A/N: Hey guys! This story has been crawling around in my head for a while, so since I adore writing first POV (especially for Sherlock!) I decided to finish and post it. (last phrase is from TSoT best man speech)

Enjoy :)

The first time I kissed you, I was ill.

I was not riddled with the common cold or influenza, nor was I afflicted with something cancerous and fatal. No, it was nothing so dramatic. Nothing so tangible.

When I first kissed you forty-six and a half days ago—when you were crushed against the bookcase, my hands disrupting the organized novels as I ran my shaking fingers through your hair—I was irreversibly stricken with an illness some might call dangerous and others might call bliss. Being that those two words are synonymous to me, I decided to call it both.

You're a romantic however, so I suppose you'd insist on naming it love.

I know if you heard this you'd smile; you'd say "Oh, Sherlock," and a slow building grin would take its time to engulf your face until your eyes crinkled at the corners and your entire expression glowed with joy. You'd probably grab my hand too, squeeze it once within your warm, rough palm and give me a look that'd say more than words possibly could.

You're just so wonderful, John, so brilliant and extraordinary and you deserve someone who would embrace this sentiment with wide arms and ready lungs, but for some reason you've chosen me; a man too afraid to speak the word let alone accept it.

To me, love has always been an elusive virus mingling in the air or buzzing along the electric waves of popular telly shows, and I've avoided it as if it were the plague. It is an illness, a distortion of the mind; As a genius and detective and scientist I fear it greatly.

Dear doctor, of all people you should understand the danger of this affliction: If a single area of the body in infected with a deadly virus, the illness will spread and eventually eat through the muscle tissue, the skin, bones, and blood, until the entire host falls dead like an empty husk. Perhaps it is a tad morbid, but this is how I view the concept of 'love'. It starts in the most primitive areas—ah yes, it's a clever disease indeed—and gradually morphs itself from simple-minded lust to something softer and warmer; it crawls through one's veins like a venom and seeps itself into the mind in small, unnoticeable doses. A slow burn, indeed.

I suppose I should have seen this coming, I should have known I'd fall prey to such a sentiment. With a child's heart and an addict's brain I was bound to grow attached to only the most luminescent of souls. Mycroft was never suitable company, Lestrade is only tolerable in small doses, Molly merely loves the idea of me, Mrs. Hudson is more of a maternal figure, and everyone else in my life has dubbed me "freak", or worse. It only makes sense that the moment I saw a star—oh, yes, that'd be you, John; the invalidated army doctor with galaxies of courage in his veins—I'd become painfully, tragically, hopelessly addicted.

(Mycroft once asked if I'd ever return to cocaine—I was not lying to him when I said 'no'. It's far too difficult to balance two addictions, and since I do not plan on eradicating my craving for you I suppose the drugs will have to go)

Love—it's just, it's all so trite and over sentimentalized. People have those three words engraved into rings and embellished on necklaces and inked across planes of their skin just so the rest of the world knows that they have someone they love and someone who loves them. I vowed long ago never to lower myself to their plane of existence by speaking such an empty phrase.

Sometimes, though, I find myself wanting to say it to you. When you're bustling about the kitchen at two in the afternoon making lunch and tea, humming something trite under your breath, and you call, "Sherlock, do you plan on eating today?" only to serve me a sandwich anyway, I want to say it. I want to cup the sides of your face in my hands, my long fingers cradling the back of your precious, precious skull, and I want to whisper it against the swell of your bottom lip. I wish to write it down the curve of your spine and the slopes of your calves in calligraphic, indelible writing that is visible to only us. I want to tap those three words in Morse code against the steady thump of your heart and punctuate each beat with a soft kiss.

I want to, John, but—I can't. Not yet.

It's a word that I cannot quite wrap my tongue around because the discordance of vowels and consonants in my mouth taste like poison—not surprising, the body tends to recognize unfamiliar entities as such—and I can't help but swallow it back down. I've heard the way it sounds when other people say it, bland and dull and teeming with meaninglessness, and that makes me fear how it shall sound when (if) it passes from my own lips. When it people use it too often it becomes a silly garnish tossed at the end of phone conversations and letters for the sake of etiquette, social requirements, and the prickly, insistent urge to love and be loved. Everyone—all of them!—they all throw it out there, scream it from rooftops with rings and cards and flowers and useless superficial ballads, all in hopes that one day it will echo and return to them. Humans want to be wanted, that is a simple fact exemplified through every action man has taken in the entirety of its existence.

Another simple fact: I am human and I want to be wanted.

Oh, John, I'm sure you must know how it irks me to admit something so painfully banal, but it is true and the only thing I despise more than prosaic sentiment is denial. I want to be wanted by you, no one else.

Because there is no one else in this entire useless universe that makes me feel the way you do; no one else that smiles when anyone else would glare, no one else that says "Brilliant" when the world has shouted "piss off". You give me a sense of gravity, pulling me and my endless, whirring mind back down to earth where we sit across from each other and drink sweet, pale tea in companionable silence.

You laughed once because I didn't know the solar system, but I hardly need to when they are entire galaxies in your eyes.

One day I am going to say it, okay? I'll say those three words against your lips or wrist or the sweet curve of your spine, and perhaps if I'm lucky and the stars in your eyes align just right, you'll say it back.

It is logical to stop now, to pack up my things and leave before my fate is utterly sealed, but for once in my life I find logic lacking. Logic doesn't explain the lick of fire that travels up my spine from your gaze alone, reason doesn't illuminate the insatiable urge to press you to different planes of the wall and kiss the breath from your lungs; cool, detached intelligence does not help me understand why my soul lifts higher at the sight of your warm smile.

And since knowledge is useless, I must return to my most basic impulses: I want so I take, I am an addict so I feed my addiction.

You, John, it is you—beautiful brilliant star in my sky of blackness and monotony—you are my obsession. I crave you, need you—I want you with the purest yearning one can feel.

So, no, I cannot leave. Love has already seeped into my skin and thawed the ice in my veins, it's far too late. Sweet mistress Cocaine has been replaced by an even headier substance, one that is wrapped up in jumpers and strength and endless reserves of patience.

I adore you hopelessly and I can guarantee I will stay, because love has made me its fool, you've made me your addict, and for once in my life my wild soul has settled into a glowing lull that feels rather like happiness.

I'm hardly adept enough at the moment to tell you what you deserve to hear, those three sparkling words, but the one thing I can tell you, the one thing I mean with the deepest sincerity is that, John Watson, you keep me right.

A/N: Oh how wonderfully romantic :) That was great fun to write, I hope you guys enjoyed reading it! Reviews would be absolutely lovely! Feedback is to me what John is to Sherlock (utterly important and precious :)

Until next time, darlings!