They are on a post-case high—one involving a closed-room murder, a double-homicide, an aluminium cane, and an exhilarating chase down the Thames. Traditionally, a difficult case like this calls for Chinese takeout.

There is no reason that this instance should be an aberration, so John dutifully picks up his phone to order, grinning at Sherlock as he rattles off their orders with a familiarity that comes with practice. John settles down on the sofa and grins at Sherlock as he does the same.

"Fantastic," John says, as he turns on the telly for a rerun of Poirot, which John knows Sherlock hates to love to criticize. "That one's definitely going on the blog."

"It was, wasn't it," Sherlock murmurs, pulling his feet up onto the cushions. There is a red tinge to his cheeks, ostensibly because of the cold. Not much more is said between them as they watch the fictional detective investigate on the screen, interrupted by only a quip or two from Sherlock.

(That should have been the first sign to John; usually, Sherlock cannot hold back his scathing comments for Poirot. )

There's a knock on the door downstairs, signalling the arrival of their Chinese.

John pats the detective's knee as he gets up and leaves to pick up the food.

He's not exaggerating when he says he's stuffing his face when he eats his kung pao chicken. Sherlock, on the other hand, has only eaten a quarter of his lo mein.

(Second indicator: after cases like this, Sherlock is typically ravenous.)

John startles out of his dinner when the feeling of wrong settles over him. Breaking his concentration from the telly, he looks at Sherlock at the other end of the sofa. He only slightly unsettled to find Sherlock's silvery-grey eyes fixed on his face. "Is there something wrong?"

To his relief, Sherlock shakes his head. "No. Nothing." He lifts up his box. "I'm not very hungry. Take some of mine." John quirks a smile and does so.

(Sherlock never offers John food directly. He subtly moves food to John's plate or politely ignores it when John takes from his.)

Their hands brush lightly as John transfers the noodles to his mouth.

He's very startled when Sherlock gently takes his hand while it's on its way to pick up more noodles.

Again, John wrenches his attention away from the television to Sherlock, to their joined hands, to Sherlock again.

"Sherlock?" If John didn't know him better, John might have said he was nervous.

(And maybe, John thinks later, he doesn't. Because of all the things happening between them, he had never considered this.)

"This is," Sherlock starts, nervously biting his lower lip, "the correct moment for when one is expressing interest in another, correct?" And John very nearly yanks his hand out from his friend's tentative grip.

"Sherlock, what are you..." John cannot fathom this situation. If what is happening what he thinks is happening, there is no way that they can survive this night without some casualties. "What's going on?"

"Perhaps I have misjudged the timing," Sherlock bites out, looking pained. He starts to retract his hand. John very nearly lets him, but his sense of self-preservation has long since fled him and he does not let go. "No," John says, "what are you trying to say?"

Sherlock does not say so much as do. John's chopsticks clatter uselessly to the ground as he is being pressed into the side of the couch, being kissed fiercely—everything is wet and sliding and warm and a sinking feeling settles in the bottom of his stomach.

John scrabbles for Sherlock's shoulders and pushes them apart.

"I love you," Sherlock says the instant they are separated. "I don't know why, and I don't understand, but I love you so much, and I still don't understand, I hate not understanding, please don't go—"

John doesn't want this. He knows he doesn't want this. He wants a white picket fence and two point five children and a loving wife, just as he's always wanted since he got back from the war. He doesn't want a lapful of angles and bones and pale consulting detective, trying to hold himself together as John holds him away. At the same time, John cannot picture a life without his best friend.

Sherlock is beginning to look desperate; his eyes begin to shutter the longer John distances himself from him. Something in Sherlock's pale eyes resonates with John and he knows now that he cannot deny Sherlock this one thing—this one intimacy that he probably has never known and never known he wanted before.

He guides Sherlock back to his lips, and thinks of a faceless, beautiful woman that he will never have.

"Just saving her time, isn't that kinder?"

Sherlock had once said that to Molly during the case of the Great Game, and then, John had denied his choice in revealing Jim's apparent preferences. (Of course, 'Jim' turned out to be Moriarty, and John still doesn't know. Is not sure he wants to.)

John wonders if he should have broken it to Sherlock the same way, but he is not sure whether it would be kinder or for the greater good of it all.

Then he glimpses Sherlock's warm smile in the periphery of his vision and all his compunctions fly out the window. He reminds himself that he must allow Sherlock this one thing.

Sherlock, bless him, does not notice John's act.

"It couldn't kill you to help with the shopping once in a while," John calls from the fifteenth step of the flat, Tesco bags in his arms. A mop of dark hair peers over the ends of the sofa, tapping away at John's laptop.

John doesn't know why he bothers.

"Case," Sherlock offers from his place in the dark, but he sits up and sets the laptop aside. "Veterinarian, woman, middle-aged, found dead in the middle of a horse stable by a stable boy. No personnel at the time, remarkable lack of blood. Not the murder site." He comes into the kitchen and begins to absentmindedly sort all the items into the cabinets, rattling off other bits of information as John reorganizes the fridge. Another courtesy that Sherlock had allowed John since they became involved.

"—horse stable was the second leading contender. We'll need to make a trip out to investigate the scene," he finishes just as he settles the last jar of jam in the cupboard just a shelf too high for John (but that's okay, he's making an effort), and swings around to face John expectantly, features glowing in excitement.

John smiles and tugs him down for a kiss. He pretends it's not Sherlock, but it's harder to do so the longer he does it.

"Wait until I've put the chicken in the freezer and we'll go, okay?"

Silver eyes fasten him with a disarmingly soft look. Sherlock turns and swans back into the sitting room.

"When shall we expect the happy announcement?" Mycroft says the next time he 'accidentally happens upon John for a chat'. Not for a moment does John believe there isn't a veiled threat and knowledge of his situation hidden in that question.

"None of your business, Mycroft," John says, tiredly. His phone vibrates against his knee. John flips it around to read it.

Come home. - SH

"Do you truly understand the situation you are in?"

John remains determinedly silent.

I need you. - SH

"Are you certain of how you should proceed? Can you even keep up this facade, Doctor Watson?"

I don't want you near Mycroft. If you are, tell him to kindly stuff his gob with the Jammie Dodgers he's certainly hoarding. Come home. - SH.

"The only right way to navigate this is if what you feel is genuine."

John, please. - SH

Mycroft sighs, but John does not think for an instant that it is defeat. "Perhaps you are a better actor than I thought. I don't know how my attentive younger brother hasn't seen through your act yet. But I have come to care for you, Doctor, in some small way, and I believe that you would never intentionally harm my brother. Sometimes I feel that you know him best. Do treat him well."

John meets Mycroft's eyes. "What I feel for him is real. It may not be what he wants, but it's real enough."

I don't know what I'd do without you.

"Yes, that is what I am afraid of."

The day comes when John has to sit out of a case because of an emergency at the surgery. Being the only GP with previous experience as a surgeon, John is forced to perform an appendectomy in the middle of the waiting room. His hands are steady.

Ten minutes after the emergency appendectomy, John's phone rings. He glances at the screen lying on the sink counter. Lestrade.

"What's up, Greg?" John asks into the receiver as he dries his hands on a paper towel. "Sherlock find a new lead?"

The weathered DI sighs. "Not exactly. Well, yes, but he's not being forthcoming with it. He's being completely unmanageable, John. He's sniping with Donovan and Anderson, and the rest of the team is trying to keep them from ripping each other limb from limb... hold on—" John hears Lestrade barking out for someone to hold Donovan down. "Sorry, do you think you can get down here as soon as possible? I'll text you the location. This is getting out of hand."

John lets out a breath as he swipes off his doctor's coat and crams it in his locker. "Oh, god, sorry. Of course I can. Is it that bad? I had to perform an emergency surgery—couldn't accompany him today."

Lestrade huffs. "It's fine. It's just that sometimes I feel we can't get through without you to mediate." He pauses. "It wasn't like that before. I'm not sure if that's good or bad." He seemed hesitant, and John's spine seizes up. "Though, we've seen the looks he's given you on the scene, I think we can say you're a good influence on him. Generally. I think."

"Yes, alright," John says. "l'll be there."

'She insulted you' is the only thing Sherlock petulantly offers when John arrives. John settles a hand on the small of Sherlock's back and prods him forward. He can almost feel Sherlock preen at the contact.

John withdraws his hand without making it look too obvious. "Thank you, but you know better than to pick fights with Anderson-like creatures, Sherlock. Not a maiden in need of saving, you know." He offers a smile that Sherlock returns, something he's clearly unused to having on his face, but is learning to accommodate. He was always a quick study. John holds this close to his heart as justification for what he is doing. "Go and spew out your deductions to the Inspector. Then we'll go home and have a kip, yeah?"

Sherlock makes his conclusions to Lestrade with alacrity and whisks them away back to Baker Street.

John stirs awake to the dull light of the evening and warmth and dark curls gently tickling his nose. Warm, wiry arms tangle about his waist, and John thinks, this might not be so bad.

He immediately regrets it because of the realization that he's not had a warm body to hold for a long time. His thoughts might have been affected because he is simply touch-starved.

But not as touch-starved as Sherlock is, and as he remembers that, he tightens his arms around Sherlock's bony shoulders.

(John really must make more of an effort to get him to eat.)

The shift makes him sneeze into Sherlock's hair and then Sherlock's awake and glancing at him with sleepy, content eyes, and they laugh.

"I love you, I love you, I love you–"

"I love you too."

(Not quite.)

Inevitably, one of them gets hurt, and unfortunately for John, it's Sherlock.

In this line of work, either one of them (or both) invariably gets injured in some way or the next, so it's not completely unexpected.

What is unexpected is the horrible wrenching feeling John feels in his chest, akin to the feeling of having the bullet in his shoulder being pried out by clumsy fingers, like the fire of having an incendiary bomb thrown into his face, like the cold of the Thames after dark in the middle of winter. It's not the typical feeling John feels for fearing for a friend's life, like the times he sat aside his comrades in Afghanistan and hoped for the best. This is an infinitely worse feeling—all the pain is concentrated and directed exactly where it hurts the most.

He can't figure out whether his feelings toward his flatmate are just very strongly platonic or if they transcend that.

(There's a lot he doesn't want to know. But this is important.)

He just knows he absolutely cannot lose Sherlock.

Perhaps this is the way Sherlock felt about John when he took the risk of confessing to John months ago.

Because he's a doctor, John liberally abuses his privileges and unrepentantly bullies his way into Sherlock's room.

The nurse startles, but tells him that Sherlock has been asking for him repeatedly, and that shouldn't warm his heart but it does. She smiles at him sweetly and tells him that she finds their devotion 'lovely.' John has a half-protest formed in his mouth before he bites the inside of his cheek and reminds himself that isn't exactly true now, isn't it?

So he smiles and nods, excuses himself, and scoots closer to Sherlock's bedside. The white bandages plastered over the stab wound are barely visible over the thin hospital blanket.

John seats himself on the edge of the bed and takes up his hand. Sherlock's eyes flutter open just a sliver.

"John?"

It's weak, and John hates it.

"I can't lose you. I don't know what I'd do without you." It's an echo of Sherlock's own words weeks past, and the corners of Sherlock's lips twitch up.

"I love you," Sherlock says in a small, but confident voice. He gently squeezes John's hand as he slips back under the artificial haze of drugs.

"I love you too," John says, looking at their clasped hands, pale and tan and almost perfect in his eyes.

And it might not be true now, but John thinks he'll have a long time to puzzle it out.

A/N: Originally written 2 September 2012. Posted to AO3 26 October 2016. Non-S3, S4 compliant!

IT PHYSICALLY HURTS TO READ OLD FANFICTION. sherlock might be a little, maybe a lot OOC here. however, i am also a fuckin' sucker for "initially not in love but falls in love along the way" relationship get-together stories. it's probably why fake-relationship stories always tickle my fancy.