Bleeding Love 3

A/N: well, here it is, the last part, with a little stylistic twist. Hope you like it. Thankyou to everyone who has reviewed and favourited. Regular readers will be glad to know that the extension to the Cuddle'Verse is coming on nicely, but proving to be epic. I'll have a lot of reading for you when I'm done. In the meantime, enjoy!

Warning: contains 'language'. And some sex.

You didn't realise that you had been waiting for him until he turned up on the doorstep. You always thought you had accepted it, accepted everything. What he was. What he did. You knew it was different to the other times you had lost people, friends, loved ones. You just never accepted it was this different.

You were angry, yes. Hurt, yes. Lost, yes. Broken, yes.

What you didn't realise until you looked into his eyes was that you'd had the easy end of the bargain.

The heart exercise was pretty mean, you had to admit. There is no denying that there was part of you that gloated at his suffering, that wanted to jump up and punch the air and shout 'Hah! You bastard! Take some of your own medicine!' You were glad when he cried.

Because you had cried. He'll never know how much you cried. How much you hurt.

There's a bit of you that is ashamed at being so glad he was miserable. There is a bit of you that knows its uncharitable, that desire to get back at him, to make him feel just a little bit of what you've been through. It's not right.

But it is natural.

And because you are John Watson, because you have seen the shadows, walked the line, you don't turn away from that part of you. You don't try and cover it up and be a martyr. He hurt you. You are not going to deny that. He needs to know that. He needs to take his punishment.

But then all that fades to nothing when you hold his weeping form in your arms and know that however much you need him, he needs you more.

Need.

That's what your whole life has been about. Striving to be needed. Nobody needed you in that little three-bedroom semi in Woking where you grew up, struggling in the shadows of Harry's tantrums. Nobody needed you at school, where you were always the sidekick, the quite bright but a bit mousey boy, the lad with the puppy fat on the outskirts of the trendy group, the nice boy that girls didn't mind taking home to meet their parents but were never serious about because all girls like a bastard.

Nice. That vanilla, mediocre word that has dogged you all your life.

Being in the army gave you the chance to be a bit not-nice.

(Look where that got you.)

Need is why you ended up in medicine, you understand now (it's amazing the self-knowledge that hitting forty has given you.). People will always need a doctor. The trouble is that while everybody needs a doctor occasionally, nobody needed one permanently. You wonder sometimes if specialising in trauma medicine, first at Barts and then in the army, was a kind of subconscious self-harm – people pass through the life of a trauma doctor, rather than staying. They only ever enter his life because things are as bad as they can get. They don't stay around because they'd rather get better. Physically and, it turns out, emotionally too. You were made to be left.

But then that was your subconscious pattern too, choosing women who didn't need you. Needy women were too cloying. You chose the sure-fire rejection every time. The unattainable. Like your parents' love (too busy concentrating on Harry to have time for you.)

Sherlock was always unattainable.

But then, you didn't realise you loved him.

At least, not until he jumped off that building. Since then, he's been just about as unattainable as anyone can be. That's being dead for you.

Turned out he was being dead for you.

Turned out he was being wrecked for you.

Now you look at him, semi-conscious in the crook of your elbow, whimpering, tear-stained, broken, and you know beyond doubt that nobody, anywhere, will ever, ever need you as much as this man does.

He's a mess. He clearly hasn't been eating. Bones stick into you right, left and centre, even as you hold him. His skin is sallow, flaky, sure signs of underlying neglect and ill health. Dark shadows around his sunken eyes. And these clothes, God! Wearing a disguise is one thing, but this is quite another.

He's been pining for you.

Oh yes, Sherlock Holmes has broken your negative pattern just as surely as you have broken his.

You hold his trembling form and you know the truth. Everything has changed. At first you were relieved he was alive. Then curious as to why. Then wearied by the emotional fatigue of feeling so much. Then you were angry and mistrustful, which was only natural. Then vengeful. And you got your revenge in spades, oh yes, just look at him, the poor sod, lying there in pieces! And now what? You don't know. You only know you can't let him go. Not now, not ever.

Part of you is still in awe at your power over him. You made him grovel. The Great Sherlock Holmes, the world's biggest ego, actually got down on his hands and knees, and crawled and grovelled and begged for your love.

That has to count for something, right?

That's when you realise.

You love him.

More than life itself.

And he loves you – literally - more than his own life because, like some latter-day martyr, he has sacrificed that life to save yours. (How many other people can say that of their – what? Partner? Flatmate? Friend?)

That's where people go wrong. They see what they think is there. They see a little mousey-haired doctor running around at the Great Detective's heels, being ordered about and patted on the head. You see the internal workings. You know perfectly well that he was just a rude, objectionable ex-junkie wack job with borderline autism and a God complex before you arrived in his life. If he is the Great Detective, then you made him that. Without you, he's nothing, and he knows it. If anyone has the power in this relationship, it's you. He's the one who is doing the begging, after all.

You hold him, and a wave of tenderness comes over you that is so strong, you start to shake. You clutch him to you, press your face into his dark curls, and feel his brokenness. You will heal him. Whatever it takes. You will give him everything you have, because he has given everything, and he has so little to give. You have more than enough for both of you.

Co-dependent, isn't that what your counsellor would call it?

Frankly, you don't give a fuck, really, and you kiss his sorrow-rumpled brow and feel your body begin to wake for the first time in months. Maybe years. You have been dormant, you realise, cocooned in your own carapace of – what? Refusal to commit? Inability to love? Or loving the wrong people? Whatever it is, you have been hardened to the world.

Sherlock got under your skin. You don't know how, though you suspect it was his complete helplessness in the face of social interaction. He needs you to explain the world to him. To explain people to him. To explain feelings to him. You are his translator. In a world full of oranges, poor Sherlock is not even an apple, he is a small mongrel dog bemused by all these incomprehensible citrus fruits, and you are the only one who can explain them to him.

Sherlock Whisperer, Greg Lestrade called you once, and you are. The world's one and only. How ironic, you think to yourself.

Holding him gently, you find yourself nuzzling his cheek, even more razor sharp than it was eight months ago on the roof of Barts. He may have been neglecting himself, but he smells so good. His cheek is soft, the skin delicate. You realise you have longed to touch it every day since you met, just to reach out and stroke that pale flesh with your fingertips. You pull back, amazed at yourself, at the way his physical scent has overtaken your senses, intoxicated you in a brief second or two. You find he is looking up at you, eyes pewter, and wide with wonder. Those perfect lips split, part. You are filled with the overwhelming desire to kiss them.

What has he done to you?

This is what Harry has been referring to for months as 'The Willy Issue'. She was convinced as soon as you moved into Baker Street that you were in love with Sherlock – you hate it that she was right. But being Harry, she couldn't take the idea of love being platonic. Harry is all for outright, naked, no-holds-barred fucking, regardless of gender. She has been telling you for so long that what you really needed was a boyfriend.

It's not that sex with women didn't satisfy you. Why else would you spend so much energy defending yourself against the assumption of homosexuality? You like girls. You always have. You like lips and breasts and bellies and hips and cunts and painted fingernails and lipstick and high heels and lacy lingerie and perfume and the sweet, sweet taste of a woman's sex. All that stuff. And John 'Three Continents' Watson should know.

Besides, anybody who has been in the services has had time to savour the dubious joys of an almost entirely homosocial environment. You've spent most of your working life surrounded by muscular, virile men. The odd female nurse, increasingly some female soldiers, but still, overwhelmingly war is a man's world.

You never felt the slightest twitch.

The story goes that the showers at Camp Bastion had treacherously slippery floors because of all the wanking that went on in there. You had to walk through a foot bath of semen just to wash. You remember it well. (Let it never be said that you did not make your own contribution, either.) You even witnessed the offerings of others on occasion.

Nope, never a twitch. Guaranteed.

With Harry nagging you, you recently took to sitting in pavement cafes, watching the girls go by. Enjoying the sway and bump of those gorgeous behinds, the bob of pretty breasts, the swish of lustrous locks. The next day, you'd watch the boys. Watch for the muscular columns of necks and thighs, bubble arses, well-shaped arms and pecs. You tried very, very hard to see her point. And you can see it from a purely aesthetic point of view. Men can be beautiful. You get that already.

You just don't want to fuck them.

Not in general, anyway. The specific is another matter.

The thing is, Sherlock doesn't fit easily into either category. He has the face of an angel and the lips of a screen goddess. He has an arse to end all arses, an arse that would make Jay-Lo weep with envy. He has soft curls and a sense of style that wouldn't look out of place on the Paris catwalk. But he also has a very male swagger, a means of locomotion that leaves the onlooker in no doubt as to what hangs between his legs. And he smells more male, even with his favourite aftershave, than a whole battalion of marines after a three-week bivouac in the Bosnian mountains. You know that smell, and you never in a million years thought you would find it sexy.

You do.

Holding him now, weak and vulnerable, more your own than he has ever been, or ever will be again, you are confused by the desires waking in you. You know you aren't gay. Christ, you can think of a hundred examples to prove it. But there is an exception to the rule, and it is currently pressing its lips to your ear and murmuring softly.

'I love you, oh, God, I love you so much…'

In that subsonic rumble of a baritone that goes straight through your chest and down your spine.

You aren't gay. You don't want to fuck men. Not men in general.

Just him. Just Sherlock.

You lift him, tip him up, angle him to face you, weak though he is, and kiss him. You faintly remember that you kissed him last night, maybe more than once. There was so much going on then. Now there is nothing more than you and him here in this room, in each other's arms. His eyes staring into yours, blinking, surprised by love. You run your fingers over his lips, along the line of his jaw, around the shell of his ear, down the sinuous curve of his neck. You come to rest in the cup of his collarbone, at the base of his magnificent throat, where the skin is almost luminous. You stroke and circle there, stuck, dazzled by the sense of sheer want that is rising inside you.

He moans.

Want. It's a strange thing.

Want and Need. Two words that completely define and encompass your relationship. You need Sherlock. You need Sherlock to need you. Sherlock needs you. You want Sherlock. Sherlock wants you. You can tell from the way his lips part, almost in disbelief. Women have looked at you that way. You never thought he would.

You wonder, not for the first time, if he has ever been touched. Moriarty called him the Virgin. Is that so far from the truth? If he has been touched, was it ever with love? (You know it was never with as much as love as you can show him, that's for sure, but even so.)

You know from the look in his eyes that he wants this. You feel him begin to tremble, feel the anticipation heating his skin. As exhausted, as burnt out as he is, this is a need he can't deny. His eyes cloud with hunger.

You want to crawl inside his body and lose yourself forever. You want to tear every stitch from him and melt into his skin. You want to kiss him till your breath runs out, and then keep on kissing him. You want to caress him and stroke him and drive him wild with need and want and make him come, screaming, under you, and to never, ever let him go.

You know this cannot happen.

At least not without a serious u-turn on your part. Maybe on his part too, though you have no idea whether he is gay or straight because he has never given the slightest hint, even in the midst of that weird obsessional thing with the Adler Woman (and there are no words for how much you hate her). Around Sherlock, sexuality becomes so fluid as to be irrelevant. But it isn't irrelevant to you. It's huge, life defining. You are about to reverse polarities, and to do that, you need guarantees.

'I want this,' you whisper, fixing him with your eyes. 'I want you. But I need to be sure. I need to know you won't back out on me. Change your mind. This is us, Sherlock, this is our future. I want you. I want to love you. Your body as well as your mind. I want you to love me too. Do you understand that?'

He looks up at you, nods as if the understanding is slow in dawning on him. Good. You know he is taking his time, giving this serious thought.

'I want you to take that amazing brain and turn it on me. I want you to focus on me. Everything you have. Only on me. I want there to be nothing else when we make love, just us, not ideas or experiments or cases, just you and me. And if you do that, I swear to you I will never give you cause to regret it. I will show you things, make you feel things you have never imagined. I will give you pleasures you never dreamed of. But you have to be entirely mine, Sherlock, do you understand?'

It's a tall order, you know. To expect a mind so adept at multiple lines of complex thought to focus on one thing. You know you are asking a lot. Maybe too much, in fact. It will be the greatest test of his entire life. To sustain this single concentration for the rest of his existence.

When he answers, his voice shakes with emotion.

'But I am yours, John. I've always been yours. I always will be. Don't you know that?'

'Your mind, Sherlock.'

'Yes, everything, all that I am I give to you.'

And there it is. This is my body, which is broken for you. This is my blood, which boils for you. This is my heart, which beats for you.

You never dreamt he would give you this.

So you take him. In a tangle of limbs, of nakedness, you take him and mark him and make him your own. He gives himself up to you willingly, trembling with desire and love, and you take everything he has, and give him double back. You take him to places neither of you have ever been, transcendent places that only the flesh can understand, that the heart alone can navigate. In your arms, he sparkles like raw diamond, incandescent with the triumph of love. You realise he feels loved for the first time in his life, and it makes you weep to see, even while you are inside him, moving towards your own ecstasy. The way he clings to you, cries for you, quivers for you, brings you to your own transcendence too.

You were made for this. For him.

All those women were just empty fucks. So much for 'Three Continents' Watson. This is what love is. You know that now. You will take him and lift him up beyond the stars and you will do it again and again, and he will sing your name with his soul for evermore.

And after, when it is over, and you lie with him in sweat-soaked sheets, you know this joy is only the beginning.

FIN

PS: the story about Camp Bastion is true.