Hugging was nice, Sherlock decided. John was wonderfully solid underneath him, the pleasantness of the contact all out of proportion to the actual tactile and temperature sensation against Sherlock's skin. Sherlock eventually raised his head from John's chest and dared another look at John's face.

"This is new for you," John said.

Sherlock didn't bother to dignify that with a response. His lack of experience was probably painfully obvious, anyway. (Experience fucking, yes. Experience being fucked, yes. Experience actually caring . . . not so much.)

"Um." John shifted, which called attention to the fact that despite the quiet moment, both of them were at least most of the way to erect and John's white cotton pants were the only thing separating his penis and the bare skin of Sherlock's stomach. "Sherlock, do you want to . . ."

"Yes," Sherlock interrupted, and launched himself back upwards to drown out John's question with another kiss. Because he could. Because John would let him. Because John was kissing back, tongue and lips indicating just exactly how much practice he'd had kissing women who were all not Sherlock, which was definitely a Not Good track for Sherlock's mind to be going down, but he was John's first male kiss and that was a much nicer concept to think about. Sherlock moaned into John's mouth, relishing how even that small sign of surrender had a noticeable effect on how John was starting to move beneath him. Sherlock's own erection was pressed into John's pants somewhere in the vicinity of John's left ilium, but it was enough friction to feel amazing when John shifted and wriggled his hips and then settled one heavy hand on each side of Sherlock's waist and pulled him downward, crushing their pelvises together-

"Tell me," John murmured, breaking the kiss only as far as was absolutely necessary to speak. "Tell me what you want."

"You." Sherlock ducked back down to resume the kiss, but John stopped him with a palm to Sherlock's chest.

"More specific," John said. "We can't - I don't want to ruin this by making assumptions. We've been assuming things about each other the whole time we've lived together. I want you to tell me, in words."

Oh. That was different. And surprisingly logical, considering their relative positions. Sherlock had to make a conscious effort to force his brain back into some semblance of rationality. There was a lot he could say he "wanted," both in a short-term and a long-term sense, but John's reaction to those sorts of admissions would be highly dependant on his frame of mind, and Sherlock was not at all sure he could read John correctly. Not now. John had been so angry, so determined to not let Sherlock manipulate him again-

"You're still mad," Sherlock said.

John blinked - that had perhaps been more of a nonsequitur than he'd expected - but then he sighed and nodded. "I can't just turn it off, Sherlock. You lied to me - the biggest lie there is - and even though I trust that you don't want to do anything like that again, it doesn't mean you won't. I can love you and want you and yet still be mad at you. The emotions aren't mutually exclusive."

"You . . ." Sherlock felt like the air had just been completely knocked out of his lungs. "You love me?"

John's slow smile was like the breaking of the sun over the horizon on a viciously chilly morning. "I love you, you berk," he whispered, and kissed the tip of Sherlock's nose. "I love you as William and as Sherlock and as Holmes and I could probably be persuaded to love the 'Scott' part, too." He arched his back in a languid stretch, the motion rippling Sherlock's body on top of him as if Sherlock weighed nothing. "You still haven't said what you want tonight, though. I find myself hoping it's something that involves me finally taking off these pants."

Oh god. Sherlock swallowed hard at the sensation of their bodies sliding together, even through the sturdy fabric. "May I do it?" he asked, his voice sounding more like a Flake bar than the molten chocolate resonance he was aiming for.

"If you want." John stretched his arms up over his head, showcasing the musculature on his lightly furred chest, then brought his hands back down and threaded his fingers through Sherlock's curls. "I rather assumed you'd want to catalogue me all over, actually. Gather data."

Sherlock couldn't stand waiting anymore - he captured John's mouth with a little grunt of desperation, which quickly turned to an outright moan as John skillfully ripped away control of the kiss and gave him more data than he could possibly assimilate at once. Some uncountable number of minutes later, John broke the kiss and tilted his head back - a clear invitation for Sherlock to drag his attentions downward, to the thin skin of John's neck, the chance to to trail kisses down his collarbone to his sternum. The scar tissue from John's gunshot wound stood out, white and angry and wrinkled, against the golden-tan of his pectorals. Not just sun in Afghanistan, then - John was faintly tan all over, a natural pigment in his skin tone which didn't fade even in February. His chest hair was nearly the same golden-brown as the hair on his head, thick enough to tickle Sherlock's face as he pressed kisses through it but not enough to obscure the evidence of too much worrying, stress eating, stress not eating, sparse exercise. Nowhere near as much muscle as John used to have, not in the pictures from his army days which he'd always hidden in the Bible on the top shelf of his wardrobe. Worrying over him.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock whispered, pressing a kiss lower, to the soft skin of John's belly. "I didn't observe. I'm so sorry."

"Mmm?" John had his head angled up, was smiling lazily down at him.

"I assumed you'd be able to delete me. To forget."

"And did that work for you?" John asked quietly.

Sherlock shook his head, his nose brushing side-to-side over John's navel. "I couldn't bear to try."

"Well then there you have it." John propped himself up on his elbows, the better to actually see Sherlock's face. "Are you going to work any farther south, there?" He bucked his hips once, a not-so-subtle hint that he was the only one left wearing anything at all. "Just asking, mind."

"I . . ." Sherlock closed his eyes, sat back a bit so he could think without John's cock being right there within licking range. "You asked what I want."

"Yeah. And you sound like you're trying to work up the courage to say you don't want sex."

"No!" Sherlock nearly went limp at the thought. "I do! I just - I need you to be utterly selfish. Just this once."

John went still beneath him, and Sherlock was immediately sure he'd said the wrong thing. But John just held his breath for several seconds (two, three, four, four and a half) before expelling the contents of his lungs in one sharp burst. "I don't want to be mad at you, Sherlock," he said quietly. Cutting to the heart of it, so typical for him. "I may not be able to turn it all the way off, even though I want to, but I can't just-"

"Please," Sherlock interrupted. "When I first walked in - what were you thinking then?"

John met his eyes steadily. "That I wanted to believe you were telling me the truth, but I couldn't be certain. And I had to know for sure."

"You were angry, though."

"Yeah." John sounded a bit sad. "Yes, that's true. I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

"I want you to, though." Sherlock rolled his head back to stare up at the ceiling, absently willing it to tell him the correct words, the right way to say what he wanted. What he needed. "You're right to be angry, and I can't - I'm terrible at apologies, John. You know that. And I want to. I want you inside me and I want you to take what you want and not worry about being 'good enough' or impressing me with your sexual expertise. I need to give that to you. I came here prepared to offer everything - well this is it." He sat back a bit further and spread his hands, baring his body to John. "You know I don't 'do' this, but I want to. For you. I want to flay myself open and let you muck about inside, let you tinker with my mind and my heart and my body however you see fit. Because I need you to know that I - that your feelings are reciprocated." He wanted to look back down, to see how John was reacting, but he didn't know how he'd bear it if John wore a look of disgust. Sherlock kept his eyes averted and his open pose and waited.

Which was why he actually jolted in surprise when he felt John's lips press gently against his sternum. "I love you too," John murmured. "If you're sure that's what you want?"

Sherlock nodded mutely.

"Well then."

One moment Sherlock was more or less kneeling over John's prone body, the next moment John had flipped both of them in one easy move and was braced on one strong arm, hovering over him and pressing his hips down into the mattress. Sherlock sucked in a breath with the suddenness of it, and with the very definite spike of lust which speared through him and left him with a renewed ache in his already-hard cock. He was too surprised to react, even when John traced his free hand up Sherlock's sides, raising his arms one at a time and pinning them over his head.

"Don't move those," John whispered. "Let me taste you."

Sherlock kept his arms frozen in place, his hands palms-up and half-curled on the duvet just beyond where he would have been able to feel the tickle of his own hair against his wrists. The position left his chest feeling open, exposed - a feeling which was only intensified when John ducked his head and buried it in the crook of Sherlock's neck.

"Always wanted to do this," John murmured, nipping and sucking with only minimal attention to the bruises he was going to leave behind. "That bloody scarf - sometimes I tried to imagine you were wearing it to cover over the marks I'd left the day before. That it was a secret just between the two of us, because even though everyone teased us about being a couple, we were the only ones who knew the truth."

"You can," Sherlock groaned. "Do it."

"Oh, I am." John bit down on Sherlock's trapezius, over the juncture between his neck and his shoulder - not hard enough to break the skin, not quite, but definitely enough to leave a clear impression of his teeth marks. A temporary dental record of John, just him, no one else, which Sherlock could carry with him until it faded. Sherlock resolved to get a tattoo over the area before it disappeared, etching John's tooth marks into his skin permanently-

But now John was trailing lower, nipping and lathing Sherlock's chest, abrading his nipples with his teeth, and Sherlock was achingly desperate for some attention to his erection. He whined and shoved his hips upward plaintively, but John smacked him not-entirely-gently just over his sacroiliac joint. "Wait until I get there," he commanded.

Sherlock relented, but he caught his lower lip in his teeth to muffle the embarrassing sounds he was quite sure he didn't authorize his voice to be making.

John paid particular attention to Sherlock's navel - prodding with his tongue, flattening his palms over Sherlock's external oblique muscles and sliding inexorably inwards until the entire world had narrowed to just John, his heat and his touch and the fan of his breath against Sherlock's skin. John raised his head to shoot Sherlock a sadistically evil grin, then shifted downwards a bit more and sucked Sherlock's cock down to the root.

"Oh! John! Je veux ta bite bandante! Baise-moi, John, s'il te plait. Baise-moi." Sherlock slammed his eyes shut and groaned - he could never bring himself to say these things in English, but somehow the French just rolled off his tongue. He needed everything, needed John to conquer him, needed John on him and inside him and fuck, the way John swirled his tongue just so as he sucked-

"Damn, that's hot," John murmured, pulling off just far enough to speak. "You just go ahead and talk to me in French all you want to, if it makes you feel better - I won't get a word of it. No danger of me understanding or acquiescing to a single thing." He wrapped his lips around Sherlock's cock again, sinking down as far as he could and pulling back up oh-so-slowly until he let the head slip from between his lips with an audible pop. "Go on - beg for it. I have it on good authority you've never begged for anything in your life."

Merde. John had moved lower once again, tonguing and caressing Sherlock's bollocks, looking totally at ease despite never having had the opportunity to do this before. Sherlock rolled his head from side to side (careful to keep his hands and wrists exactly where John had put them) and tried to focus on not coming yet. "Tu m'as tué," he groaned. "Tu as pris mon cœur et tu l'as disséqué et maintenant je meurs avec le goût de tes lèvres sur les miennes."

"Mmmm," John said, and slid his hands out to the sides so he could trace the sensitive crease where Sherlock's thighs met his pelvis. Up and down, lateral and medial, distal and proximal. "I can't wait to be inside you, to feel you tight around my cock. My first time with a man. I would invite you to give me some pointers, but, well . . ." He dipped his fingertips suddenly behind Sherlock's thighs and urged his knees up, tilting Sherlock forward and granting a whole new angle of access to his bollocks and perineum. "I've done a bit of research. And I rather like the sound of your voice when you're babbling in French." He bent down and licked a slow, wet stripe up the entirety of what he could reach, all the way up to the tip of Sherlock's cock. "I did recognize the please," he added.

"Je prierais mille fois pour ne pas te tu t'arretes," Sherlock admitted. "S'il te plait, John."

"Hold that thought." John sat back - the absence of his touch feeling like a physical pain - and rummaged one-handed in the nearest drawer for-

Oh. Sherlock didn't say anything aloud, but John easily read the expression on his face.

"Shocked you didn't have something like this here already," he said with a bit of a smirk as he popped the cap and smeared a bit of lubricant on his right index finger. "You already knew I prepared - I saw you analyzing the sheets as we came in." He settled back between Sherlock's raised knees and stroked his other hand soothingly down Sherlock's thigh. "This is what you want, right?"

"S'il te plait," Sherlock repeated.

"Right, then." John went slowly, gently, circling Sherlock's hole several times with that single finger before pressing just the tip inside and allowing Sherlock's body time to adjust. It had been ages since Sherlock's last time receiving anal penetration - it wasn't something that lent itself well to a first-time encounter, and there usually wasn't a second time - but John was careful and his other hand was pressing gentle circles into Sherlock's abdomen and Sherlock found himself relaxing into the sensation. John pressed deeper, twisting a bit as he went, until his finger was sliding easily in and out and Sherlock couldn't entirely prevent his hips from twitching anymore.

"Encore."

"Gonna assume that means 'more,'" John said with a hint of a grin, and added a second slippery finger.

Sherlock groaned and forced his body to go lax. John was being utterly careful - not surprising, he was a doctor, he was good at reading patients' nonverbal cues-

"Oh!" Sherlock's eyes flew open.

"Found it," John said, pride in his voice. "You like that, don't you."

"Oui! Maintenant, John. Baise-moi! Enfonce ta grosse bite dans mon cul." Sherlock knew he was blushing even just at the idea of John understanding him, but John's clever fingers were relentless, now, stretching and working at his hole and brushing his prostate on every third or fourth thrust and then Sherlock really was babbling, long strings of words with no thought of meaning behind them whatsoever, not even sticking with one particular language as he cried and moaned and pleaded for John to just finally fuck him already.

"You're lucky, you know," John growled, sliding his fingers out one last time and finally stripping off his pants. "Fuck is the one word I happen to know in about a dozen languages, and I'm pretty sure you just used all of them." He lined himself up, fingertips digging into Sherlock's hips hard enough to leave bruises, then paused. "Last chance to say no, you know."

"John, just bloody fuck me!"

"Well that was perfectly clear." John hauled Sherlock's leg up over his good shoulder, planted his hands on the mattress on either side of Sherlock's chest - stiff-armed to take his weight - and slowly slid home.

They both breathed out sighs of relief at the same time. Sherlock wrapped his other leg around John's waist and hooked his heel over John's back - the lopsided position was less than perfect, but it gave John room to maneuver and didn't put undue stress on his scar. More importantly, it let John press even deeper inside him, a motion that made them both groan as John bottomed out and his pubic hair brushed Sherlock's bollocks.

"So tight," John moaned. "Fuck, Sherlock. I'm not going to last long."

Sherlock wasn't entirely sure he hadn't come already - somewhere between when the tip of John's cock had touched his arsehole and when John had buried himself completely, Sherlock's ever-busy brain had gone completely, blissfully blank. All that was left was the knowledge that John - his John - was literally inside him. Was groaning and trembling and it was Sherlock making him feel that way, not some nameless faceless would-be girlfriend. Him. Sherlock's cock was lying neglected between them, swollen and nearly purple and aching so badly, but John had said to keep his hands where they were and he wasn't supposed to be the one giving direction-

"Touche-moi," Sherlock begged. "Je vais mourir avec le plus petit contact, jouir le plus fort que j'ai jamais jouir - s'il te plait, John, touche-moi!"

John thrust once, twice more, then wrapped a warm hand around Sherlock and drove deep again and merde, that was it. Sherlock arched with a silent cry and spent all over his own chest. Dimly he was aware of John stiffening above him, muttering (cursing?) to himself, then John was coming in long pulses which he could literally feel inside his body. He pulled out and slumped down on top of Sherlock with absolutely no care for the mess now coating both of them and encircled as much of Sherlock's ribcage as he could reach.

"That was brilliant," he breathed against the corner of Sherlock's jaw, sneaking in a lazy, close-mouthed kiss. "Utterly brilliant."

Sherlock let his legs drop flat to the bed, not caring when he regained muscle control in his limbs. "You do know you say that out loud?" he murmured. He could feel John's grin against his neck.

"Sorry - should I stop?" John whispered.

"No, it's fine." It's so much better than fine.

"Mmmmm." John snuggled closer, his weight a welcome warmth despite the strange stickiness around Sherlock's arse. "I've got a plan, you know."

"You do?"

"Mmmmm. I'm going to get up in a minute, and grab us both a flannel so you don't have to move. And I'm going to clean you off, and me, and then we're going to get under these sheets and spoon together and sleep off our combined refractory periods until we're ready to go again."

"Oh." Sherlock's body was definitely not up for another round so soon, but his mind had no problem conjuring up a whole host of interesting images. "And tomorrow?"

John lifted his head just far enough to look Sherlock in the eye. "How long do you think it will take your brother to clear your name?"

God, don't want to think about Mycroft while naked in bed with John. "He said a few weeks, most likely."

"Good." John pressed a gentle kiss onto Sherlock's lips. "Because I stocked the fridge, took off from the surgery, and for all anyone knows, I'm on vacation in Brighton to get some time away. I figured either we'd shag each other into the mattress or I'd need the time to nurse a broken heart. And I really do prefer the former option."

Sherlock's throat constricted. And to think that I almost lost this . . . He wrapped his arms around John, reciprocating the hug, and squeezed until he could feel his own tears threatening to overflow his lashes.

"I love you too, John," he whispered. "I love you too."