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1.
“I’ve missed this view,” I murmured, holding aside one of the curtains and gazing down at Baker Street, devoid this late of all but a single besotted pedestrian weaving down the opposite side of the road.
“So have I,” Holmes replied as he stepped in behind me, and my entire body thrilled as I felt his hands come to rest on my hips.
“Holmes…” I murmured, but fell silent as I felt his lips brush the back of my neck. “Holmes,” I began again, but the lump which had abruptly risen in my throat cut me off once more.
“John…” Holmes said softly, and I know not whether he turned me around or whether I did so myself, but suddenly I was in his arms. He raised his hands to my face and kissed me, and for a moment I kissed him back with a desperate passion. Then I tore my lips away.
“Sherlock, we have to move on, both of us,” I said weakly, pulling my head back to look into his eyes, shocked to find them welling with tears.
“Move on to what?” Sherlock hissed; “To whom? There is no one else, John. You were my first, you are my only, there can be no one else.” He wiped his sleeve angrily across his eyes, but the look he gave me was one of despair. “Do you love her?”
“Don’t do this again, Sherlock,” I shot back. “The thing is done.” I raised my hands to wipe my own eyes and he snatched my wrists, holding them in an iron grip.
“Do you love her more than you love me?” His voice was hoarse and uneven, and I felt a tear slip down my cheek as I looked into the face of the man I adored and admired and loved more than life itself. His sea gray eyes searched my own, rimmed with red, nakedly desperate and vulnerable. I couldn’t bear to see him so shattered, nor could I bear to hold back my own torment any longer.
“Of course I don’t, God-damnit,” I whispered shakily, needing to blink and, with my wrists still in Sherlock’s grasp, having no way to stop the tears from sliding down into my mustache.
“Then stay,” Sherlock replied, and so help me I did.
2.
Perhaps thirty minutes later I was plucking the lit cigarette from between Sherlock’s lips to steal a puff, and I could tell how contented he was from the fact that he didn’t gripe about it. We’d only been intimate twice before so that, in spite of our years of close friendship, Sherlock was still thrillingly new to view disrobed, and my eyes continually strayed down the length of him.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen him naked before, it was more that I was now allowed to look, allowed to touch and caress and kiss in the way that I’d so long yearned to do in secret; and, even more than that, it was because I found him so comely to behold—his usual angular handsomeness transformed into a surprisingly fragile kind of beauty. Perhaps it was the inherent intimacy and vulnerability which comes with seeing a fellow creature unclothed, or the flickering play of the buttery candlelight across his alabaster skin, but the way that his leanly muscled body was sprawled amongst the sheets made him as seductive and beautiful as Burton had described his harem girls sprawled on their divans.
And I was looking at Sherlock because I was conscious of the need to absorb his presence, to drink it in, to store it up for the days of separation which were inevitable now.
“What?” Sherlock finally asked, cutting his eyes over at me and giving me his knowing smirk when I demurred. How could I have abandoned that smirk?
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked a moment later.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I shot back, then gripped my brow in frustration. “Sherlock, let’s not spend this time arguing again. I won’t be able to stay all night.” I knew that he wouldn’t like that, but it was the truth. “I have a wife and a home now,” I added somewhat cruelly, probably more from anger with myself.
“But you’ll come to see me when you can,” Sherlock added presently, unable to keep the question out of his voice.
“Of course I will, Sherlock,” I sighed, and my eyes roamed along his long, lean body once again. I reached out and laid my hand on his upper thigh, where the hair of his legs was fine and flossy, simply to feel the warm reality of his flesh, and I snickered a minute later when I noticed his organ starting to swell.
“Again already?” I asked with a meaningful look at Sherlock’s groin, and he gave me a bashful little smile in return. I had never seen him bashful before and was enchanted.
“It’s still novel,” he murmured by way of explanation.
“Yes, of course,” I grinned. “I remember when it was novel to me; I wanted to do little else for about five years.”
I worked myself down into the crook of Sherlock’s arm, propping myself on my elbow and throwing my uppermost leg over both of his. I gazed down at him, my eyes following my hand as I gently ran it down Sherlock’s flank, across his belly, up the center of his chest, marveling at the warmth and softness of skin on a man who could often seem so very cold and hard.
When my hand reached Sherlock’s sternum I left it there and ducked down to kiss him gently. Our two previous intimate encounters had been so hasty and intense that they had seemed almost unreal, and only now was I fully and completely aware that it was Sherlock I was finally kissing as I had yearned to do for so long. The awareness was ecstatic, enormous, too big for me to contain; I could have wept for joy. I could have also wept for Mary, behind whose innocent, slumbering back I was squandering kisses which should have been saved up for her lips alone. And lastly I could have wept for myself, torn between these two loves—one which felt too tepid to fully enliven me, the other which was nearly too hot to withstand, and neither of which felt permanently tenable. My heart, my whole life was being torn in two, and all I could do was lay there and kiss this man about it, so that is what I did.