Falling For You

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John woke up confused.  He remembered the previous night in small bits and pieces, but he wasn't sure what had actually happened.  He had seen Sherlock again, this time sitting in his chair.  John noticed that he was in Sherlock's bed, but he didn't remember how he had gotten there.  Had he walked?  Did Mrs. Hudson come up and lead him into the room of the dead detective?  John wasn't sure, but he intended to find out.

"Dammit!" he heard from the kitchen as something fell to the floor.  Curious to see who the voice belonged to, John walked to the kitchen and saw Sherlock over the stove with a kettle on the stovetop. 

He screamed.

"Bloody-"

"Morning, John.  Sleep well?" Sherlock asked with a slight smile on his face.  John watched his friend cautiously.  

"Hm?  Sleep... are you...?"

Sherlock raised an eyebrow.  "Am I what?"

John wondered if he could manage the word.  He tried.  "Real?"  His voice was hoarse but he managed to get it out.

Sherlock smiled.  "Yes," he said.  "And I am so sorry for the hell I caused you."

Sherlock moved over towards John and John found his heart beating rapidly inside of his chest. Then John remembered that he loved him.  That he was totally and helplessly in love with Sherlock Holmes.  He had been so shocked about finding out that he was alive and everything that he forgot he loved him.  But it all came back to him, how the inky curls on Sherlock's head made John's heart flutter.  How his high lips made John go weak in the knees.  And how Sherlock Holmes had left him but how it didn't cause John's feelings for him to go away.  If anything, they had grown stronger over the past two years.  

"I'm just... so you're actually alive?  I'm not just imagining this?" John asked for clarification.

Sherlock nodded, his curls flopping with his head.  "Afraid so.  Looks like I'm back to being the number one arsehole in your life," Sherlock chuckled.

John found himself laughing.  God, of course Sherlock would have come back from the dead.  Of course Sherlock Bloody Holmes managed a way to cheat his own suicide.  John figured that he should have seen that one coming.  How had he been so stupid?

Sherlock looked at John and wished that he could stay in the moment forever.  But he had work to do.  An experiment to run.  He needed to see if Mycroft was right.

He loves you.  -MH

Did he?  An even better question that Sherlock found himself asking was if he loved him in return.  Of course, he would have to take things one step at a time.  John first.  He would be able to tell by taking his pulse and seeing if his pupils were dilated.  Sherlock wished that he could understand human nature sometimes.  Only sometimes.  If he was like anyone else, he would have been able to just read John's body language and figure it out for himself without the sciencey bits, but he wasn't very good with people.  Especially with John.  

"Sherlock?" John asked as Sherlock ventured to the other room to sit down on his black leather chair he has missed so much over the two years he had been gone.

"Yes?"

"Thank you," John found himself saying.  

"For what?" Sherlock asked.

"Coming back.  I mean," John said blushing.  "You didn't have to."

A grin spread across Sherlock's pale and thinning face.  "For you, John, I did."

John felt himself blushing.  Sherlock added that to his mental checklist.  

Blushes.  

Now for that pulse and those pupils.

He still had so much to discover.