lightconductor | Deck the Halls

He lingers in Watson's embrace and dips his head to take another kiss; he tries very hard to block out those painful images, to focus instead on Watson warm and alive in his arms, and kissing him, loving him. It works, to a degree, as much of a degree as it's going to, and he rests their foreheads together. The intimacy of hearing his Christian name is still somewhat new to him, and he revels in it, smoothing his hand against Watson's side.

"Good. Because that really would put a damper on my Christmas this year," he says finally, trying for lightness, and he draws back slightly. "By the way, John, is your continued existence my only present this year?"

"Of course not," Watson chided. Holmes had successfully drawn him out of his crossness, for all that Holmes was himself the cause of the crossness in the first place. He followed, trying to kiss him again. "But you will have to wait for it. I cannot, after all, give you your present before it is fully Christmas."

He pulled himself close, sighing a little. "Your continued existence is already more a gift than I deserve."

"I'm pleased you think so, especially considering how easily I anger you." He kisses Watson tenderly, drawing the kiss out. However annoying it is to him that Watson went out alone, he is glad now for the chance to decorate for Christmas, especially with both of them alive and so wonderfully in love.

Admittedly, guilt has been twitching at him since Watson got shot. He knows that Watson's being targeted for his association with Holmes, that whoever doing this wants to see Holmes suffer and doesn't particularly care if it's Holmes who suffers or Watson. Maybe he knows that Watson being hurt is an injury ten times over to Holmes himself.

At any rate, it's Christmas, and they're together, and he isn't going to think about those things right now.

"You shouldn't sell yourself so short, my darling," he murmurs as he draws away again, pulling out of his embrace. "I'm not more than you deserve. I'm precisely what you deserve."

"Perhaps you do easily anger me, but my quick temper is no fault of yours. Forgive me for it."

Watson let Holmes go this time, finally, and he returned to the packages to retrieve some more pine branches. His own temper was not a matter of pride for him, certainly a shameful thing, and that Holmes was so apparently unbothered by it was a matter for which Watson was quite thankful.

"I do hope you're right on that count, my dear. If you are precisely and no more than what I deserve, then the odds that I will be so unlucky as to lose you seem much smaller." He cast a shy sort of smile over his shoulder at Holmes as he finished arranging the pine, and he retrieved a sprig of mistletoe.

"This," he said, looking at it curiously. "Do you have a good place in mind that we can hang this without it being too suspicious? I do have half a mind to hang it from my belt and see what you make of that."

Holmes lets out a bark of laughter, entirely unbidden, and turns around.

"What do you think I will make of that? I will make with tradition, of course." He smiles, dark and promising. "That would make for quite the interesting holiday game. As we're already perverts, I can't see anything wrong with engaging in further perversion of otherwise innocent things."

"Now that's an unexpected bonus to sodomy," Watson laughed, flushing just a little. He hung the mistletoe from the doorway; if they did indeed decide they needed it for later games, it would be easily retrieved.

Their room was already looking far more seasonal, smelling of pine and holly, the crackle of the fire in the hearth, the cold outside their snug little sitting room. And Holmes was here, amazingly all Watson wanted in the world. For someone who still had reservations about embracing this sort of inversion, he was really utterly in love with the man before him, quite completely devoted and adoring, perfectly matched. He felt, sometimes, that the best evidence that this could not be wrong was how incredibly right it was that the two of them were so perfectly matched for each other.

"On the other hand," Watson continued thoughtfully, feigning as much casualness as he could, "perhaps I'd rather hang it from your waistband."

"I wouldn't find fault with that either," he purrs in return, and he approaches Watson with a glint in his eyes. "We could take turns with it. That would be the properly charitable route to take, given the season."

He hooks his fingers into Watson's waistband and pulls him closer, kissing him hotly.

Pleased with the response he'd earned, Watson smiled slyly against Holmes's mouth. "I cannot contest that," he said, resting his hand against the small of Holmes's back. "You have a very clever plan as far as celebrating the season goes. I don't think I could argue with that."

"I've been a homosexual for a long time. I've had time to plan." He slides a hand into Watson's hair and pulls him in for another kiss, deep and searching; he's a little breathless as the kiss breaks, and he bumps his nose against Watson's.

"This is our first Christmas as lovers. We ought to celebrate in some sentimental, romantic way or another."

"I thought we were already doing a very good job of it," Watson offered. He lifted a hand to run his fingers through Holmes's hair, tilted his head to kiss his temple lingeringly. "As a general rule, you seem to be outrageously sentimental -- to my shock, you have no notion. Christmas can be just one more flavour of it."

In love, adoring, Watson let his mouth wander down to the side of Holmes's throat, pulling away his collar just enough to manage it. "But as I'm rather more recently converted, I shall have to bow to your superior experience."

"What does it say about me that I find it more difficult to have my fault of sentimentality pointed out to me than my inversion?" he muses, tilting his head to allow Watson better access. "Perhaps we ought not indulge in sentimentality, for a change. Spend Christmas on opposite sides of the room, in surly silence."

He tugs Watson up from his neck by his hair so that Holmes might have a turn at kissing his throat; he nips gently, just beneath his ear.

"I disagree," Watson said, rather helplessly. "Besides that we're not doing a terribly good job at it so far... it sounds extremely unpleasant to me."

He savoured the situation for some moments, his breathing deep and steady, before leaning back against the wall, pulling Holmes with him. After comfortably pinning himself against the wall like this, he sighed a little.

"You will make me forget about the decorations, at this rate."

"Surely not the mistletoe," he murmurs with a devilish smile, and he lines his body up against Watson's, pressing close against him. "I believe you were onto something when you said I'm enough of a present for you. I would be content with merely unwrapping you on Christmas morning."

His voice is low and full of dark promises as he reaches between them and undoes Watson's collar, loosens his tie.

"Do you realise," Watson murmured, "I think that sounds very promising indeed."

It was true that he was feeling a bit trapped, and vulnerable because of it, for all that he had put himself in this situation purposely and willingly. There was not much to do except breathe in and savour it, treasure it, for whatever else it was, it was exciting, too. He kissed Holmes, hungry and heated, holding him close.

"You needn't wait until Christmas morning."

"No, I suppose not," he says lowly, his lips brushing Watson's neck as he talks. "But the upside is that I can enjoy this present over and over." He unbuttons Watson's shirt, and he trails his kisses lower, following the exposed line of his chest.

"You can't say that for many other kinds of presents," he breathes, and punctuates his sentence with a nip against Watson's chest as he unbuckles Watson's belt. "I can unwrap you now, and then again on Christmas, and again, if I wanted, and it would still be just as good as the first time." He slides Watson's belt off and tosses it aside.

Watson's breath caught, just a little, partly because of the lips on his bare skin, partly because of Holmes's words. "You can unwrap me," he said, hoarse and faintly laughing because of something that struck him as ridiculous about it all, "as many times as you wish, if you enjoy me so."

He slipped his fingers down the back of Holmes's collar, toying with it and tickling while he attempted to sidle his hand around to work away his tie and the collar and what seemed just then like frankly far too much cloth. "Provided I can do a little unwrapping of my own."

"Certainly." He stands and grips Watson by the hips; in a fluid motion he turns them around so Holmes is against the wall, and he pulls Watson in close, stealing a hungry kiss. He would've had to get Watson off the wall anyway if he really wants to get him shirtless, and this seems like a pleasant enough way to introduce the change of position.

"Unwrap at will," he says against Watson's lips, with a devilish smile.

It was for Watson often easier to take this more... aggressive, dominant role, to control rather than be controlled (although, to be fair, no less pleasant when he gave that up). He fell onto Holmes like a starving man, sliding his fingers between buttons while his mouth explored well-known skin over Holmes's throat and collarbone. He pressed Holmes up against the wall, pressing the two of them together. His lips trailed to Holmes's ear, nibbling and mouthing gently at the flesh there, while Watson slid his hand over Holmes's abdomen under layers of cloth. He gripped tightly, just above the angle of pelvis.

"You are a wonderful present," he whispered.

Though Holmes prefers the control he finds when he takes the more dominant role, he'd be lying if he didn't admit that he likes to be worshipped, to be touched like this at the hands of a man who knows what he's about. Sometime, still, he'll have to get Watson in his uniform. If he's honest, he thinks of that sometimes when Watson falls on him like this.

"Then you and I are going to have a wonderful, if exhausting, Christmas," he murmurs, though his silky, seductive tones have been quite interrupted with Watson's attention to his neck; his voice is breathless and strained now. He grips Watson's hips, holding him firm, and rolls his hips up, bringing his straining cock against his thigh.

Oh, how Watson loved to feel that. Once it had been a strange and slightly alarming thing to feel his lover's cock against him, but by now it was a rather glorious thing. There were few things that delighted Watson quite as much as the knowledge that he was performing well in his role, whether mundane or erotic.

"I think I might hold you to that," he murmured, half a growl. It made a difference, too, to know that he was the one who could reduce Holmes to this. That was just slightly aweing. He caught Holmes's mouth with his, peeling off his shirt while he shrugged out of his own.

"And other things, I hope," he says, strained, as he musters up the attention required to help Watson remove items of clothing. It would be decidedly unsexy if they had to stop and tend to him, or if he hurt himself out of his stubborn determination to be perfectly fine, despite the healing wound on his arm.

Watson gave a small groan suddenly, as he bent his arm in an unfortunate way, straining the stitches. Foolish of him, but he'd been thinking of almost anything else, of Holmes and of impending sex, not his own infirmity.

He dropped his head down onto Holmes's shoulder, his eyes shut, while he tried to regain his equilibrium, tried to breathe through the sharp pain as it faded into dull throbbing.

He kisses the nape of Watson's neck and runs a soothing hand down his good arm as he waits for Watson to recover. He'd been afraid of this, of Watson's enthusiasm and stubbornness, both traits he loves him for, of course, but traits that inevitably lead them to this.

"Patience, my dear," he murmurs, and he noses the hair at the nape of Watson's neck. "Let me unwrap my own presents." He slips his hand underneath Watson's shirt and drags his knuckles over his rib cage.

Deck the Halls

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