"I am, sorry, Watson." The words left his lips slow and heavy and fell into his friend's ear in an exhalation of breath. "You inspire genius in me in regard to our cases and the most blinding of emotions in personal matters and you seem to suffer the worst from it all." His breath caught and hitched as Watsons adept fingers lingered on the small of his back, pulling him forward so that their bodies where flush with not an inch of space between them from stomach to shoulder, hearts pounding into each other's chests. Nowhere left to hide.

Hands spread possessively across his back, fingers burning across naked skin, counting the ripple of his bones. He wanted to speak again but he had no words left, there was only the rush of blood in his ears, the sound of their breaths echoing against one another.

The press of lips against his.

"I am not sorry. Not for any of it." He was being crushed, the lines of their bodies melding until it no longer mattered where one began and the other ended. Lips crushed against his again and this time he was ready.

He would not squander this opportunity, not hurt Watson again only to deny himself simply on the basis that it would not happen again. Nothing last forever, everything in life is fleeting and precarious. When Watson realized the full extent of his misguided desire he would leave, and with him he would take the life they had created. But in his wake would not be the bitterness of misguided rejection but the resonance of this single memory resplendent in its glistening light, the accumulation of years building to a final fatal pinnacle.

Like having a single night on the stage, loved by all the world, and then disappearing into shadow and obscurity.

A single memory to call upon when he had nothing left.

This time his own hand crept to the back of his friends neck, holding him gently in place as their mouths joined, as lips caressed and held and eyes slipped closed in surrender.

Their hearts pounding together.

They gasped against each other as they separated, each sucking lungful of air sweeter with deprivation, sweeter because their chests heaved against one another hotter than the dying fire.

"I will never be sorry for a single moment I spend with you." Watson's voice promised in ironic counterpoint to his own bitter thoughts, making him smile brokenly into their abandoned kiss. Hands slipped across his body, caressing skin that is too soft, too pale and adolescent, and muscles too underdeveloped. His own hands trailed boldly over his partner's body, memorizing every inch before it could be taken away. Tracing over flat stomach, the stark contrast of muscled flesh and furred skin to his own undeveloped nothingness. Touching and mapping the ridged smooth scar tissue like an explosion of a spider web cast across his partner's skin, the wounds that tortured him in the night, the flesh that ached in the damp London weather his to touch and molest. Muscles that lifted a gun, a cane, a blade in his defense, skin once covered by layers of socially proper cloth unveiled for these fleeting minutes. Hips pressed between thighs, spread open and pinned in place by Watson's body, by warm hard flesh.

Desperate sucking kisses burned the skin of his jaw, his neck, the hollow of his clavicle as Watson sought to obliterate his mind. Bristled skin scratched against him, a soft mustache lighting every nerve in his skin until lips returned to his. Swollen and red and wet.

A kiss that betrayed the desperation of two people knowing that they could never again return to this moment.

Watson devoured him, the kiss changed, lips and teeth and tongue working together to invade him. Unhindered taste was added to the attic of his mind, locked away to later haunt him in the darkness of the lonely night where he could disappear into the memory of Watson. He locked into memory the ghost of him, a pale echo to suckle flesh and invade wet heat.

He opened himself to Watson, let himself be invaded, plundered, tasted, a foreign tongue pressing into him, inviting, hands clutched feverishly at his skin, hands pressing fingertips into his hips hard enough to bruise, short nails drawing blood.

This time when they gasped for air his lips were wet with the lingering taste of him, as swollen as Watsons, as wanton and foolish. The wet sound of their lips parting was enough to send warmth to the pit of his stomach, driving out all lingering thought of self preservation.

He wanted more, another kiss to memorize, to feel love. A fleeting moment, and then, nothing.

He bent forward, his lips ghosting over Watsons before hands caught his face, holding him sill until blue eyes bore into him once more, familiar blue all but swallowed with black.

He could taste him on his breath. The beat of his heart was pulled away from his own, leaving him cold but for the pulse in wrists pressed to his face, proof that he was not yet alone.

Watsons voice broke between them, heavy, raspy and low with desire, with raw unbridled emotion, demanding to be heard, demanding understanding. Eyes pinning him place, leaving him more naked then the press of his body, than the revelation of all of his exposed deformities.

"I love you."

A chaste kiss pressed to his nose, to both cheeks just below his eyes, hands still holding him in place so that every expression could be dissected and interpreted, to make sure that the words held the right understanding, the proper weight. Like forever in a moment, a lifetime come to its final pinnacle.

He did not move, did not let his face change or drop or twist, to betray not a glimmer of emotion. To be the perfect actor, all of those years put to use. The final great performance he had never had.

He would pretend he was under the bright unforgiving stage light at last.

Easy to smile when your heart is shattering. Easy to lie.

Commit the words selfishly to memory, their resonance, their truth. The way they were said as if they could never be said to another. Only for him, the glint in blue-black eyes, the familiar lines of his friends face twisted into agonizing emotion, into misguided love. Bright as a flash in the fleeting black night.

Easy to love the idea of him, the mask, the face, the surface. Easy to love when the scars still lay beneath the surface and the mutilations are yet to be truly discovered, to commit yourself to half life by binding yourself to a half person. A mind without a soul, a brain without a body to match.

In months maybe Watson could forget the words, he could forget the inflection of his voice, never know how he looked in this moment.

But it would haunt Holmes for the rest of his life, words that mean more than the press of a stolen kiss.

Words never to be said again, to be taken back in horrified silences, in the moments of the future which lay before them in the professions of love for another. The knowledge and understanding of knowing if those words were uttered again in a day, in a month, they would never hold the same resonance, romantic love and endless promise lost to the casual love of a beloved friend.

Never like this again. Never so much like true life.

"I was walking through life half dead until I met you. You brought me to life."

Watson went to kiss his cheek, his chin, butterflying kisses across his skin, as if memorizing the sharp lines of his face with his lips. Holmes waited until lips descended on his skin and turned his head, stealing another kiss, pulling him down, holding them together, daring to taste, to invade, to make Watson whimper against his mouth. Sounds filed into the attic of his mind, drawers and rooms filled with only him.

Watson never closed his eyes, blue boring into grey, two eyes blurring into a wall of unfathomable blue.

In the morning Watson could take back his words as a fool's, as a dream and hope and illusions shattered in the harsh day light.

Holmes bit at Watson's lips, needing to hear that sound again, to feel arms hold him closer, to close around him as if they would never let go, hands possessive on his skin.

"And you, my dearest Watson-" A breath, a life, the beginning of the end and a confession "-are my life."

Words that Holmes would never take back.

His smile was like watching the sun rise and erase the shades of grey from London, like all the doubts and inevitabilities of tomorrow could melt under his brilliance until there was nothing but now. Until the press of flesh was almost enough to erase the guilt.

It was a new type of kiss, lips stretched into a blinding smile, teeth threatening to clash against soft flesh and opposing teeth. Hands grew bolder, trailing down his chest and brushing over nipples, pink turned rosy with the flush of blood, sensitive enough to make him gasp and writhe under his practiced hands. Fingers daring to touch new skin, to linger on his lower back, fingers dipping beneath the cloth, the slide of slick flesh instead of coarse wet fabric enough to make him arch into waiting heat before his mind could tell him to stop.

A shiver of panic saturating his spine, stilling his hips even as warm hands blazed a trail of fire across untouched flesh, fingers lingering dark places.

To lay naked before caring, dissecting, eyes. To be at last uncovered.

To see all of the scars and mutilations reflected in eyes more beloved than his own, to see the personal horror of a failed lifetime shared, flayed and cast into the sun. To see love cringe and shrink away.

To see love die in the echoes of horror and forgotten screams.

Dawning horror.

Love over before it began, not even a moment to last forever in perfect crystallized memory, untouchable.

Too broken and soiled to be loved even for a single deluded night.

"Sherlock."

Lips against his, begging for entrance, granted and devouring; warm arms wrapping around him, engulfing him, washing away the world and the last traces of logical thought form his mind. Vague indefinable terror lingering just outside of his embrace, outside of this shared comfort.

"Stay with me."

Warm and hot at once, whispered against his ear, a delicate lobe stolen between warm lips, bitten, a shiver of another kind wracking his body, pushing his arms around Watson, holding on as if by force he could keep this moment, this perfection. To hold them in rapture.

A groan and a whimper pressed into his neck, the sounds somewhere between mindless abandoned bliss and anguish. "I won't let you go." A subconscious promise dark and beautiful whispered into the hollow of his throat, teeth dragging sensuously across his skin, lips sucking blood to the surface as if trying to taste his very essence, red and purple blood pooling just beneath the skin, marked, loved, causing his heart to pound wildly in his chest. False words and pretty lies driving him closer to the edge of oblivion.

Every inch of marked skin ached the moment his lips left it, wet and bruised and abandoned to the air, the ghost of feeling haunting him, ruining him. Desire aching, spreading across his body and pooling heavy between his legs like liquid fire, twisting his limbs.

Lips returned to his, tongues pressing, kissing so deeply that he could taste the tang of sweat soaked skin in his mouth. Hands spread across his chest possessively, fingers fanning out over his heart, their kiss pressing him back into the chair. Not for a moment was he released, Watsons body pushing on top of his, hips pressed flush, chests rubbing and pressing sensuously against one another, the unique friction of skin on skin.

Watson's blunt nails scrapped across his chest, dragging across nipples, making him arch and gasp as the sensation from two pinpoints spread into every corner of his body, nerves of an untouched body set finally alight. Masculine hands drifted lower, thumbs dipping into the waist of his trousers, sliding beneath layers of cloth and delving into the hollow of his hips, fingers curving around him, holding him in place as sensation wracked his body.

Pinned like a butterfly.

Words mumbled into his lips, a wordless rasp of lips and tongue against him, indecipherable as his mind flooded. He tried to kiss him back, to taste and catalog and render him speechless, to stop the flood of words before they could destroy him further. Before Watson could pull him into foolish hope and surrender the last of his crumbling walls, to make him dream for a moment of forever when a night was already too much to ask.

A soft wet sound as Watson pulled away, their lips parted, a brilliant smile pressed to his skin, unbridled joy, glistening eyes looking on him as if he were still real.

"My beautiful love." Watsons fallible human heart pumping against him, their bodies slick, pale flesh pressed together, belly to belly, scars pressing against scars, puzzle pieces fitting together, clues sliding into place. Fingers dipping lower, pushing down cloth, delving to where thigh met groin, soft untouched skin, the pad of a thumb stroking hallowed flesh.

"Do you know that to me-" A half an inch closer to the scars, the pooling of blood and heat in the pit of his stomach, a strange stirring he could not control, basic human instinct taking control of his limbs, pressing him closer. A lost strangled cry in the back of his throat, muffled against Watsons skin in a moment of mindless need, the tang of skin in his mouth as his teeth closed over the throbbing pulse in his neck, marking him. Bite marks in white flesh, so when the morning came he would know it had not been a lie. Sweat and musk on his tongue, the intimate pulse of his heart beating for him.

"-you are perfect." Hands engulfed in wet cloth, holding him, stroking almost innocent skin, as his trousers dipped dangerously low on his hips, protruding bones naked in the firelight.

Perfect.

Not mutilated.

Not broken.

More than the machine mind without a heart.

Large warm hands plundering soft skin never meant to be touched and held him close, meaningless words whispered in his ear, a warmth, a smell, a touch, that means Watson. Means home.

For a brilliant instant none of it mattered. Not the boy in the forest or the chemist with his blood. Just the hands, the heat, the rush of a heart in his ears. Safe in his arms. To feel. To be loved. He arced into warm hands, pressing into a hard welcoming body.

Mutilated scars pressing into whole flesh. Sensation ripping through him, sweet unparalleled friction making him cry out like a whore and a wanton as something hard pressed innocently, accidentally, into his leg.

A hardness straining against its confines, pressing into scars, masculinity pressing into nothingness.

Proof of mutilation in lack of flesh.

Castrati.

Eunuch.

Monster.

Thick warm hands released him, letting his hips fall untouched to the seat of the chair. Holmes closed his eyes against it, against him, closed his betraying mouth and shut himself off from the world. He closed his hands over his face and he could see them, the cherub boys of Italy playing together in the abandoned rooms of the school, finding pleasure in each other's embrace, safe with their own ilk, malformed organs hanging like a child's between their legs.

Watson pulled away completely, the beat of his heart stolen from him, the press of his organ carefully removed, lips left cold and desolate.

The parties after the shows where the boys would laugh in their chiming voices, sweet with youth, trying to catch the eyes of the rich and powerful. The private rooms they were led believing they had found their way to the top, the cruel deep voices of laughing men tingeing the music of the night, a dissonance in the air. Deep booming laughter as friends joined the rooms where cherubs stood naked, greasy handed men with thin lipped wives and heavy purses.

The slap of a hand on flesh, the sound of clothing rippling as it fell to the ground and mocking voices decreed childish organs useless. Aborted screams turning into subdued sobbing as old hands touched young flesh and masculine organs plowed into unsuitable bodies. The sound of familiar voices, his background, his choir of angels pretending in a poor façade of acting that they enjoyed the brutish pain, the sound of self delusion as they tried to make themselves believe they had still found their secure future.

"Holmes." The calm warm hands of a doctor took his hands from his face, holding his fingers, thumbs dragging over his knuckles as he was pulled to sit up. He did not open his eyes until the last traces of the boys disappeared from his mind, their voices fading into memory as he thrust himself back into the familiar rooms of Baker Street.

Watson was still on his knees before him, chest flushed and heaving, gleaming in the firelight, irises blown black surrounded by a ring of dark blue, his lips were still kiss swollen and wet and red and he was holding his hands as chastely as a brother. He watched as his own hands were raised to Watson's lips and two gentle kisses were pressed to his knuckles.

"I know what I have put you through this last week, the magnitude of what you have told me tonight and what it has taken from you." When Holmes looked he realized that Watsons knees were bent uncomfortably, hiding his arousal from sight.

He almost could have smiled. Watson had not stopped out of his own distaste or even disgust, his body still obviously flushed with desire. He had known the very instant his own mind had wandered to dark places. He was hiding his intact shameless body, he was protecting him.

"I do not want to rip any more secrets from you but I need to know if you have had lovers." Unflinching, unrelenting, the army surgeon with the gun and nerves of steel, gentle enough to remove a heart. "If you know how two men may lay together."

"No." Holmes found himself twining their fingers together, feeling for the change in Watsons pulse, the flutter that meant his touch made his partners heart skip a beat. "I have never let anyone touch me, but I know how the deed is done."

He could almost grasp his own clinical detachment, that aloof place his mind could reside in even as he sat bare chested with his companion between his legs, their fingers lacing, unlacing, tapping the beat of a song into his palm, the strains of a sonata in the back of his mind playing in sweet company to Watsons voice.

"Not a deed. Not between us." Watson's fingers tangled of their own will, changing the song on his skin, changing the music in his mind, a duet instead of a lonely sonata. "A declaration, an act of love-"

This time he did smile, bittersweet. Easy to detach when others are deluding themselves with falsehoods and blatant lies, innocent as children in a cruel world. Easy to fall into old patterns. "Says the romantic writer."

"Says the man in love with you." Watson corrected. Both of them were staring at their joined hands, watching the innocent play of flesh tangle and wind, music like Handle, like Mozart, thoughts turned to sound. "I will not hurt you, you know." A simple offering, words fishing for the reason for his momentary panic, trying to soothe fears without knowing what they might be.

A bitter taste rose in his mouth as the sound of Watson in his mind began to change, tentative and careful in a way he never was with the infallible detective. The mask of false calm he used to sooth injured children and weak minded women. The sound of the end, as inevitable as the dawn.

"With women in three continents to vouch for you how could I fear?" He wanted the words to come out like a prelude to a laugh but dark strains of bitter poison infiltrated the sound. Fingers clenched tight around his, stopping the music in his mind as it built to its gruesome climax, stopping the way a heart stops.

Piercing grey eyes flickered and caught on blue.

"My days of promiscuity ended when I fell in love with you."

A sadness infected Watsons features, a depth of emotion that seemed to dull the skin and eyes, a sorrow that added years to an already troubled face. Like all the years of happiness that lay between them had been a façade, a mask more perfect than his own. It is not possible for a soul to know such anguish and smile as Watson once smiled, to laugh as he laughed, as if it would be the greatest thing he ever did.

It is not to say that he cried. This pain was too old for that, it went beyond the physical, although an ache seemed to radiate off of him, debilitating as his old wounds, radiating from his troubled and ill heart, crashing through Holmes in their strangled touch.

"I know that you do not believe me. That you will give yourself to me tonight believing that I will leave you. That you will let me bury myself within you and you will believe I do not love you." Watson pulled his hands free as if the touch was too much of a lie for him to sustain, but once his fingers were free they fell back to pale skin, catching pallid wrists in his grasp. Like the regret of a death bed, final acts being all that was left in life.

"I would ask you to trust me but I will not force you to lie to me. I could not bear that." A bristled kiss was pressed to each wrist, bottomless blue eyes closing as if memorizing the feel of him, a sentiment that stole the moisture from his mouth and pricked at the back of his own eyes.

If he lied to himself, like cherub boys broken by men in hateful self delusion, if he let himself believe, he could almost see unfathomable love. The promise of forever, superimposed over the reality, dreams lingering in beloved eyes and endless sorrow.

Lies he wished he could believe.

"But I will spend every day of the rest of our lives convincing you."

Hands dropped his wrists and arms wrapped around his lithe chest, pulling him closer even as Watson pressed into him, hard flesh resting between his thighs. Groins meeting and rubbing together, the unforgiving slide of hardened flesh against scars, layers of damp cloth a fleeting barrier between them, stealing his breath as if they had never stopped. Making him pant into Watsons flesh, not given a moment to regret, a moment to dissect or think. Their hearts pounding against each other, pumping so hard and fast that they might try to burst from their chests, to break through flesh to beat together.

Watson was on top of him, pushing him down into the chair so his shoulders pressed into the back, his hands slipping to his waist, pulling his hips off the chair, breathing him in. Thumbs slipped mercilessly into his trousers, tracing maddening circles on the juncture of his thighs as the cloth slipped lower, the warm leather of the seat sticking to exposed flesh.

"Holmes" A sound he had never heard before, a dark melodic resonance that set his teeth on edge, that made his blood boil in his veins. Gone was the sorrowful doctor, the man mourning a love that would never be. A slow purposeful thrust into the curve where leg meets groin, still tingling with the memory of wandering hands, hardness pressing into him, heat burning through cloth. "God." A gasp as if the sensation was too much, the sharp smell of blood as he bit his lip, blackened eyes staring into him without compunction, blatant need. Truth. "I want you."

Lips trailing down his chest, encircling his nipple and giving a teasing bite as they trailed lower, kissing a trail of fire down his stomach until Watson kneeled between his knees, waiting until Holmes looked at him, until the tension had built around them so thick they could scarcely breath.

Cloth peeled away from white skin, dark and heavy, dragging as it released him, lips kissing each new inch of skin, lavishing affection, hungry for more.

Holmes watched as his trousers were pulled free, as he lay naked at last, scars spread out, mutilations revealed between wanton legs. Watson pulled the damp cloth from white thighs, ignoring lands of disfigurement spread before him until every scrap of clothing lay in a crumpled heap at his side.

His hands splayed over white thighs, nails digging into flesh creating crescent moons of red, he took a deep shuttering breath as he mercilessly spread his legs apart, head dipping to examine more closely the white pink scars, fingers making wide sweeps of flesh, coming closer each time to the mound of flesh aching for his touch, hard and engorged with blood.

Blue eyes seared up at him from between his legs, waiting for the moment their eyes locked to press his tongue into the scared flesh of his decimated organ. Watson only waited for the first cry to be ripped forcefully from Holmes' throat, elegant white hands tangling helplessly in his hair, to take him into his mouth. An inch of engorged flesh fitting perfectly into the wet, tight, cavern of his mouth, as if they were made for this. His entirety engulfed between beloved lips as a tongue laved against the scar tissue sensitized by decades of deprivation. Fingers ran the long line beneath where another mans haired testicles would lay, the skin perfectly smooth save for a single ridged canyon on which his fingers played, coaxing sensation, willing hips to push desperately against him, to draw his lips up and down around his flesh, for a voice to cry out in strangled pleasure.

Watson withdrew his mouth with a wet obscene pop, applying his lips to unblemished thighs, biting and nipping, marking them as his own. Before Holmes could pull him back in desperation he put the palm of his hand flat against the stump, pushing and rubbing the wet flesh in time with the desperate circling of his hips, touching parts of him that he could never dream of touching on another man, sexual organs flayed open for him to touch and caress.

Watson bit hard, a purple bruise already forming as he pulled away. Holmes cried out in distress as unfelt sensations threatened to overwhelm him, hands pulled desperately as his pleasure built to unendurable levels, something strange and dry pooling in his stomach.

"Watson!" He swallowed back the building panic as the feeling built without a foreseeable end. Watson marking his skin, marks that would last longer then their fleeting embrace, than the memory of his wet mouth.

Watson let his fingers play across the sensitive skin, across undamaged nerve endings, pushing into intact flesh, manipulating the great detective with his hands, stealing his control. There was panic in his face, in the quick desperate pant of his breath, the unending motion of his hips. Divine torture.

Another gasped breath, a sobbed admission. "I can't-"

Pleasure without fulfillment or release, building eternally, unbearably, his mind holding him back beneath the precipice as grey eyes focused wildly, pleadingly, on him.

Watson spread his fingers out, sliding his hand over his groin, fingers rippling past the flat stomach and heaving chest to at last run up his throat and catch his chin, to focus that great frantic mind on only him.

A kiss to the stump of engorged flesh, a smile pressed into the scars as eyes that sent shivers down the spines of the most hardened criminals dissected him. The great mind needed more than simple touch, more than physical sensation.

"You are beautiful."

He heard him cry out, his voice high and ringing as he hollowed his own cheeks around his friends flesh. The legs around his head trembled, the body beneath his hands straining, all the muscles contracting and then released. His long hard body melting into the chair.

With another breath, like rapture on the tip of your tongue, Watson pushed himself closer, stopping only when his hips pressed into the dark leather of the chair, crawling into the place Holmes walls once existed, pulling him close, their bodies flush as the aftershocks and lingering sensation reverberated through his limbs.

This time when his own clothed arousal pressed into the naked groin of his friend Holmes did not freeze in his arms, did not turn in on himself, lost in a haze of memories. This time grey eyes watched him as if every moment could be made to last an eternity, his body warm and supple and pressing against him even now.

He allowed lips to press to his temple, still and docile as Watson breathed in the scent of him, like dark wild alleys and brilliant light infused in flesh. Like holding lightening in your arms.

"Watson" That heavy sleepy voice flooded his dark reverie as slender arms slipped around his shoulders, one delicate hand trailing up the sensitive skin of his neck to bury itself deep within his auburn hair and bring him down for a kiss. The sweet brushing of lips becoming deeper and less innocent, seconds of wordless affection turning wet and burning and hungry until it engulfed their minds, became the center of their world in taste and sound and touch. A kiss to make Watsons heart pound and break. "That is not all men do." Long legs wrapped around him, thighs encasing his hips, muscles pulling him closer, pressing his painful arousal into welcoming flesh. A whisper dark and wet against his ear that made his loins twitch in their entrapments as the smallest corner of his mind rebelled. "Take me."

It was an act, a face meant to ensnare, a voice to entrap him in lust, a body posing as wanton to seduce but his kiss still tasted like the bitter copper of blood, his body trembled so slightly a lesser man might have missed it, a man less adept at the eccentric ways of Sherlock Holmes.

Beneath the seduction and basic need of the human body, beneath the façade of love, doubt lingered. A nameless fear in a mind that refused to acknowledge such weak emotions, fear in the fearless.

Holmes wanted this part of him before he was left alone. A night of rapture before a lifetime of solitary dreaming and cold recollection. He was collecting data, heartless and analytically trying to define the feeling of love, trying to break a touch down to its basic parts, a kiss into the chemicals released into the mind. He was pretending to believe in forever while preparing for a lifetime spent alone.

Holmes was handing him his body, his guarded emotions and secreted soul, his virginity in return for a single night of memories without the hope of more. To give himself up after a lifetime of isolation and hiding without ever believing in love.

"No." Watson broke their kiss off but the bitter taste lingered in his mouth, he buried his eyes in Sherlocks warm neck, breathing into the hollow of his throat, letting the honest heartbeat lull him from his own heartbreak. To block out the way the hands tracing the contours of his body were set in a specific pattern, memorizing the landscape of his body, a mental map of wounded tissue and anatomical features. "Not like this."

"But-" It was the first real word to emerge from his friends mouth in long minutes spent in each other's arms, somewhat lost, an edge of panic, the hint of betrayal infused in a single syllable. It reminded him of the first time he had been wounded in Holmes company, how fear and indignation seemed to run hand in hand as if he should have been able to control the entire universe.

"You said…" The control was perfect as if he had never faltered but even with his voice back in his command he could not seem to speak the words that Watson plied him with, even now unable to fuse his little act with words that might hold meaning and truth.

Love.

Desire.

"Stop." Watson stole a kiss even as he begged and commanded, pulling a lip into his mouth and releasing it, pulling back before Holmes could respond, before his touch could lie. "I will do as I have promised. I will break my heart for you and spend every day of the rest of my life in repentance for taking your body before your heart." He looked unflinchingly into his face, watching the pain flicker behind his eyes, feeling his heart pound painfully in his chest.

He would not live in the lie Holmes created for him. He would not pretend their first time together was made of joy and love; he would take the dark reality of fear over the fairytale ending Holmes would have him believe.

A reality they could share.

Holmes said nothing but the press of his body changed, less provocative, less falsified, grey eyes fastened on him, half make believe and half frightened. Watson felt his heart break all over again. Until it felt as if there was nothing left of him to break.

Holmes had been right about one point in his predicted future.

Before tonight Watson had never believed the man who leaped into danger and blood and the most sallow holes in London could ever feel fear. That mindless flood of panic, that base human reaction.

Now he knew better, knew the way it haunted his eyes, knew the type of fear to look for, that it was not blood he feared but heart.

Watson closed his eyes and imagined for an instant how it would feel to believe as Holmes does, that they would never see each other again. A flash of brilliance in the night and then only darkness.

That he would never again wake to see Holmes still awake after a long night of contemplation, his long body strewn over the settee, his eyes flashing to him with childlike mirth the moment he walked in the door as if hours had spent in the hopes that he would do just that. To have heard his last private violin concert, the music of thought turned to sound with only him to listen. How it would feel to kiss those lips and hold his body close as if he were his own and then never again set eyes on him.

Such a feeling of sadness filled him that he could scarcely breathe when he opened his eyes to find Holmes still in his arms, still looking at him with his mix of concealed heartbreak and need.

"Not here, not like this is meaningless." Watson gathered long limbs close, his hands sliding along bare flank, holding white flesh pressed to his hips as he stood. The arms around his neck clutched closer, the long winding legs around his waist holding tight. He stood with Holmes captured in his arms like a debauched bride, watching a bright flush paint the white laid out before him.

Each step drove his arousal into the coarse material of his own pants, into the teasing of Holmes' warmth, driving him mad. Every step, every grind, hating his body for its eagerness to commit such an atrocity against his own heart. Watson dug his teeth into his lip, focusing on the sharp sensation, the tang of blood as he pulled Holmes closer to his chest in a futile attempt to reconnect to the world, like child finding safety in a doll crushed over its heart.

He finally held the untouchable in his arms, the accumulation of all of the desperate wanderings of his mind, the man he had watched from his shadow for years, the person who had coaxed him with a harsh laugh and gentled hand back to life when he thought only of death, the man who he would die for…

And it felt like betrayal.

They were not the two partners forgoing a conversation with the look of an eye, the gesture of a hand, not two people who trusted each other with their lives, who cared more for each other than themselves. Not the duo traveling the pages of fantastical mysteries.

They were strangers fumbling together in the dark.

The door closed behind them with a finalistic thud, the clink of the metal lock shutting the door on the outside world. The point of no return. He could not look as he set Holmes down on the covered bed, his long white body gleaming in the near darkness. He saw in his peripheral vision the way he pulled himself completely onto the bed, the way he watched as Watson bent and slowly unlaced his own shoes, delaying the inevitable, giving time a moment to right itself, trying to rein in the bile rising in his throat and the desire raging his gut.

His socks were next to join his meticulous pile, sitting on the floor now, unwilling to sit on the bed in so casual a manner. His hands drifted over the laces of his trousers but he found himself unable to go further. It seemed so clinical, so antiseptic, like a secretary might wait outside the door with a sour face and ink stained hands, a doctor with the glazed look of the untried would walk in at any moment and examine old scars without a hint of empathy or humanity.

He tore his hands away from the ties and stood, thrusting the fancy into the back of his mind with the rest of his writer's wanderings. He did not deserve respite, not now. His hands shook as they opened Holmes' bedside drawer where he knew an untouched jar of cream lay, another crush of guilt rushed over him. Cream that should have been applied to healing wounds, that he should have applied to Holmes himself rather than trusting he would do it. Neglect.

The jar was cold in his hands, he twisted the top violently, applying too much pressure. The creak of a bed told him that the other occupant of the room was moving but he was still shocked when a hand entered his vision, a hand closing over his with the reassurance and confidence of the man he had met all those years ago who held the world at his fingertips.

"Watson."

Even naked and exposed he was not diminished as another might have been. He stood tall and proud, the lines of his body softened in the intimacy of his small bedroom. Like one of Botticelli's angels come to life reaching out of painted gardens and perfection for him.

He no longer clutched to the artifice of forced passion although something akin to it burned with heavy reality in his gaze. When his hand, too soft to belong to a man, glanced across his cheek all of the pain that formed between in the past days, hours, or maybe even the years before seemed to disappear as if they never existed.

"It does not matter what I believe will happen." There was a moment of indecision, and a deep final breath as the last of the great detectives walls were cast off, abandoned at their feet, the refuse of war, the bandages of a caustic life. For him.

"I love you."

When they kissed it was heartbreak and bitter resolve, it was sweet and burning passion. It tasted like a victory and a surrender.

Watson pushed them onto the bed, letting his heavy body pin the detective in place as if he might fly away, surrounding him until he was the only thing that mattered. Soft hands were bolder now in the darkness of the familiar room with all of the lies and prejudices laid out before them, a barren landscape for their would be love to wither or flourish.

He traced the contours of Holmes face in lips and fingertips, delicate and engulfing, half caring and half unquenched need while hands carefully freed him of the constrains of his final layers of clothing. Watson rolled off of the other man, kicking off his trousers, wanting to pin him back in place, to let him feel his desire without seeing it, to forget that the differences between them cause Holmes so much pain.

Slender arms pushed him back into the bed, slim legs straddling his thighs just below a thick explosion of scar tissue on which his hand subconsciously lay. He lay still, wanting to pull Holmes down to him, all too aware of how youthful his companion looked, how his beauty seemed beyond the touch of time while his own scarred body seemed to wither, his own arousal betraying his embarrassing need, almost grotesque next to the flat clean planes of the body above him.

Neither of them spoke as iridescent hands callused with the strings of violins and the grasp of a pipe pushed away the hands he used to hide himself, as they traced the path of his history scarred into his flesh. A breath caught painfully in his chest at the first touch against his organ, stroking across the length as if examining a clue, finally lifting it and caressing it, holding it in his warm palm.

Holmes smiled as his fingers trailed down, gently lifting his testicles, absorbing the warmth there before fisting him briefly, leaving his open palm at the tip, testing the skin he found there, fingering the vein running beneath the length. He bent his long body over him, kissing him so that Watson could feel his smile in the darkness, feel the hand close over him again as their bodies pressed against each other.

"Soft as I am." He whispered, wonder infusing his voice, lost in his own world, speaking to no one but letting the words pour from his lips.

Watsons chest arched as the hand pulled his willing flesh, gasping into the other mans smile.

It had never been like this. Like a touch could be enough to steal his soul.

Holmes turned them over; holding Watson close as he moved to his own back, pulling the other mans weight on top of him, holding him so close that he could feel the heat and weight of his member as if it were his own arousal pressing into his stomach. His body thrummed with blood, the cruel nub of flesh between his legs throbbed with need, a desire without comparison gripping his body, crippling his mind. A need more mental than physical when Watson gasped his name with breathless reverence and a face created to be in love looked down on him.

"Now." He let his hand run down his back, skimming to hold onto his flanks, to hold in his hands globes of muscled flesh. To pull Watson into him as he opened his legs further, to splay himself beneath the other. "John please."

A small helpless thrust rocked between their bodies, Watson rocking against the stub of engorged flesh until they both bit back a cry. His hands wandered across the bedspread desperately as hips rose to meet his thrusts, finding the jar loosened and abandoned next to the rise and fall of their bodies. It took an eternity of seconds to muster the dexterity to slick his fingers but only a heartbeat to run his fingers between their bodies, slicking both of them until the slide of their bodies was effortless.

Still slick fingers ran down scars, into secret dark havens and the warmth of embracing flesh. Watson expected a gasp, a tightening of muscles as he penetrated up to his knuckle inside of him. He did not expect the instantaneous acceptance, the way his body opened to him, for a soft moan to break the rhythm of their panting breaths. For the intimacy of his first name to be what was moaned into his ear.

Hips rose and fell, still sliding against each other but now as he fell Holmes impaled himself deeper onto his fingers, never slowing as one finger was joined by two, his gasps and moans the only acknowledgment of the way Watson moved his fingers inside of him, stretching his passage, moving held within the depths of his body. No more strange than if they were made of one body moving fluidly together.

Three fingers buried within him had Watson pressing his hip down to still him, sweat breaking out across his pallid chest as the fingers within him moved, twisting and opening relentless as the ocean.

He wanted more. To push him open, to take the body so completely given into his care and make him writhe. To make him scream. To leave an imprint of his touch seared into his flesh. He wanted to touch him in a way that would make him forget doubt, to flood him with sensation until it erased the memory of blades and blood with the blunt push of his fingertips. To leave part of himself deep within his almost willing lover.

"There is a place within you." Watson gasped as Sherlock's hips rose against his own arousal only to impale himself on John's hand, deep, engulfing. "A bundle of nerves left intact." His fingers twisted and Holmes strained to pull off, to push further, but Watson pinned him in place with a sweaty hand as his other worked deep inside of him. "A place they could not take from you."

He bent his fingers, searching, twisting, owning at last, claiming with deft fingers and Holmes screamed, his body arching. The sound was rough and stolen from his throat, his hips pushing convulsively down onto Watsons hand unable to control himself, hands clutching at the fabric of the bed as the fingers twisted within him, pushing again and wringing a cry from his body. His touch tearing him apart.

Watson pulled his hand free of his body, need flaring in his loins as Holmes pressed down against retreating fingers, as red swollen lips gapped panting and grey eyes bore into him as if looking into his soul.

"John." White hands grasped his shoulders, fingers kneading into the muscles, sweat slicking their touch. Under his gaze Holmes bent his knees, long legs folding nearly against his chest, spread to fall on either side of Watsons body, ankles coming to rest in the small of his back, embracing him.

He fell into place without thought or effort, their bodies aligning perfectly, his weeping arousal nudging prefect flesh, pressing against the opening of his body. He wanted to push in and bury himself within Holmes, wanted to watch his face fall open, to tear down the walls that lay between them, to strip away the remnants of society that lay on his face and render him perfectly naked. But pain wrenched at his heart at the desperation painted across sharp features.

Holmes' legs strained against him, pulling him closer, pulling him into his body. Pale hips rose, pushing back on his length until he could feel the muscle give way, heat engulfing the tip of his member. Watson spread his hand over Holmes' flat belly, pushing him down, off of him, before he could lose himself, pinning him in place against the coverlet.

He could taste the words as if they were his own, they writ themselves in his heart, etched in flesh and blood as surely as a bullet.

As clear as if Holmes had pulled him down and whispered the words into his ear.

Do it now before I lose you.

The pain in his chest, the hand clenching around his heart, like a bullet splitting muscle, like watching love die, strangled his voice, tore him apart as he bent to press his mouth to Holmes, to kiss the words into his mouth.

"You are a fool if you believe that I could touch you-" He closed his eyes, their eyelashes brushing, the world warmed with their mingled breath, the skin under his possessive hand quivered "and ever let you go."

He thrust in deep and slow, Holmes opening for him, the muscles of his stomach tensing under his palm, engulfing every inch of him as their bodies slid together, until he was buried completely within him for the first time.

Their kiss froze, abandoned as Holmes was filled and he adjusted to the feeling, as their mouths could gape only for breath. He was wet, virgin, heat, perfection made physical. Watson waited until Holmes began panting against him, not speaking but his hips moved in hopeless circles, pushing, grinding into him from where he lay pinned.

Watson pulled out of his lovers' body, watching Holmes writhe beneath him, watch him try to strangle the sounds escaping his steel resolve, watch the normally impassive face flushed with desire and passionate need, watched as his body tore him apart. When only the crown of him remained buried within him he stole a kiss as the lithe body beneath him strained to feel him once again, pushing against him. His lips were wet and sucking on his neck, biting at the lobe of his ear as pushed in a scant two inches before pulling out again, building need, and satisfying nothing.

"John!" Hands grasped the back of his neck, wide desperate eyes looking into him, imploring him, begging him for more. Tears threatened to spill as the feeling of over panic and overwhelming passion flooded his body

Watson had set a fire in him. The pleasure was building to alarming levels, his passage felt slick and open, abandoned as he pulled out completely.

It was like dying, like being torn open and a void filled as John pushed deep within him, slick passage holding him, pulling him deeper until it felt as if every inch of his being was being invalided, filled with him. Splaying him open and stealing every secret, every part of him dark and hidden and laid out for him to touch and hold. Flesh met flesh, the heavy swing of his testicles pressing to soft flesh, their weight and softness strange and wonderful, like nothing he had ever known.

Watson's breath was on his face, panting into his neck as teeth and lips marked him, claiming him over and over as his own. Blood pooling under skin marking where he had belonged to Watson, a moment of passionate obsession frozen in time. His hips moved and deep within him his engorged member twisted against new flesh, pressing impossibly deeper. Hands on his hips lifted his body to change the angle of Watsons thrusts, his hips cantered off the bed like a wanton whore, his legs splayed.

It was almost enough to send panic shooting down his spine, too open, too vulnerable. When Watson thrust mercilessly back into him, his most intimate organ plunging into his body, thrusting to where fingers had made him writhe and scream.

Physical overriding the mental.

A surprised mewl the only thing to escape his lips as his need replaced panic in a rush of heat. He let large hands hold him up, let Watson pull out and drive back into him, filling him.

John entered him, heat infusing their bodies, every breath pushing his member into that bundle of nerves, making his legs shake, each little thrust a flash of white in his mind pushing him closer to oblivion. Watson laid his body on top of him, heavy and real, until their lips could meet.

Watson plundered his mouth sloppily, unable to concentrate as their bodies pushed helplessly against one another. He left a trail of wet heat in his wake even as he thrust between his legs. He kissed a trail of fire to his ear, lips still teasing, tongue working an evil magic.

Holmes felt his entire body stiffen in panic as he withdrew, his body hollowed and empty without him now, a lacking he never known he had, a deep need to be filled pushing his hips desperately against Watson. The pleasure was still building, impossible to reach the pinnacle, as if this torturous pleasure would last forever, driving him mad, fear pricking his mind. A hand dipped between their bodies, a slick palm rubbing the thick nub of flesh between his legs, pulling his hips into a helpless grinding circle.

"John please!"

He couldn't see his face, could not look into his eyes, but his body was flushed and hard on top of him, still desiring him. Tanned skin glowing with life, sparking new desperation in him.

He gasped, his mouth left open and panting as a voice heady with desire, roughened with passion vowed with the magnitude of a wedding vow and the sincerity of the lost. "I love you."

His hard member was nudging against his slick opening again, teasing, promising, holding back, his hand still rubbing his scarred flesh, igniting nerves that never should have woken.

There was a gasp in his ear, a sound ripped from the depth of Watsons very being, a breath that sounded like 'love'.

Watson thrust deep and harsh, rubbing against his prostate, obliterating his mind as he stayed buried within him, not pulling out but pressing desperate circles into his body making it hard to breathe without gasping and begging mindlessly for more or to finish him or make this last forever.

Like Watson never wanted to be outside of him again.

Watson's warm hands left his body, muscled arms moving to hold himself up on the bed, bodies still joined, groins and stomachs pressed close as blue eyes became visible once more, open and deep and beautiful in a way nothing else had ever been before. Red lips panting and filled with blood from kissing him formed words written in the lines of his face.

"I'm yours."

Watson held him as the building pleasure crested at the sound of his voice, crying out in the other mans ear, desperate to keep his eyes open and watch Watsons face as he lost his precarious hold on his body spent himself deep with Holmes. They held each other as the world ceased to move and then started again, through the lights and brilliance and tremors that affected every iota of his body, until the chemicals saturated his brain and brought him to the pinnacle of euphoria in which he could almost imagine staying in John's arms forever. Until he could almost believe this was real and the end would not come with the morning sun.

Strong hands lingered on his face and body, caressing and finally turning him so that they shared a pillow, bodies partially entwined, limbs left where they fell and pressing into each others bodies as if there was no difference between the two.

They stared into each other's eyes, their breaths mingling, a comforting expanse of white pillow cradling their heads, diminishing their worlds until only the other existed. Holmes could see the hint of a smile gracing his partner's lips, that smile which had too often of late been lost to him. A smile of perfect happiness.

A single steady hand traced the contours of his face, not as if he were memorizing, but as if he could not help himself. Fingertips danced across the dip of his cheek, a thumb brushed over his lips as if he wanted to steal a kiss. But the hand only drifted lower, fingers splayed and palm pressed possessively over his chest, over his heart.

Watson's eyes shone in the gentle blue light of the oncoming night. He took a deep breath, the way he does before reading his newest story aloud, because he knows that despite protests Holmes would do anything to hear it.

"Ever since our beginning and I made lists of your peculiarities I knew that I would spend all of our days together with you as the expert, but years have passed and now I know one thing absolutely which you would never guess."

His smile grew, soft and gentle, a smile which welcomed him in, a smile which was enough to keep his breathing shallow and his heart beat irregular even when he knew he should shut his eyes and turn away, even though he knew this man could break him apart.

"At first you will act as if nothing has changed and for awhile it will even feel as if this is true. You will accept my every kiss with a resolved pain. You will believe that every embrace will be our last and every kiss you will treat as our final goodbye. You will look at the future I predict now and you will think of how foolish and romantic I am, how naïve. This period will span days, time I will not waste. I will kiss you in the privacy of our rooms and hold you in my arms. When we go out to the theater, to dinner, or even out on a case you will look at me and know the words I am thinking even if I cannot say them. Because the first thing you hear when you wake will be that I love you and it will be the last thing you hear as you go to sleep at night.

Then, one day, you will wake and all of the details which once meant nothing will impress themselves on you. You will know when I touch you that to me you are perfect. When you speak I will hang on your every word, when you hold me I will count myself as undeserving of the great luck which has befallen me. But most importantly, when you are flawed, when you are cruel or throw yourself into danger, you will realize that this will never change between us. I will still be annoyed and worried, and I will still love you.

It may take the passage of weeks, months or even years but you will find yourself trusting me, we will grow inexplicably closer, and you will begin believe in us. My stories in the Strand will be more flawed and romantic than ever. You will take on more clients, more brilliant adventures, clients who will invite us to dinners and parties, and requests for our company will be, regretfully, denied. The end of the day will finds us hidden away together in our home and for the first time you will look forward to tomorrow.

Objects will come to possess new meaning to us. The chair on which we first kissed, the room in which we spent our first anniversary, the rug on which I knelt to ask you to spend the rest of your life with me, the rug we will have not moved from for the whole of the evening afterward.

We will go away for a year or two. Travel places neither of us have been or perhaps to places we once knew. On paper, courtesy I imagine of your brother, I will have met a girl whom I wooed and married.

By the time we return to Baker Street she will have tragically died and left me a widow with only you to care for me.

If people ask you will say that I visited often, that we were unbelievably happy, that when I officially moved away you barely noticed my absence until the day you went to collect me and take me home.

We will invite friends to Sunday dinner, ones that linger after for a drink and a cigarette just to hear the end of our most recent escapade, to hear your theory of this or that.

Years will pass, maybe this night will have faded from your memory entirely, although I doubt it. We will remember our days together as fondly as a dream, a life spent as well as any other in the history of the world.

We will age, our bodies will deteriorate and those around us will suffer similar fates. Some will age gracefully; the lines on our faces will speak of a life spent in laughter and joy. Lestrade will be bald. The irregulars will grow up, they will visit with stories of wives and babies and a life that was better for you having been in it.

One day years from now we will be on holiday, in Switzerland or France. I will be rushing off on an errand, off my usual path but well within the realm of normalcy because with you no part of the world is out of reach, and you will see me. At first you will smile, a familiar face set against fantastical backgrounds, you might nod at me and contemplate running to finish your own errand but you will condemn the thought a moment later. Your smile when our hands grasp tight will be genuine and unafraid. You will not say a word. And in that place where no one knows our names, under the roar of a waterfall, or standing on top of the world, you will kiss me.

Alone in the darkness of our room that night, trapped in each other's arms, you will whisper that you believe in us, words I have heard a million times, and each kiss will be like the first.

We will age and we will grow old and we will watch the world change around us and I would not change a second of the life I spent with you.

Though the days will change and the adventures differ there are two things I know beyond a doubt which will always happen.

When you wake up in the morning the first thing you know will be that I love you.

And it will be the last thing you hear when you go to sleep at night.