Fic: Enough
Title: Enough
Rating: M, or R, or whatever you crazy kids are using these days...
Disclaimer: I am not ACD. Were I ACD, I would be dead right now, and therefore could not be posting this story.
Summary: Are dreams enough to get you through the night? Set post-SIGN.
Author's Note: Not only is this the first H/W fic I have ever written, but it is the first fanfic of any sort that I have written in quite some time. It is also unbetaed (gasp), and written in my own style (more gasping) as I could not even begin to recreate the mastery of Doyle's. Read, review, but please-- be gentle. ;D

Ya no me importa si mi quiciste porque en mis sueños yo te tuve.

I no longer care if you ever loved me, because in my dreams, I know I had you.

--Alejandro Sanz

I no longer remember what it was that drove me from my bed late that last bachelor evening. I could not tell you why I took my dressing gown, nor the reason for my notes and satchel. I do not recall whether I walked or took a cab-- perhaps I even flew. Nevertheless, my heart always knew where it was going, and I followed it doggedly.

The key still fit the locks. Why the poor woman never had them changed when I failed to return my key I'll never know. Slowly, silently, steadily I climbed the stairs-- five, seventeen, two-hundred, what difference does it make? I no longer proclaimed a capacity for or knowledge of numbers.

I feel as though I can barely proclaim ownership of any knowledge, at all.

How could I have missed it? How, when he had laid the most vital clue there at my feet when I announced my impending marriage? How, when he looked at me so murderously, and then at that damnable Moroccan case as though it was his only remaining friend, the only constant in a swift-moving universe besides his own cold, hard logic? How? More importantly, why?

My mind is ever-maddening in the here and now, and I throw open the door to the old rooms brashly, loudly, a chaotic and cacophonous punctuation to my thoughts.

And there he sits in his chair by the fire. Awake. Waiting.

“For you, Watson. Waiting for you. An ironic turn of events, considering the many nights I unknowingly kept you awake for me...”

I cannot speak. I cannot move. For a second-- no, for minutes, hours-- I cannot breathe.

“What would you do, Watson?”

I would... but I must... but I fail...

“Would you marry her, Watson, marry her to protect the genteel life you have created for yourself? Would you announce your undying love for her to silence your own heart, lying stifled in your breast? Would you take her to the marriage bed, lay her down, move inside her as though you cared for her well-being, as though you wanted her-- only her!-- to bear your child?”

He is swift, and my back is pressed to the closed door faster than my blinking eye. I feel him pressed against me, skin hot, eyes dark, lips... Oh God, his lips...

“Or would you forget her? Forget convention? Damn, forget the world!” His hands are on my chest, diving beneath my coat and... ah!

My bag clutters uselessly to the floor beside me, but with the rushing in my ears it sounds a continent away. Fingers pull at my nipples, stiffening underneath the fabric of my shirt. I am a lover of women, but this... This is the most exquisite thing I have ever known. I thrust against him, towards him, quite unaware until I feel his hardness, his maleness, and respond in kind.

“Would you pitifully copulate with her--” His lips brush against my ear, words the barest of whispers.

“--or would you fuck me, John?” And a hammer strikes my heart in two, electricity jolts up my spine, and I feel death in my mouth, my voice weak.

“I must...” I pause, feeling the salt welling beneath my closed eyes. “Holmes...” I cannot bear to use his Christian name for fear of breaking more than I already have. “I must marry her, Holmes.”

He slams me-- hard, my shoulder reminds me-- back into the door and snarls. I wonder for a moment if he is drunk or mad-- but I share his disgust, his feelings, and therefore it must be both.

“You must do nothing but what you want to do!” He might as well have spat acid in my face for all the venom in his words.

I would take... No, but I must go... Oh, how I fail! He is raving, shouting at me, pacing the floor, and I clamor to rise above the din of my own mind.

“Holmes...”

“You would turn your back on all that we have been, all that we could be, all that I know-- I know you want--”

“Holmes...”

“You would leave me for something, someone you do not even desire in the slightest, leave me to my vices and my crime when I have shed myself bare and shown you my depths, when I have shown you more than I have ever revealed to another person, living or dead--”

“Holmes.” He stops, turns to look at me, and is silent for the first time in the last five minutes. One lone, traitorous tear slithers mutely down his cheek.

“What would you do, Watson, if I told you I wanted you to stay?” The water breaks, and my vision blurs.

I would tell you. I must tell you. I have failed in telling you! And I find the words, at last.

“I would take you in my arms, embrace you, feel the leanness of your body against mine. I would look into your soul through the great gray stillness of your eyes, and you into mine. I would take your hand to my heart and let you feel the pulse, full, quickened, unsteady at your touch.”

We find each other, somehow, through all the words, all the emotion he swears he hates. Whether I pulled him to me or I to him I will never know. One of us is shaking, or perhaps both, or maybe at last we have fit our two halves together and become whole in the other. I brush the stranger from his face.

“I would tell you how beautiful I have always found you. I would admit that your prowess and abilityleave me absolutely breathless. I would undress you-- kiss you-- love you. I would love you, Holmes.” I inhaled sharply.

“But I must marry her. I must lie in front of God and all and pledge myself to her. Bind myself to her. I must be her husband, for all of our sakes. I must...” Dear Lord, but I am choking! “I must push you from my heart.

“I failed you. You. Sherlock... I failed.”

He looks up at me, and our lips meet at last. His mouth is so soft, so like a woman's-- But, oh, he is male, and sin has never tasted so sweetly. Our tongues slip together so naturally-- how is this an abomination? How can it be, when this is more than I ever dreamed possible? How can I let this go?

“You must, John.”

We parted soon after, quiet as the dead. My feet found their way from home to house, my notes in my arms...

My dressing gown on his shoulders... My love in my throat...

I slept fitfully, consumed with dreaming of him. So real in sleep, this fire in my belly that must be extinguished!

His skin is like damask, like silk, like nothing I have ever seen or touched. He fills me completely, owns me. My back arches and I cry out his name at last before sinking into the oblivion of his gaze...

The night is filled this way, as have been all my nights since meeting him, with sweat and ache and uncontrollable lust. But now it is morning, and I dress to meet Doom himself, should he care to show his face on this, the most dreadful of days.

He is there, waiting for me at the altar in an empty church. Waiting for me, yet not. I touch his face, his hands, his lips...

“No, Watson.” I am not Watson, I am John! John!

“I would... Kiss you...” How is it that he leaves me so breathless? So reasonless?

“You cannot.”

“I must, Sherlo--”

“Holmes. And no, you mustn't.”

Fail, failed, failure! NO!

We stand there in silence, together yet not, waiting yet not. At some point the pews fill and the music starts.

“I cannot...” He finds my hand and holds it in his own as the bride glides down the aisle to meet us.

His voice is filled with a sadness so unlike him that my breath catches painfully.

“You must, John.” And as always, he is right. He squeezes my hand, and then it as if it were never there.

I repeat the vows as though a machine, as if caught in a waking nightmare.

I am.

“I do.”

She leans to me in happiness, and I kiss her chastely. Her lips feel dead to me, cold like a fish-- there is no milk and honey, no unbridled emotion, no passion. Where is the warmth of my beloved? I imagine that it is him, and suddenly the world stops moving.

His mouth, so yielding against mine, so full of spice and tobacco...

Or maybe it starts.

He moans into me as I stroke him, my mouth on his neck...

Is this all that I will ever have? A woman to love that I have no love for? Empty promises? An empty heart?

But no, it is Mary, not my love! Her breasts jut from her body foreignly, my idle hand suddenly full, confused, lost.

I steel my resolve and let the ice grow in my bosom. If this is all that God has seen fit to give me,

I start in surprise, the familiarness of his cock gone, my fingers buried in her womanhood. This is not right-- I am cheating on my love with my wife! Why should men face such indignities, such cruelties? Why must it be she in my marriage bed?

All that I will ever be allowed of him,

I close my eyes in sorrow, and there... Ah, it is Sherlock! He has never failed me, never failed me...

Then, by God, this...

He screams my name as he climaxes, collapsing into my waiting arms. For a moment, I simply watch him, adore the body I know so well in dream, commit this moment of vulnerability to eternal memory. When I can stand it no longer, I take him-- hard, as I have always wanted to, while he is still moaning from his release-- and I am soon undone, as well.

This...

I have always followed him, and I always will-- I have always loved him, and I always will.

This is enough.