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John huffed in frustration, his tartan shirt rode marginally up his tense stomach as he stretched a glittering star up to the ceiling as high as he could, but to no avail. Finally, he gave up, dropping his arm and rolling his shoulder with a pained grimace.
“Get off your arse and top the tree for me, Sherlock, I’m not going to ask you again.”
“John, I’ve never topped anything in my life and I don’t plan on starting now.”
John’s annoyance was lost in the smirk he couldn’t quite hold back and he twisted his body to glance down at his boyfriend, the wooden stool he was currently standing on giving a cautionary creak in protest.
Sherlock was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the living room, a cardboard box full of mismatched baubles and wire hooks (donated kindly by Mrs Hudson) balanced precariously on his knees as he worked to pair them up. His face was drawn in concentration as he held up two identical-looking hooks to the light of the lamp to gather which was better for a slightly larger decoration.
This was the first time that they had gotten a christmas tree for the flat, and both men were undeniably excited by the prospect. There was something very intimate and homely about decorating a tree with the one you loved and then being able to cuddle on the sofa, warm and comforted by the roaring fire in the hearth and each other’s fingers tangled together, and watch the way the light danced off of the glass ornaments. They thought it would be the perfect way to set this christmas apart from the others they had had together, since this year was their first christmas as a couple. What better way to commemorate the occasion than begin a new tradition?
John still gazed at Sherlock, who was somehow elegantly hunched over the job at hand, longing to kiss the dent of his furrowed brow just above his nose and the pale ankle peeking out from beneath his rumpled pyjama trousers and the sharp collar bones and smooth plane of chest revealed by the wide neck of his t-shirt, stretched-out and baggy from years of wear.
While John had been so captivated, Sherlock had matched three more baubles with their hooks and was smiling softly, almost imperceptibly, to himself as he placed them gently on the carpet in front of his bare feet, lining them up perfectly with the other few he had prepared. He gained a lot of pleasure and comfort in arranging certain items sometimes, John had noticed a while back, and John glanced briefly at the pristine line of ornaments, all in size-order, before looking back to Sherlock’s face with a fond smile on his lips. He couldn’t believe he was so lucky as to have the chance to be with Sherlock; to truly know him, and to totally love him. He was certain, beyond any doubt, that he was the luckiest man in the world.
The detective had clearly realised that John had been silent for a while and finally raised his eyes from his meticulous task to find John looking at him like that. His cheekbones dusted lightly with pink as he cleared his throat, but he couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from John’s or even let himself blink. John let his smile grow and part into a grin that ached his cheeks as he stepped carefully off of the wobbly stool and walked the few short steps over to Sherlock’s position on the floor, briefly wiping his hands on his jeans to rid them of excess glitter before steadily lowering himself to crouch to the side of Sherlock’s long folded legs, being cautious of the perfectly arranged decorations in front of the younger man.
Sherlock almost instantly scooched round so that he faced John, his wide-eyed stare never having left the doctor throughout the movement as they remained on John’s eyes now. He looked a little flustered; his eyes held a familiar wonder and openness that they took on in these intimate moments and his cheeks blushed darker still, the flush expanding to give him faded rose-like blotches on his neck.
John settled to sit on his heels, never looking away from Sherlock’s beautiful face, and gently reached out his hands. Sherlock automatically raised his own to meet John’s, but hesitated when instead John clutched the sides of the box on Sherlock’s lap and lifted it, slowly placing it behind himself then turning back to Sherlock and scooping up the soft hands that had frozen mid-air in his own. Sherlock closed his mouth with a soft breath, not having realised his lips falling apart slightly when John hadn’t primarily held his hands. John saw this slight show of vulnerability and allowed himself to give a reassuring squeeze, before gently turning Sherlock’s palms upwards and guiding them up to his own lips. He held them for a moment before his mouth and closed his eyes, breathing in deeply through his nose then gifting a barely-there kiss on the centre of each palm, the wrinkled flesh soft and hot to John’s chapped lips.
Sherlock’s breathing audibly hitched and John felt a light tremor shake the warm skin against his lips and the delicate wrists beneath his fingertips. He opened his eyes once more to be greeted with the breath-taking sight of Sherlock Holmes, looking down at their hands, pink lips parted sweetly and eyes downcast, his ebony eyelashes kissing his ivory and rose cheeks before they looked back up to John, crystal clear and glazed with a faint sheen of tears.
“I love you so much, Sherlock.” He spoke as earnestly as he ever had and far more than he had ever thought himself capable.
John repositioned his hands on Sherlock’s so that he could grip them tightly without hurting him, pulling them forward and towards his chest. The position caused for Sherlock to have to lean forwards slightly, and John replicated the movement, guiding them so that they stopped just before their foreheads touched. Sherlock’s breath came heavily and unstable now, the sound of his quiet panting reverberating in the centimetres between them, intermingling with John’s slightly more wheezing gasps of air. Their hot breath swarmed around them and, for a second, John was deaf and indifferent to every other sound in the room, to anything at all other than the sound and the feeling of him and Sherlock sharing breath from each other’s lungs.
“Sherlock,” John whispered, his voice rattled and caught on the name, “I love you more than anyone could ever conceive to be physically possible. You have to believe me.”
“I do. I do,” Sherlock countered desperately, unconvincingly, his voice quiet and quavering as a result of the silver tear-track now running down his left cheek. He allowed his hands to fall gently to John’s chest, only a light pressure against the sternum but John knew it was enough for Sherlock to feel his racing heart. His lip wobbled subtly as he avoided John’s stare, head resolutely turned to the floor, obscuring his face in shadow.
“Sherlock…”
A short sob broke between them, muffled by trembling lips pulled tightly, desperately together. The hands on John’s chest tremored noticeably now and Sherlock slumped in on himself, dropping his head to his own chest. His curls, fluffed up from a day spent lounging on the sofa, tickled at John’s jaw as the detective shook and cried. John could hardly stand to watch Sherlock’s obvious insecurities take hold of the young man without breaking down into sobs himself. Instead he managed a shattering breath and blinked away a few tears, running his hands from Sherlock’s wrists gently and steadily up his forearms, being careful not to break contact, and continuing round his shaking shoulders and then up to the nape of his neck and round to cup Sherlock’s warm, wet face in his hands.
“Love, look at me,” John’s voice trembled in his anguish, “Please.”
Sherlock let his head be gently lifted to face John’s, which now had tear-tracks of its own shining in the warm lights of 221b.
“I love you, Sherlock.”
John did not say anything more, he just looked into Sherlock’s eyes and hoped he was as open a book as Sherlock claimed him to be. He absolutely adored, admired and adulated this man, and he needed for Sherlock to understand even a fragment of the extent to which John cared for him.
Sherlock had stopped shivering; he was now sitting completely still and staring with an unadulterated amazement and surprise at whatever he had just seen in John’s eyes.
Time slowed as the two lovers stared into each other’s eyes and refused to look away. Sherlock could feel John’s heart pounding against his chest through Sherlock’s hands, and John could feel Sherlock’s blood thrumming through the veins in his neck against John’s fingertips. They were linked in a never-ending loop of us, us, us.
The rose petal lips parted suddenly, “I love you.”
“There you are,” John remarked softly, smiling, wiping at Sherlock’s red-rimmed eyes with the pads of his thumbs to cast away the melancholy of the evening, revelling in the way that Sherlock’s soft, wet eyelashes swept across his fingertips.
“John,” Sherlock implored, reaching up to move the healing hands from his face so that he could once more look into his partner’s eyes. Shining, crystal blue intersected with amber met rolling ocean waves with swirling green, “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Sherlock surged forward and met John’s lips in a desperate-but-lazy, hard-but-soft kiss. It made no sense; it was impossible; it was extraordinary. It was Sherlock, and that was all John had ever wanted and would ever need.