There will be a retaliation. There's always retaliation, whether its leather gloves and avoidance or a door locked tight for hours. At this point it's only been the latter, but something more will come; though judging by John's increasingly hectic pacing it will soon escalate.

The retaliation, of course, will be towards me. Impulses are rarely an issue for me, though in the case of John Watson that's rapidly becoming another matter entirely. I fell asleep with the taste of him drying on my fingers, and woke up to it fading on my tongue, my own essence plastered to my pants. I must have made noise, must have disturbed him; I slept with my door barely cracked – in case he woke up in the night and was ill – and when I rose it was opened wider by several inches. I left the room intending to behave as usual – scan the paper; take a swift shower before checking for inquiries on my web site.

But John upended everything by rising before me – I had expected him to sleep for far longer, given the amount he'd had to drink. When I came out he already had the paper spread between his (sturdy, steady, glorious) hands. I meant to simply take it from him, perhaps allow myself to indulge in a brush of our knuckles during the exchange – then I smelled it, beneath the heaviness of the alcohol: smoke. John and cigarettes, my (new) favorite indulgence synthesized with an old one.

I had to be closer after that – I masqueraded reading long after I had finished in order to continue inhaling that faint trace of tobacco mingled with the supple warmth of his skin; dared to let my little finger find his (heightened) pulse. If I could subtract the alcohol I would bottle that scent and wear it as cologne – perhaps that could be an experiment; I could take some of the soap from the clinic, use my favorite brand of cigarettes, some earl grey tea and a dash of gunpowder for good measure.

I've distracted myself again – he's stopped pacing and is likely standing in front of his door, hand wavering over the brass knob. He'll be thinking hard, teeth burrowed into his bottom lip –

He's decided. I hear the snick of his door latch as it slides from its chamber, his bare feet padding softly over the runner in the hall. And there's a thought; John's bare feet, littlest toe nestled tight against the next from his restrictive work shoes, skin on top smooth, paler than the rest of him; on the bottom coarse. It would be a delight to have it slide up my calf, rasp over my knee and onto my thigh, though I think I would still prefer his dexterous hands above all.

The stairs creak as John bears his weight upon them and I settle into a pose of perfect pensiveness, knees drawn up beneath my chin, fingers tented in front of my lips, eyes falling shut just as he descends the final step and rounds the corner.

He falters, stands absolutely still, quiet but for his audible breathing. Then his knuckles pop as he flexes his fingers (I shiver just barely) and he swallows. I hear the soft sound of him wetting his lips.

"We need to talk." There's gravel and tension in his voice, the retaliation I'm anticipating loaded behind his words. I keep my eyes closed and wait.

"Don't ignore me, Sherlock."

"You said we have to talk. I'm waiting for you to start, naturally."

He laughs – clipped, jerky, more from exasperation and nerves than from mirth – and moves into the living room. My eyes fly open when the couch dips as he sits beside me. I have to swallow twice and clear my throat before I can speak.

"What needs to be discussed?" My eyes are trained on the mantel, so I do not see when he moves his hand with the precision and stealth of a military man. When he lays it on the fabric stretched tight over my knee a soft, high-pitched grunt leaps from my throat and fire sweeps up and down my entire body. I tense so tightly that my muscles quiver, and he leaves his hand there, fingers burning through my trousers, eyes trained on my (heated, surely very flushed) face. I let my eyes fall shut but that only serves to call the rest of my senses to attention; his breathing measured, each exhale swimming with the sharp scent of winter-mint mouthwash. Hand no longer simply laying but gripping my kneecap delicately, an unconscious action that seems to have caused my vocal cords to tighten to the extent that the most minor of vibrations might cause them to snap. I let my head fall forward, just enough to relax my throat so that I can speak, and even then I can only manage on tremulous syllable.

"John…" His hand slides off of me with a short rush of noise, coming to rest millimeters away on the couch cushion, and suddenly my leg feels cold.

"That, Sherlock. You've been staring at me all week. At my hands. You sniffed me because I smelled like stale cigarettes. And before that…" He sucks in a breath and shifts, leaning forward and peering at my face. "You're blushing, too," he murmurs with a shade of disbelief, nibbling at his lip and raising his hand slowly – glacially slowly – towards my face. He stops a breath away from my cheeks and I kill the groan in my chest before it can spill out and spook him back to his senses; he's like a wild animal, curious, tentative, and so I sit there and fix my gaze on the map-like ridges of his fingertips.

"Sherlock…" John's hand traces the air around my face, curving around my ear, tilting beneath my jaw and oh, touch me, John, please, your palm, your fingertips, even just the tips of your nails. "When you said you liked my hands…"

I wet my lips and turn towards him, preparing myself to speak, possibly to refute the truth that he's surely realized by now – what could I tell him? 'I'm conducting a study on the level of astringency of various medical workers' hands. It's for a case.'

While I'm snared by my thoughts John's fingers alight on my neck and pull back just as quickly. He glances at my face and I realize that my mouth has dropped open and my eyes have gone so wide that they start to water. I snap my mouth shut and breathe through my nose, blood thrumming through my neck and he touched my pulse, for the briefest of moments felt at the life rushing through my veins.

John settles his hand on my shoulder and I bite into my lip – too hard; stinging scarlet wells up, dripping hot onto the skin beneath my mouth. John gasps softly and cups my jaw with his other hand.

I am overwhelmed - the rasp of his skin on my unshaven face, each finger forming to my jaw, the slight nervous dampness of his palm. His thumb rolls gently over my lip, tremoring so slightly that it's like the flutter of tiny, fragile wings. That tiny flutter skitters down my body and tickles dangerously at my groin. When I gasp John's thumb slides into my mouth, gliding over my inner lip. I freeze. So does he.

"Sherlock…" John's hand drags down my shoulder, coming to rest at my elbow, and his voice is so soft, almost but not quite the same voice he uses to approach children (I'm no longer supposed to speak to them until John has calmed them down). He curls his fingers under my chin, thumb still tucked between my gums and my lip, and tugs my face forward so that our eyes are level.

"Should I stop?"

I attribute my inability to form a proper response to the thumb in my mouth, but that hardly accounts for the half-strangled noise that works its way out of my throat, vibrating into the air between us.

"Dear god." John's eyes slip shut, his nostrils flare softly as he breathes, then he presses his lips into a line and re-opens his eyes, staring dark into mine. There's something almost calculating in them, and he lets his thumb slip completely into my mouth, tracing from my canines back to my molars, brushing along my inner cheeks before coming to rest softly on my tongue, the taste of cheap bar soap predominant but beneath that the warm spice of his aftershave. In the same moment his left hand travels down my arm and shoves into the sleeve of my robe, lightly gripping my wrist and gliding up my bare skin. He drags his palm slowly up and down my forearm, sending shocks of pleasure into my tensed stomach and between my legs.

His thumb shifts, pulling back slightly before pushing further along my tongue and I unconsciously begin to suck and it's glorious – the soft wet noises and my own gasp when he removes his thumb in favor of his first two fingers, the scrape of the nail on his littlest finger against my cheek, palm stroking slowly up my arm, his suddenly harsh breathing and blown pupils – all of it so satisfying in the pit of my stomach.

"God, you're…" John retracts his hand from my sleeve, leaving the skin singing, and weaves it into my hair. I hum softly and suddenly he's close, chest pressed to my knees, pushing me into the arm of the couch. "You're wild, you're…" His fingers push through my hair and I moan and so does he, softly, and again when my teeth graze his knuckles.

"Jesus." John's fingers pull noisily from my mouth and he stares at them, the skin blushed and slightly swollen and glistening. Something flashes through his eyes and before I can register it properly his hand tightens in my hair; for a moment I think he might punch me, but then he pulls my head back and trails his slicked fingers down my throat.

My throat is sensitive, almost always bound by a scarf, and his fingertips paint goose bumps over my adams apple, coax a rough noise from my vocal cords. He pushes against my knees until they part, leaning between them and relaxing his grip on my hair. My head tilts toward the top of his as he stares down at my chest, then he reaches out and runs his hand over my pectorals (through my shirt, which dampens the sensation) and down my ribs. He continues downward until his fingers curl under the edge of my shirt, pulling it up swiftly, cloth whispering over my sensitized skin. He releases the shirt and flattens his palm on my stomach.

My muscles contract under the touch and my back lifts from the cushions, pressing harder into the thirty-seven-degree-heat that's igniting the hardly-touched nerves packed beneath my skin. He slides his hand up the center of my chest, head still ducked down so that I can't see his face – but his hand does not tremble in the slightest, not as it angles over my ribs, fingertips dragging roughly over - over…

Goose bumps spring over my chest and my nipple – John is touching my nipple, squeezing it, rolling it gently between his thumb and forefinger; the room fills with noise and it takes me a moment to realize that the sounds are pouring from my mouth, repetitive, mono-syllabic, "Oh, John, John, your hands, more, John, more."

John's nails scrape over my sternum and I arch up even further. He slips this hand around my chest, caressing between my shoulders before traveling down, knuckles rolling over the small of my back; my hips cant up but there is nothing, just the barely-there friction of my pants. John unfurls his fingers and drags his nails roughly over the skin and my hips strain up again – and suddenly the pants are enough. He does it a second time, and I have to grit my teeth and close my eyes; a third and the string of words return, my hips rolling now, seeking the (almost non-existent but still too, too much) drag of my pants over my erection.

John's head drops onto my shoulder, lips skimming my neck as he rasps my name. One set of fingers angles down, dipping beneath my pants, and the others rake up my back. Fire cascades down my spine and behind my groin; my body goes rigid as heat thrums from where John's fingertips are scratching softly, scraping, and where his lips glide against my pulse over and over. I finally do something with my own hands, which have been gripping the cushions almost painfully, wrapping them around John's shoulders, pulling my body up until I collide with his.

John gasps against my throat, then the sound morphs into a soft growl; he digs his nails into the flesh of my buttock and the fire heads to a point where I rock (when did I start doing that?) gently against him.

One of my hands curls tight into John's short hair, and he digs even deeper; a white-hot pulse sweeps once through my body and I'm trembling; twice and my fingers pull so hard on John's hair that he hisses softly; three times and I shatter, gripping him with my knees as I come in waves.

When my body falls back into the cushions John groans, mindlessly shoving one of his now freed hands into his own pants, pressing his forehead tight to mine as he empties himself with a few rough strokes. He melts against me, lying there silently until he catches his breath, then he brings a hand up to my face (and it smells like me, my sweat, my skin). His thumb rolls once more over my slack lip, and I must have bitten it open again because there is a small metallic burst on my tongue. His eyes go soft and he lets his hand slip away, replacing it with his own lips.

John kisses weakly, a gentle, almost cautious brushing of our mouths that ends before I can think to reciprocate, his head drooping heavily onto my chest. I shift underneath him, pants sticking to me uncomfortably (twice in one day, and it hardly ever happens once). He grumbles gently in his sleep, curling his (could I call them magical? Unworldly? Certainly extraordinary) hands around my chest. I lay there with him in a shroud of comfort and slight disbelief.

As always, huge apologies for the wait, but at least this chapter is longer, right? And it also changed the rating ;p Thanks to my lovely betas Splendiferously and Hollydermovoi from tumblr, as well as the very thorough Aziith. Hope you enjoyed it, and though I make no promises I think the next chapter shouldn't take quite so long to produce :)