"I'm so sorry Alisha, this is my flatmate, Sherlock Holmes" John introduced in a whisper, looking around the expensive Italian leather shoes resting between them.

"I don't care who he is, we are on a date" Alisha whispered urgently, pushing at Sherlock's shoes yet failing to move them.

"John, what you were thinking before; it's true" Sherlock murmured from his seat as he continued to watch the cinema screen, his arms stretched over the backs of the seats either side of him.

"What was I thinking, Sherlock? How much of an arse my flatmate is?" John hissed viciously, turning toward the taller man.

Sherlock allowed a smirk to cross his face before glancing to John and then back to the screen. "No. The fact that Alisha here is very young. Going out with an older man, better yet, a Doctor on an Army pension, oof, jackpot ay Alisha? Yes I think so, young lady here dreams of an effortless future. Best break it off now, John" Sherlock murmured in a fast paced commentary, removing his feet only to move forward and grasp a handful of popcorn from John's supply before resuming his position, his feet dipping in the gap between the two seats in front.

John had no words. He only let his mouth gape as he watched Alisha grasp her handbag and run from the theatre in a fluster. Before he knew what he was doing, the doctor had clambered over the seat and pounced upon the detective, scrambling awkwardly to his knees – which lay either side of the detective - John sat up and raised a fist, ready to punch the younger man square in the jaw when he caught sight of Sherlock's face.

The otherwise confident and brassy genius, was currently huddled beneath the doctor with his eyes firmly closed, wincing at the blow he thought he was about to receive. Suddenly, in one moment, everything became clear to the doctor. John let go of Sherlock's coat and sat back on Sherlock's legs.

Sherlock cracked open an eye and looked at John in confusion.

"You don't have a case" John said flatly.

Sherlock's eyes widened very slightly but he worked hard to cover his surprise.

"You don't have a case, and you don't want me to date" John continued.

"Why wouldn't I want you to date?" Sherlock tried, but it was all too obvious to John now.

"You don't want me to have a full time relationship, because you don't want me to leave you" John said, noting with some amusement the blush that coloured the detective's cheeks.

"Don't be ridiculous, John" Sherlock tried again, watching as John dismounted the detective and sat in the seat beside him instead.

"Its ok, Sherlock. I think I'm too old to be dating anyway" John mused dejectedly.

"Nonsense. You are not old" Sherlock said sternly.

"I am, Alisha has never heard of 'knight rider', Sherlock, that makes me old" John countered with a small smile. "I think I should face fact. No one is interested in me anymore, I'm old hat, destined to be alone for the rest of my life."

"You could date me, if you wanted" Sherlock said lightly, removing his feet from their sandwiched position between the front two seats.

"What?" John laughed in shock as he looked at Sherlock. John was immediately struck by how alike Sherlock's profile was in the cinema light to that of Alisha's and his clarity cleared further.

"We have a cinema to ourselves…now, popcorn, we are in the same row" Sherlock counted as he looked around at their location.

John looked to the left, the couples that were there had now disappeared, more than likely when the 'fight' between them broke out.

"Well, you'd better be a good date after what you just lost me" John said tiredly, rubbing his face in disbelief of his words.

"Oh, I'll be much better" Sherlock said coyly, raising his arm up to wrap around the top of John's chair.

"You'll be rubbish and we both know it" John countered, watching the film with a determined expression.

"How much would you bet on that?" Came the deep voice of his flatmate and co-worker less than an inch from his ear. John jumped a little and shivered lightly, turning his head toward Sherlock in shock.

"How much are you willing to bet that you'll be better?" John asked accusingly.

"Oh, I don't bet, John" Sherlock murmured, leaning further forward still until lips met lips haphazardly.

For a moment, John forgot who was kissing him and lost himself in the motion, reaching a hand up to run fingers softly through thick hair and tug them closer, leaning awkwardly over the arm rest between them, desperate for more. When a soft moan met his ears from the man under his administrations, John leapt back in shock, gasping for air as he stared at a dishevelled looking Sherlock Holmes.

"Are you watching this film, John?" Sherlock asked softly, looking toward the screen with a surreptitious wipe to his lips with an index finger.

John swallowed hard a couple of times before looking back at the screen. The doctor realised that this question was an underlying query. If he were to say 'yes', he would be saying 'no' to Sherlock. Saying 'no' to the film would end with a taxi ride and a rather interesting evening. John stared ahead with his jaw resolutely set.

"No" John whispered after a minute or two. Sherlock turned to John with an unhidden look of surprise.

"Shall we, then?" Sherlock asked, placing a brave hand, palm up, on John's knee.

The soldier looked down at the offering hand and took it without a second thought.

~0~

Getting back to Baker Street was very strange. The cab ride was far from close and cuddly; it was rather more; awkwardly silent. Reaching 221B, Sherlock unlocked the front door and held it open for John, which was rather more different again in that at the end of a date, John would leave after a kiss on the females' doorstep.

The pair walked up the staircase as usual and entered their living room without a word. Standing side by side for a minute or possibly two, Sherlock reached for John's hand and the doctor noticed the hitched breath he let escape him at the contact before they looked at each other. The glance was all they needed to set the atmosphere at ease again as the two shared a small smile.

"Come here" John whispered as he pulled Sherlock's hand around his back and turned to bump chest to chest against the taller man. Sherlock remained exactly where he was, raising his other hand to meet the first around his soldier.

"Go on then, prove you are better than Alisha would be on a first date" John encouraged, waiting patiently.

To the soldier's amazement and unmistakeable arousal, Sherlock visibly bristled at the name of the girl John had been out with, the shorter of the two found himself quickly and viciously pinned between the living room wall and the lithe body of Sherlock Holmes.

"No more women, John. Me and only me. No one can take you away from me, no one" Sherlock growled into John's ear. John's breath caught as he struggled against the detective.

"Sherlock" John started, a little panicked by how his body was reacting to such a dominating figure.

"Say that you are mine, John" Sherlock whispered, biting the shell of John's ear in a tease.

"Oh" John replied with, caught off guard by how wonderful the teeth of his flatmate felt.

"Say it" Sherlock hissed impatiently, pinning John to the wall with only his hips.

"I'm yours" John panted, trying and failing to rub against the detective.

"And who am I?" Sherlock asked slowly, moving back a little to stare imploringly down at his victim.

"I am Sherlock Holmes' property" John said in a whisper, being caught off guard by the bright eyes of his hero focussed solely on him and nothing else.

The next moment, Sherlock's lips were on John's; the wonderful feeling of being dominated utterly and completely, washed over John and he revelled in it. Sherlock shed his and John's coat without so much as a fumble and before long the two had transferred to the couch; Sherlock covering John's body with his own.

The sound of the door downstairs was not heard.

Sherlock allowed a predatory growl to escape his throat as he pulled at John's striped shirt; only succeeding in un-tucking it from his corduroyed trousers. John gave as good as he got, attacking the detective with fierce kisses and running his hands under the un-tucked hem of that purple shirt.

There was a cough from the now open doorway to their living room and Sherlock leapt to his feet in a sudden movement, John lay dazed and dishevelled on the couch and let out a whine of loss.

"Sherlock" Mycroft started as he walked smoothly over to the black leather armchair, currently unoccupied.

Sherlock bent his head to wipe his rather red lips surreptitiously for the second time that night before he tucked the front of his infamous purple shirt back into his trousers and sat down in John's usual armchair.

"I need you to look at a case for me, Richard A'daire. A trained sniper assassin. Highly armed, extremely dangerous-" Mycroft droned, interrupted by a very confused looking John.

"Mycroft, can this not wait until tomorrow?" John said rather snappily from his unmoved position on the sofa.

Sherlock glanced toward John with a hungry smirk before focussing on his brother once more in a dull interest.

"Tell me more" The younger stated bluntly.

John sighed in frustration and got to his feet, bustling into the kitchen to make tea, that, and re-adjust his trousers.

~0~

2am found the two men perched precariously on a roof ridge, John was holding onto the hem of Sherlock's great coat with military strength.

"I'm not going to fall, John" Sherlock said impatiently, trying to bat away the hand that held him.

"I'm not going to let go, Sherlock" John growled angrily.

"There he is" Sherlock said quietly as he moved forward an inch to watch the trained assassin take up residence in a window three floors up in the house across from them, just where Sherlock said he would be.

"Thank god, we can get off this roof" John said in relief, looking worriedly down at the ground.

Sherlock looked up then, up at the wires that connected each house.

"How desperately do you want off this roof?" Sherlock queried in a mischievous way.

"Pretty desperately" John said, missing the key note of excitement in Sherlock's question.

"Good" Sherlock said, standing very suddenly up and grasping John; wrapping some material around himself and then the wires, Sherlock tightened each knot.

"What are you doing?" John asked in panic.

"What are we doing, you mean?" Sherlock said with a smirk before pulling the soldier close and jumping from the roof.

John was about to howl in fright before Sherlock kissed him mid-flight. Before they knew it, their body weight threw them through the opposite buildings' window and they landed in a ball on an empty offices' floor.

Happy to be alive, John continued the kiss and helped himself to a grope or two.

"John" Sherlock half moaned and half protested. "Time and place, we can't do this now, or here" the detective said sadly, getting to his feet and offering the doctor a hand.

"But Sherlock-" John almost whined.

"Shh" Sherlock hushed immediately as he heard a noise from behind the door on their right. Running through it and down the staircase beyond, John stayed in the room a second longer and huffed out his resignation before following after his deranged partner.

Finding the room that the assassin was accommodating himself in, Sherlock and John quickly established that the man himself had gone out. They decided to await his return by hiding themselves inside the only piece of furniture that the cold and unwelcome room had; a wardrobe.

"John, that is not where your hand should be" Sherlock mused in rather an amused tone somewhere to John's left.

"It's dark, it's empty, I'm wound up tighter than a harbour rope holding a galleon and you keep teasing me, what did you expect?" John growled quietly, continuing his administrations with his hand.

Sherlock unwillingly allowed a small moan as John's hand reached skin. "John, stop" he instructed, his hand grasping John's before it could cause further damage.

"Ok, well, can you help me? I really, really, can't work under this pressure" John whispered quietly, only the whites of his eyes visible in the otherwise black space.

Without a further word, Sherlock had unbuckled John's trousers and was wrapping a cold hand around something that he really hadn't thought he would desire until now.

John was vocal, very vocal, so Sherlock's free hand quickly found a new location, wrapping tightly over John's mouth and nose.

John struggled to breathe a little which only intensified the whole experience leading to his earliest finish on record.

Sherlock moved behind John in the small space, keeping the shorter man upright as his orgasm shook through his body. It was a little over 5 full minutes before John regained any sort of consciousness and stood free of the detective, they shared a soft kiss of John's 'thank you' and Sherlock's 'your welcome' before they heard the door shut with a loud click.

The two immediately became alert, John making himself decent and Sherlock listening intently to the actions on the other side of the wooden wardrobe door.

The unmistakable click of a rifle being assembled rang out within the room and John looked up at Sherlock in recognition; only just seeing the taller man's outline rather than anything else.

With a curt nod, Sherlock threw open the doors, or rather, tried to. Sherlock jostled the doors again in front of him, only to no avail.

"Ah, I thought I had caught something" Came a dry sneer from the room outside. "What exactly did I catch that comes all this way to a disused building, to have sex in a wardrobe?" The voice continued.

John froze in fright and Sherlock looked to John in surprise.

There was a crack between the doors that was only just wide enough for one of them to peek through, Sherlock was first, lining his head up against the door to allow his right eye to adjust to the light beyond. There was their assassin, sitting on the floorboard facing the window, gun in hand as he stared at the street intently.

John retrieved his gun before he slunk to the floor of the wardrobe and took aim, peeking through the crack below Sherlock's head.

The consulting detective felt the doctor wobble slightly on his haunches at his feet, and so placed a steadying hand on his shoulder, squeezing it in encouragement.

The gun shot rang out loudly inside the small cupboard, almost deafening the two members within, but the anguished shout from the other side was louder still as the bullet hit the man squarely in the kidney. An immobilising shot.

Sherlock pulled John from the floor of the wardrobe and placed him behind himself before launching his right shoulder into the wooden door in front of him. It took three goes before the wood gave in and the taller man fell through onto the floorboard.

"Sherlock!" John cried in surprise as he leapt from the wardrobe to kneel by the detectives' side. "Are you ok?"

Sherlock's eyes widened in panic as he tried to speak, tried to warn John.

"It's ok, you are just winded, just relax, your breath will come back when you relax" John cooed, helping the detective to sit up. Sherlock, still unable to speak, raised his arm to point at something behind John, his eyes wider still.

John didn't have time to turn round before the whip crack of a bullet being fired sounded very suddenly behind him.

~0~

When the doctor woke, he was amazed at how little pain he felt. His leg, his back, nor his head were reminiscent of the usual aches and pains he receives after a nights' sleep. The next thing he was aware of was how white and clean the room he was in was. Too clean for your average hospital. John looked beside him to see the source of the beeping and confirmed his fear, it was a heart rate monitor…attached to him.

When John turned the other way, he couldn't understand why there was another machine, just like his, beeping away in sync. It was only when he blinked hard and lifted his head from the pillow that he saw the bed beside him.

Sherlock lay perfectly still, white skin looking dull in amongst the brilliant white sheets of this strange ward. The most heartbreaking of all was the plastic pipe inserted in Sherlock's slack mouth; that was more than a bit not good.

John struggled out of the bed and instantly crumpled to the floor, his body was weak, so weak. John tried to scramble across the floor, but his arms appeared to be made of nothing more than jelly. After a further 10 minutes of trying, John stopped to rest, half way between the beds, when the door to the small white room opened and in came a very clean man. John stared at him with dull eyes, watching intently to assess the intentions of the intruder.

"Oh, you shouldn't be out of bed, young man" The older man stated as he swiftly picked John up under his arms and propped him on his own bed. John glanced tiredly at Sherlock's bed and instantly longed to touch the man.

This doctor, John supposed, noticed the glance and immediately stood between them.

"He is really very ill" he stated.

"Who are you? What happened to us?" John questioned in a rather raspy voice, something wasn't right here, not right at all.

"I am Doctor Passave, you are in hospital, you were both shot" The man surmised.

"I was shot?" John asked incredulously, looking down at himself.

"In the neck" The doctor explained.

"What?!" John exclaimed, trying to get to his feet once more, and once more landing on his bottom with a thump.

"That is why you are as weak as you are, you are lucky that you do not appear paralysed." The doctor said gently, again, lifting John from the floor with apparent ease and propping him against his own pillows.

"I will be back in an hour, can I get you anything?" He asked gently.

"No" John snapped in momentary anger.

"As you wish" Doctor Passave said before moving to Sherlock's bed and checking the monitors.

"Where did he get shot?" John asked weakly.

"The chest" The doctor said without turning round. "His lung collapsed"

John felt the breath leave him in a rush as the news settled in, Doctor Passave left the room.

After six hours of sitting still, John tried once more to right himself on his feet, the doctor had been in on the hour, every hour, injecting Sherlock with medicines he couldn't see, John himself, refused painkillers of any sort, desperate to know what had happened to the assassin, what had happened to the target and how they had ended up here. John had worked out that this was definitely no hospital, a ward made to look like a hospital but wasn't one.

Just as a foot hit the floor, John could feel the usual aches and pains set in, sure enough, his leg ached, his shoulder spasmed and his head jolted, but his leg stood strong.

Lifting two hands to his neck, John felt the bandages but did not feel pain within. There were no mirrors in the ward, only white beds and sheets.

John, relieved by his apparent lack of pain rushed forward to Sherlock's bed, eager to see if he was the same. Ripping open the hospital gown, John saw a gauze strip and pulled it aside. Sure enough, on the left of Sherlock's chest plate was an entry wound, but not a bullet wound that's for sure.

John checked Sherlock over quickly and thoroughly before rushing toward the door and barricading it. Once the room was secure, John checked the frosted window, he opened the glass to see a brick built wall in place of a view. Suspicions and panic spiking further, John rushed to the ward door to un-barricade it and sneak a peak outside. What hospital had a leather bound library adjacent to the wards?

~0~

With the door once more firmly barricaded, John returned to Sherlock's bed and clambered on to it, cuddling around his defenceless flatmate; John removed the wiring from the younger man and held him close.

The peace lasted 3 hours before the doctor returned. John jolted awake at the sound of the door being tried; he pulled Sherlock closer and waited.

"John" Sherlock murmured, his eyes still closed.

"Sherlock? Shh, it's ok, I'm here but I need you to stay quiet" John whispered soothingly.

"What's going on?" Sherlock started, lifting the sheets in an attempt to get up.

"Sherlock, stop, listen to me and stop, stay still and quiet, we are in a room, a man pretending to be a doctor is trying to get in to drug us. We are not safe and I need you to keep quiet" John hissed, tugging Sherlock back to him. Sherlock stilled at the doctor's words, listening intently to the door being tried once more.

It didn't take the genius of Sherlock Holmes to know that Doctor Passave would get past the barricade, it also wouldn't be a hard leap to make that he would bring men with him; men that held John and Sherlock down to inject them and make them sleep once more. What was surprising however; was that John's partner, flatmate and colleague, managed to engage in combat with the three men and Doctor Passave; within seconds, John was also fighting. Not many people would be able to recover from that many drugs and take down three large men in the space of 24 hours, Sherlock did it in 3.

"What did you give us?" John growled as he knelt on the 'doctors' chest, his hands grasping the white coat lapels.

"Nothing!" Doctor Passave cried out.

"You definitely gave us something, so you'd better tell us before I tear your neck from your shoulders." John growled again, his eyes narrowed and his teeth bared.

"Vasocaine" The man said weakly. "You were shot with a dart gun, both of you."

"Why are we here?" John pressed.

"Because my brother brought you here" Passave said in a strangled cry. "He said I could have you"

"Have us?" John pressed his knee further into the mans' chest.

"For the experiment." Passave said with a smile. "I was testing a theory we had. You two would be the best test subjects I could have asked for"

"Explain" Sherlock said in a low growl from behind the soldier.

"There was a film a while back; a foreign film. The Human Centipede" John froze in place, Sherlock rose an eyebrow.

"Have you heard of it?" Passave asked, the strain of a fully grown soldier on his chest now getting to him.

"No, I have not" Sherlock said robotically.

"Yes" John whispered, the overwhelming urge to throw up washing over him entirely. "You were going to do that? To us?" John asked with some difficulty, his mouth now going dry.

"It was implausible. I wanted to prove as such. I needed you both weak. Starve you and drain you over a few days before I began." Passave said.

"I don't understand" Sherlock said, his voice as his usual mechanical self.

"You are sick" John spat, reaching for the man's arm. Passave's eyes widened as John simply twisted and pulled at his wrist, instantly breaking the 8 evenly spread bones with a sharp snap.

Sherlock winced and took a step back to watch on as the kind doctor he had known so well transformed into the soldier he must have been; making the man underneath him scream and writhe.

"Its people like you that make this world so -" John paused to expertly pressure the weakest part of the collar bone, a sharp crack breaking the silent air "- disgraceful. I've killed better men than you." John continued in a dangerous snarl before getting to his feet and stamping on the weakest parts of the mans' ribs, snapping bones with each expertly executed manoeuvre.

"John" Sherlock tried, grasping John's shoulder to stop him continuing as the man cried on the floor.

"This man was going to…" John started, turning to Sherlock mid shout.

"You are not going to continue this" Sherlock stated firmly.

"Oh yes I bloody well am" John countered, whirling round once more toward the wreck of a man on the floor. "I'm not going to kill him, but I am going to cause some irreversible damage to him. He's a sick bastard and he should die in pain"

Sherlock blinked in shock at the doctors' behaviour and could only continue to watch as John continued to break the mans' bones' singularly.

"Can you still talk?" John asked.

"Mmfh" Came the reply from a broken jaw.

"Good. Where is your brother?" The soldier asked emotionlessly.

"MMfgh" The man tried, tears emanating from him in droves.

"Is he in this building?" John said with a heavy sigh.

The man nodded faintly before throwing up in his mouth. John did not move him.

Watching the man gag and choke was somewhat of a relief to John, he wouldn't have to kill him after all.

Sherlock stayed sitting on his bed, aware that if he were to interfere; John would more than likely not forgive him. There must be a reason for John's behaviour; therefore he would stay out of it.

John turned to Sherlock then and offered his hand, Sherlock looked to the man on the floor, paralysed and choking before taking John's hand and being led abruptly from the terrible room.

Feeling surprisingly numb, John headed for the only other door at the other end of the library and found an office.

Sherlock's clothes were folded neatly on top of John's on a desk in the corner, their coats and shoes there too. Once dressed, the two searched silently for their personal belongings before exploring the rest of the building.

It didn't take long to discover the bedrooms on the second level; there was just one with a locked door. Sherlock quickly deduced it was the room of the assassin and sank to the floor to break an entering using the pin from his watch strap.

There was no suspense or fear, there was only simple violence as the two men broke through the door and John took aim at the man getting up from his bed. In the blink of an eye, the man was dead.

~0~

Lestrade sighed as he looked between the two despondent men sitting on the back bumper of an ambulance that had been freshly called.

"How did the Passave's bring you both back here unnoticed?" The DI asked in confusion.

"They had help, three ex-service men; Marines. This is part of a larger organisation, Lestrade. I would advise you drop it down to simple insanity rather than the true cause. My brother will take it from here." Sherlock drawled, looking from John to Lestrade; his red blanket wrapped tightly around him.

"I still don't understand what he was going to do to you?" Lestrade asked, looking between them. Sherlock didn't look at John;

"I would advise you to not try and find out, Lestrade. We will be leaving now. I'll call a taxi" Sherlock rambled, fishing his phone from his coat pocket.

"No" Lestrade said firmly. "Luthor?"

A tall police constable approached.

"Take these two home to Baker Street. Safely Luthor, lock the doors" Greg said quietly.

Sherlock's small smile was more than gratitude for the DI's care.

The two sat side by side in the back of the police car as they drove the 54 miles back to London city centre. In the cold light of dawn, John still felt violently ill, traumatised even, by what they had managed to escape, the only thing that was keeping him earthed was a slender and warm hand holding his own across the space between them.

Once the car had stopped at their door, Sherlock exited onto the pavement and tugged John through the same door. Still holding each others' hands, Sherlock put both Johns' and his own hands in his coat pocket to retrieve his keys, pulling the doctor closer as they entered their sanctuary behind the door labelled 221B.

"Come with me" Sherlock said softly pulling John up the stairs and into the bathroom.

Running a bath, Sherlock removed their coats and put liberal amounts of Mrs Hudsons' bubble bath in the tub. John numbly removed his clothing before getting into the deep hot water.

"Can I join you?" Sherlock asked quietly. John still did not speak but simply nodded.

Sherlock de-clothed and slid in the water behind John, spooning him and bringing him closer. Something about this contact snapped John; the doctor began to cry.

"John?" Sherlock asked gently, pulling the doctor backward to rest on his lithe chest.

John cried unashamedly for the next 15 minutes, Sherlock holding him in the safety of their locked bathroom. When John appeared to be calming down, Sherlock leaned forward and retrieved his mobile phone from his discarded trousers from the floor beside the bath.

Half way through loading the mobile internet, John leaned back against Sherlock.

"Don't" John said weakly.

"I have to know, John. I will find out regardless" Sherlock countered, continuing to type 'The Human Centipede' into Google search engine.

John closed his eyes and turned his head away from the phone.

"Fascinating" Sherlock said incredulously.

The feeling of nausea returned to John as he imagined the images Sherlock was seeing.

"That…is new" Sherlock continued, pulling John closer.

"Its' twisted" John countered.

Sherlock threw his phone back to the floor and raised his knees in the bath; effectively pinning John tightly between them.

"I wouldn't have let that happen" Sherlock said quietly, reaching behind him for the soap.

John turned slightly, an incredulous look on his face.

"Sherlock, you were out cold" John exclaimed.

"I had it all under control" Sherlock continued, a small smirk lining his face as he rubbed the soap between his hands and applied it to John's hair.

"You liar" John said with a small smile, moving back; into the hands of his flatmate.

"I had a plan all along, John, I promise you" Sherlock said, now with a full blown smile.

"I certainly would not trust your promises" John said with his own smile, his eyes closed as Sherlock started to massage his hair into lather.

"I wonder who he would have attached to the other?" Sherlock mused with sudden thought.

John's eyes snapped open with the reality that hit home.

"Sherlock, please-" John started, moving away slightly.

"If he had attached me to you…would you have felt worse or better than if the other way around?" Sherlock queried curiously.

"Sherlock, stop it" John scalded, aiming to stand up out of the bath, but Sherlock's legs tightened around him; keeping him in place.

"We have to talk about it, John." Sherlock said firmly.

"Why?" John barked as he turned toward Sherlock.

"The thought sickens you. If left to fester this way, it could lead to another psychosomatic leg." Sherlock said quietly and calmly. "We need to make light of it, John, in order to move on".

John settled a little; he knew Sherlock was right, but he didn't want to talk about it. Moving back again, in the hot water, John allowed for his back to come into complete contact with Sherlock's front.

"So, how was our first date?" Sherlock asked, resuming his attentions to the shorter man's hair.

The sound that John emitted in response could only be described as a guffaw before he turned slightly to Sherlock and kissed him lightly.

"Sherlock Holmes" John announced with a soft smile. "I think it was the best date I have ever had" the doctor finished.

Sherlock smiled smugly as he continued to wash John.

"My bed or yours?" The detective asked quietly.

"I'll tell you in the morning" John murmured, moving in for another kiss, this one definitely more desperate than any they had shared yet.

Seemingly washing forgotten, both men scrambled out of the bath and toward Sherlock's bedroom; as the two landed on the bed, the sheets were soaked within minutes, neither cared. Sherlock fought his way to the top, pinning the soldier down with previously un-displayed strength. John writhed and arched beneath the detective but his fight for dominance proved fruitless.

"Are you sure you want this?" Sherlock growled, his hands pinning down John's arms.

"Yes" John nodded as he panted, helplessly staring up at Sherlock.

"Do you want me?" Sherlock continued, searching John's expression.

"God, yes" John whispered, receiving a bruising kiss from the man above him.

However, as Sherlock lowered his hand and allowed a finger to stroke a part of the doctor that had never before been touched; John yelped and leapt away, rolling out from under the detective.

Sherlock sat up and looked at John in confusion.

"I can't, I can't do that, just yet" John blabbered as he backed away, grasping at the pillow he currently held against him.

"Ok, ok, John, just, calm down" Sherlock tried to coo as he stepped from the bed and toward the deer caught in the headlights that was John Watson. "Just come here and lie down, we won't do anything more tonight" Sherlock said calmly, reaching out for John's hand.

Looking exhausted; John took Sherlock's hand and allowed himself to be led back to the bed and tucked in between the warm sheets.

John watched as Sherlock flicked the lights off by the door before walking round to the other side of the bed and easing himself between the sheets also.

For 10 minutes or more, the room was quiet, the air was awkward. John, unable to take the silence any more, moved closer to Sherlock.

"John?" Sherlock queried as John turned him onto his side, facing the doctor.

"Shh" John instructed, proceeding to turn his back to the detective and push backward into the warmth of his flatmate.

Sherlock tentatively wrapped an arm around the doctor and the pair settled in to an easy sleep.