A/N: I don't own anything, and I will readily admit that I'm using two of my very favorite gentlemen to my own purposes here. But before we begin, I'd like to share a personal first. I've been posting on this site for nearly six years, and never once received an angry review before now, before this story. Let me say that while I respect the views of all my reviewers, I would like to point out that the subtext between Holmes and Watson has been present since day one. I encourage any of those who doubt me to read the books, view the films (and not just the Guy Ritchie incarnation, but everything stretching back to the iconic Nigel Rathborne) and please accept that, at the end of the day, this is just one person's interpretation. Now, with that out of the way, on with the show.

Watson sat in his favorite armchair, enjoying the fire he had built and watching the sky outside begin to grey with the coming dawn. He heard the door slip open and closed behind him, but made no move to turn. He would wait for Holmes to come to him.

With the movement at the corner of his eye, Watson heard a familiar voice in the back of his mind. You have my methods, it whispered. Use them.

The first clue was the ascot. It was folded differently now than the last time Watson had seen him, seeming to indicate that it had been removed. Holmes's shirt, waistcoat and jacket were in pristine condition, but his trousers had been made dusty, dirty at some point in the evening. His hair, though no longer wet, was weighted down by what could only be dried sweat. Most obvious of all, of course, were the spot of blood he had missed in the right corner of his mouth and the bruise forming below his left eye. Holmes had been to another match.

"How'd you do, then?" Watson asked, trying to keep his voice hollow with disinterest.

Holmes lifted an eyebrow, flashing a grin just wide enough to let Watson know that he had failed. He set a stack of notes down on the table in front of the chair and turned his back. "Total incapacitation in four rounds," Holmes informed him, falling onto the couch.

Watson was all too aware that Holmes's matches never passed the third round. And then there was the bruising. "Must've been a lucky chap to get so many hits on a fighter as experienced as yourself," he said, fishing for the explanation he wasn't sure he could get.

Holmes looked up at the ceiling, eyes drooping almost closed. "I suppose I was a bit…distracted."

Watson looked over from the corner of his eye and noticed a thin trail of blood dripping down the detective's face. He hadn't missed a spot while cleaning himself up, he was still bleeding. "Grab my bag and come here before you ruin the couch," Watson told him, trying to keep his voice gruff.

Holmes gave an exaggerated sigh as he rose from his place on the couch. "Whatever you say, mother hen," he said, grinning again despite his put upon tone. "You know, Watson, while your concern for my upholstery is most touching—"

"Our upholstery," Watson interrupted.

"Our?" Holmes turned where he stood, halfway across the room, to lock his eyes with Watson's. Grinning, he crossed the room to retrieve Watson's medical bag, then came to sit dutifully before the doctor, watching him thread an alarmingly large needle.

When the needle had finally met with Watson's approval, he set his attention once more upon his most frequent patient. "Tilt you head back and open your mouth."

Holmes looked down for a moment without complying. "Before we begin, doctor," he started in an uncharacteristically small voice, "might I inquire as to the circumstances which have led you to be present upon my return? I must admit, though the occurrence is rare, you have surprised me." Without looking Watson in the eye, Holmes tilted his head back and opened his mouth as instructed.

"I daresay I surprised myself," Watson told him as he set to his work. He tried to ignore the small spasms of the muscles below Holmes's eye, the subtle winces which communicated the pain his work was causing the man. But better a small pain now than to let the wound fester. He turned his mind once more to the conversation, finding it easier to talk now that he had a task about which to set himself. "I—I sent Mary a wire. I told her our new landlord had found some trouble with the flat, that we wouldn't be able to move in as planned. I told her it could be some time before we were able. I lied to her, Holmes. I lied to the woman I plan to marry. Why—why would I do that?"

Holmes, unable though he was to speak with Watson's hand in his mouth, made the valiant attempt. All that came was nonsense, and Watson spoke over the sounds. "I believe it's you, Holmes, you and this madness you've drawn me into. I try to stop it, try to break the cycle, but you always find some way to bring me along, and then I'm simply swept up in it. I get drawn in to your cases and your insanity, and I bloody love every minute of it. I've been walking around for months now, wondering what it is you will do without me, how you will cope with such an awesome loss, and never once did I ask myself what I will do without you. And that is the true question, isn't it? You can return to the life you had before, I'm certain of it. But…every time I try to imagine a life beyond…this place, beyond you, it is pale and hollow and dull." His work finished, he clipped the thread which now formed the stitches in Holmes's inner lip and tied off the end.

The detective looked up, licking his injured lip experimentally. "What are you saying, doctor?"

Watson sighed, half in frustration, half in resignation to the admission he knew he would soon make. "I'm saying you've changed me, Holmes. As much as I liked the man I once was, as much as I've tried to be him once more these past months, as easy as it would be still to be that man, that simple gentleman with such simple aims, I can no longer pretend to be. I am no longer a man for whom a small practice and designs for a wife are enough. I can no longer pretend that I am happy with the direction my life has taken. And, much as it frightens me, I fear I can no longer pretend that I don't love you."

Holmes was standing now and, taking Watson by the hand, he pulled the man up out of his chair. "Dear Watson, I can't imagine what ever possessed you to start."

The stitches in Holmes's mouth were rough against Watson's tongue, and he could still taste the copper of the other man's blood, but the kiss was sweet and simple, an admission of things hidden from sight far too long.

"Sherlock," Watson whispered, holding his lips a mere centimeter from Holmes's ear, his voice thick and rough. "Are there any other wounds I should tend to, before we…?" He let the thought drift off, promising of the things to come.

Watson could feel Holmes smiling into the hollow between his chin and his throat. "They can wait, John," he muttered, pushing Watson back toward his own bedroom.

And that is, finally, the end of that. Let me know what you thought.