There is nothing on earth quite like alcohol.

It burns a little. Not like fire; like... like happiness. It feels happy. And it makes the world look a little less harsh around the edges. Paper that's a little torn. You can feel the fibers brush against your fingertips, and you feel a little closer to the trees, the clean white blurriness of it all.

The world becomes a painting, a piece of Van Gogh, imprecise and unprecedented. John could stumble around the London slush for ages - spinning a texture of worn army boots into the remains of of the snow on the sidewalks, just living as that sad, torn soldier. Because, in that moment, with that bottle in his hand - it tastes good. It tastes like... happiness. Like he just... doesn't... care.

His lips are preening senselessly into a cavity at the base of Sherlock's neck; a sore mark of ownership forming right beneath the collar of his shirt. Sherlock is squirming and groping and whining, a red tint to his cheeks that John has never seen before. Is it John's drunkenness? Or is it Sherlock's?

Sherlock, as far as John is aware, is a goody two shoes. Never drank, never smoked, never did drugs (John scoffs to himself; as if), and now... John is getting him tipsy. Drunk, daresay. He's spinning, and spinning, and so pretty and nice and John just wants to bite into his neck like it's a piece of Salisbury steak.

"Jesus, John," Sherlock giggles as John pushes himself into Sherlock's arms, force feeding him those alcohol tainted lips like they're the only taste he's ever known. Mumbles of appreciation rustle through him, a warm whisper ghosting across his tongue. It sounds like, "So, how fucked up are you?"

Sherlock smiles in his intoxicated state, a grin shining across his teeth like Cheshire cats and clowns. "Me? Oh, very."

"Oh?" John laughs, a little chuckle escaping his lips. "Well, tell me. After I'm done with you." John starts sucking at his neck again, bruising the skin underneath almost angrily. Sherlock keens in distress, putting his legs tightly around John's sides. He pushes John into his groin, letting a drawn out moan escape, and then begins - John is shocked - rutting.

"How drunk are you?" John slurs, kissing Sherlock harder, pressing his erection into him further, and Sherlock laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs, and it sounds like music and kisses and moans and just... God. He's fucking pretty.

"You want me?" John whispers, kissing the dip underneath his jawline. Sherlock mumbles a little "mhmm" to John, who smiles in appreciation and dips his hands in Sherlock's pants.

"My dad would be absolutely seething," Sherlock says as he pushes into John's hands.

"And, so...?" John stops kissing Sherlock for a moment, long enough to see his eyes. They look really... pretty. And blue.

John begins giggling.

"So, nothing," Sherlock chuckles, kissing John's neck. "He'd just be..." he palms John's groin and squeezes, accenting each word, "really - really - mad."

"Really, hmm?" John nibbles at Sherlock's lip. "Would he think you were a horny, dirty bastard? Because," John nimbly undoes his shirt buttons one by one, each one popping open noisily, "that's what I think, pretty boy."

"Uh-huh," Sherlock keens, riding hard onto John's palms.

A piercing, shrill ring erupts from Sherlock's phone, which John doesn't respond well to. "Don't touch it," he whines, pushing Sherlock back into the couch as he bites at his Adam's apple. Sherlock looks over at the phone momentarily, a lazy expression written across his brows.

"Bu..." his protest is cut off by a sudden air grabbing kiss, and it steals all the words out of his mouth as the persistent phone dies to a stop.

But then... it begins ringing again. And it seems louder, more urgent, so Sherlock pushes John off and grabs for the phone in one swift mention, which John takes as a rejection and slinks back onto the other side of the couch.

"Sorry, John, I..." Sherlock presses the "accept" button. "I need to take this."

As soon as John hears the "hello," Sherlock's face twists. His lips become thin, his eyes more tired, and John can tell that by his first response that he's incredibly pissed.

"Hello," he hisses, "fatty."

"Brother," the boy on the other side spits. "How are you?"

The look on Sherlock's face is as if he'd been sucking furiously on lemons. "Cut to the chase; it isn't as if you actually want to know. Why are you calling?"

There's a moment of silence, and then a grave clear of the man on the other line's throat. "Father... would, um..." the man coughs. "He'd like to see you."

The face Sherlock makes - like he's being hit by a truck, falling off a rooftop, and being stabbed, all at once - John finds himself holding his breath, staring at the crease in his eyebrows like they might never unwrinkle.

"What, I..." Sherlock can't even stutter through one sentence, his tongue wiggling limply in his mouth. When he tries to speak, it just falls apart before his teeth can form the words.

The man's voice becomes more urgent. "I know you're angry, brother, I know, but he has things to discuss with you pertaining to his will-"

"Father," he hisses. "Father can... go... fuck himself."

"He-"

The amount of mortification playing across his face makes John want to shrivel, and curl, and melt into the floor. "I... I don't want any part of his will," Sherlock says. His expression has become harsh and cold, the hurt in his eyes painfully apparent. "I don't want any part, not a fraction, not a fucking iota of any money he has. I do not want to look at him, I do not want to breathe the same air he does, I do not want anything that reminds me of him in my life!"

"But brother-"

"That includes you, Mycroft, and I rather do not care about what you have to say to me. I don't care how much money he has. I don't care."

"Sherlock," Mycroft hisses.

"No. No."

"Sherlock!"

"I don't-" Sherlock cuts himself off abruptly, and runs his fingers through his hair. "I don't want his..."

"Sherlock."

"I..."

"Dad's dying."

A frown. Half a second. Just... he frowns. And then he smiles. And then he grins, this bloody large fucking beaming grin painted on, like he's won the lottery. "What," he laughs. "Did you actually think I would care?" he asks, giddily bouncing on the cushions. Sherlock looks over at John, who's absentmindedly taking swigs of gin and humming the theme to Jeopardy.

"Hang up," John mouths at him, and Sherlock does so without even telling his brother goodbye.

"Fuck him," Sherlock mumbles. "Fuck him to the moon." A warm, affectionate body crawls into his lap, pushing eagerly at his lips. "Fuck him," Sherlock whispers painfully through John's kisses, "fuck him, fuck him, fuck him. I just want you. Only you. Only... you..." The air is thick, suddenly full of a nervous sort of kissing laughter, a reach for something more comforting than this. Sherlock pulls eagerly at John's clothes, laughing strenuously, a twisted smile tearing achingly through his lips.

Because he doesn't care about his father. He doesn't deserve to care; he doesn't care, he doesn't care, he doesn't bloody care. The sentence screams in his mind, ripping any obligation to his father away, bit by bit, because he doesn't care, and nor does his father. "Fuck him," Sherlock mumbles against John's teeth. "Fuck him. Only you."

John grins into Sherlock's skin. "You're fucking drunk," he giggles.

He's probably right, Sherlock thinks.

***

John's skin after a bout of sex smells like perspiration and an intoxicating mix of vanilla and alcohol, and Sherlock fondly takes into consideration the soft plushness of his skin. Hot and humid and rugged. Or maybe that's just the gin talking.

His skin is blanketed in layers across his body, and Sherlock finds himself staring intently at his face after he's fallen asleep. Lips so pink, breath so warm, brows untwisted into his face; it's so foreign to see him like this. So beautifully, blissfully foreign. Sherlock kisses his eyelashes, and kisses the beads of imaginary water from his lips, because that's how they met in the first place. He presses his lips to behind his ears, and he whispers, he breathes, "John, John, John, mine, mine... mine."

He's gotten what he wanted. He's stolen the unstealable. A person, with a butterfly heart beat and a drum for a pulse and wind in his lungs and legs and arms that move like an automaton. This is good. This is beautiful. He has done it.

Sherlock trusts John. He trusts him a lot, but not enough - God knows how much admiration John would need to instill in him to reveal anything about his home life. Not even that it's relevant. Or that he cares. Because he doesn't. He is here. In the now. The past is done; he is over with it, and there is nothing - nothing, that will get between him and the ultimate prize.

He's not so resigned to the inevitability of death, nowadays. He skims books full of advice on loving things, and tears pages out of magazines in order to become better at this. It's easy to steal, but harder to keep. And he knows this; he wants to keep John.

Hold him close to his shard-of-glass-heart, so he can feel that moonlit skin against his own, the quiet solemnity of a whisper in his ear. Telling John that he breathes him, John is his salvation, the thing that he needs more than any medication, any family.

Who needs family when you have trinkets? Who needs friends when you can steal people's hearts?

That sounds cannibalistic.

But anyway.

Sherlock is proud of himself, more proud than he's ever been, ever. He loves... this. This feeling. And maybe he doesn't quite understand it yet - it's less of ownership and more of a mutual understanding that they are each others', and that confuses Sherlock... but he knows that John wouldn't have let this happen if the feeling wasn't reciprocated. What Sherlock is feeling is so new, so surprising, that he doesn't bother trying to figure it out. He just needs John. That is all he knows.

Tomorrow, he's going to do it. He's going to bring John underneath his tree, and they're going to watch the lights like they're the stars in the sky. He's going to kiss him, under that tree, and ask him, again, the words which he's so afraid to say. No matter how thick the silence is, no matter how freezing the snow is against their hands, he's going to ask.

Tomorrow decides everything.

***

When he sleeps, he doesn't have dreams. It's this black, white, clearness, with no noise, and no emotion. Living without hue. (To be fair, black and white has many shades of gray.)

But when someone in color appears, with sunshine for hair and a smile that lights up places where light does not travel - the space of nothingness eradicated by this sudden piercing sunray - he wants it. He wants the green light at the end of the dock, and the dream that comes with the journey.

Sherlock dreams, that night, the night before the end of the beginning, and he wakes up in John's bed with John's skin and John's here.

John is here.

A/N: best thing I've written in five weeks amen

WHAT DO YOU THINK SHERLOCK IS GOING TO SAY TOMORROW O:

And yes they did the frickle frackle but you ain't gettin a scene srry

I LOVE YALL SO MACH AND YOU ARE THE BEST FOR STAYING THIS LONG LIKE WTF?