"You have an extreme idea of going unarmed," W whispered. The air was charged with tension and meaning, as had been their recent weeks together. W dared not turn around.

"I am eccentric," H answered with a cool shrug, "and we are alone. Quite alone, where we may be ... indulgent in eccentricity." half smiled, before casually playing another card. "You would not abandon your patient, doctor, when he makes an appointment with you?"

"I--" turning, W sees H's paleness and breaks off; at last, he shuts the door and comes over to the bed to sit with H. "Are you well?" he asked, keeping a certain distance away nonetheless.

H leaned back and sighed. "I have had a fretful anxiety to keep me awake tonight; thus my urgency to see you. I apologise for having had to wake you, Watson, but I had not expected you to retire so early to bed tonight, and I could not wait till morning."

W watched H's eyes carefully, observing the strain in them which were but a mirror to W's own strain of late. "I am always available whenever you need me," he assured quietly.

"Yes." H smiled oddly, blinking at his folded hands. Then the corners of his mouth turned down. "Even when I don't want to need you." touches W's arm, trying to be cheerful. "You might well have brought along your medical bag, although, to be honest, my strain is due more to my state of mind than my body." shows his arms, not recently scarred by a hypodermic. "I am yours to view, all the same."

W declines the offer, but ponders H's light caress of his sleeve. "Holmes?" he ventures with uncertainty.

H withdraws the touch and whispers, "Please let me get to it in my own time, Watson." after a silence, H adjusts W's dressing-gown lapel. "Neat as ever, my dear fellow. As if you were wearing regulation attire, even out of the army. And your hair..." brushes W's locks.

W swallows, closing his eyes at the touch.

"Sometimes I have wondered about you in the army. What you braved there, what you saw..."

W waited with a breathless tension, wondering if he ought to leave.

H's fingers trace along W's dressing gown. "My ex-soldier and companion-at-arms..." very faint, "I wonder how it is that you tricked me into such a romanticised, chivalrous relationship with you. Making our scientific investigations more like dramatic adventures of fiction. I wonder if I am meant to be your Don Quixote tilting at windmills."

Opening his eyes at last, W raised an eyebrow and frowned at H. "Windmills?"

"Windmills as giants, or a clod of soil as evidence fit to hang a man on. They are much the same to unimaginative eyes." H shrugged. "More than a few police inspectors, and clients, have thought me a trifle mad in my theories and methods, and I know that you have thought the same at times."

W shook his head, "Holmes, I never thought--"

H caught W's chin with his fingers, making W meet his glance. "And yet," H stroked W with a thumb, "the look on your face at times, when I am taking my doses of cocaine... as if I am the perfect tragic genius, descending into ruin."

swallowing, W withdrew from H's grasp and turned away. W did not care to be looked at this closely, with those piercing eyes. he stared at his feet, wringing his hands.

watching those hands, H sighed and changed the subject. "Do you remember how we first met?"

placing his hands on either side of him on the bed, W shrugged, trying to make his voice careless. "Yes, at Bart's, when Stamford--" W halted when he felt H's touch--slender, chemical-stained fingers sliding over his hand, exploring his skin. W turned slightly, watching H's movements.

H spoke in a low tone. "I remember ... every detail, even without reading your novel. I recall your build and your attire. Your skin. Your eyes. Your grip of my hand."

faintly "I thought that you did not retain ... irrelevant data."

"Nothing about you is irrelevant." sitting closer, stroking W along his clavicle bone beneath his shirt. "Your injured shoulder--somehow off, stiffened. I could observe the way you carried it, could deduce and draw conclusions from it," exploring "and yet I never saw it. Not then. Not ever in the years since. Never. I know you so well, yet I have no data on your injury other than what the public knows from your writings. Why, the very thing that altered your career and brought you back to England, that brought you to me, and I've never seen it." His fingers and his mind both ponder this place, as if trying to imagine the scar beneath W's clothes.

W touches H's roaming hand tentatively, trying to decide to pull away H's grasp. instead, he watches H's blinking eyes

H leans forward, whispers "Would you let me see it? Just once?" voice wavers a little

W nods slowly, permits. he rises from the bed and pulls off his dressing-gown; feels H intensely watching while he removes his shirt as well. Sets both garments aside in the chair with H's own clothes. Sinks slowly down to sit beside H again

H is breathless, reaching and touching him as though aching for it. Explores the scar minutely, leaning against W, bare skin to bare skin.

W sighs, blinking and rationalising to himself that they had really done nothing yet

H withdraws and surprises W with a touch upon a recent bruise "And here ... a bruise you took for me in our case last Thursday. I have not thanked you enough for that. And here," another place on W's arm "where you were struck with the aluminium crutch just two months ago, and required a cast for the fracture. And here..." H catalogued place after place, revealing how very much that he did know Watson, no matter whether there remained physical traces or not. H caressed each one tenderly.

W shivered slightly, and blinked a tear, so touched by H's detailed memory

H looked up and saw the tear. H embraced him, and kissed W's cheek, pressing against him and wiping the track away

W felt his heart race

H kissed W's scar now, leaning against his shoulder

"Holmes"

H sighed, clinging to him. eyes closed "Do you remember ... when you examined me in Lyons? After my collapse?"

"Yes" with an uneasy frown

H slid Watson's arms coaxingly around his body, and H meanwhile touched W's bare back, his pressing fingers trying to feel W's heartbeat

W bit his lip, blinking "You resisted my every effort."

agreed quietly "I was entirely uncooperative"

W closed his eyes, grimacing it out of him, "You made me feel as if my very touch were a ... violation of you. That I had no right. That I presumed upon our relationship, in prescribing to you how and where you should recover. That I ought not to mix the merely personal matter of our friendship with a professional custody of your health, which you had not entrusted to me."

H let W recover, shivering as H caressed him. "Yes. I had not the strength to stop you physically, and so resorted to caustic remarks. A more castigating version of my usual retorts to your interference in my cocaine use." kissed more tenderly "Wholly unwarranted. Brutal. Untrue."

W stirred and opened his eyes. he touched H questioningly, and heard H whisper faintly, "My health is always entrusted to you. My life." W looked away with unbearable emotion

blinked against W's cheek "I tried to make it up to you in the weeks afterward. I became pliable to your wishes. But you feared that I might have such a hateful mood, a cruel whim, again." kissed him again, drew W's hands along his skin "I was ... afraid, of letting you so ... near to me. Being exposed, to my deepest feelings, to you. Tempted to lose myself wholly in your care, in your arms. To not give a damn, if we--"

W stopped him, pulling back. covered H's mouth as he tried to look at H and shake his head

H kissed W's hand, entwined it in his stained fingers again. "I will never hurt you so again." slid closer, moved the sheets aside slowly. murmuring "I want you to examine me" a breath "Completely."

W permitted his hands to be coaxed. explored H's shape. bit his lip, remembering how weak H's body had been just months before, emaciated and deprived of many hours of sleep. Now he was whole. More, he was willing, for ... so much more than a medical concern

breathing into W's skin "You know. You surely know. You must..."

shaky gulp

reaching up, H opened W's mouth and kissed him. Deeply. pulling W down against him.

passionate. damp with perspiration, both entangled on the bed.

then W half pulls away, fighting. Could they really, in all good conscience, succumb? So easily, in such a grave issue?

H holds W near, reaching and pulling him closer "let me, let me..." kissed him again "We cannot live this way forever."

"Holmes" he felt H's legs sliding around and gripping him

H's fingers now unbuttoned W's pyjama bottoms. drew W near enough to feel how much H wanted him, stroking softly and tensely. "So, won't you?" he whispered within W's ear, almost inaudibly, "Won't you ... use me?"

shivered, surprised and aroused. blinked breathlessly

at W's silence, H continued, "Or is there another way you'd like to? There are several things we could try... methods to investigate." Kissed and licked against W's neck.

W shifted in bed, pulling off his final garments, then returned to H's arms and kissed him sharply. they loved and caressed together intensely, not caring what they did. Discovering how long they'd been wanting this.