"I'm not actually gay."

It's the frustration talking. It's true, though, he's not gay. He's never been attracted to men. Gay is something you'd know, isn't it? You watch gay porn and go to gay bars and flirt with men and have women as friends who you will cuddle with but never have sex with. John has definitely cuddled with quite a few women - some easily as attractive as the one in front of him, he thinks defensively - but it generally does lead to sex. Which he enjoys quite well enough thank you very much, and blokes just don't do it for him. At all. Ever. Full stop, end of story.

So why, whenever anyone sees him with Sherlock, do they assume "couple"?

Irene Adler. Bloody dead Irene Adler, standing right in front of him large as life and twice as horrid, is looking at him with an expression that he really, really doesn't want to see. Some cross between pity and sorrow. And her words, when they come, change everything and nothing.

"Well, I am. Look at us both."

Oh.

Oh hell.

Because she's not wrong, is she?

Because it's not really about gender. Not with Sherlock. With Sherlock, you know he doesn't see you that way, not at all. He doesn't see anyone that way except possibly Irene Adler, and that's still a "maybe" - a fact which must be killing her. And John, who has indeed been jealous - trust someone so very attuned to what others want to spot that embarrassing little detail - feels, quite suddenly, a rather painful kinship for the woman before him, the one who's been trying to get Sherlock's attention in the normal route and has been utterly failing. Not a usual experience for her, he can tell.

They are indeed a pair. Because for both of them, living their lives as straightforwardly as they could in their own twisted little ways, it was about fire.

You're walking along the path in the woods. The soil is damp and the sun's gone down. It's cold and dark and lonely and a long, long way from home, and these woods are full of dangerous things. Monsters and men and other beasts, and you know it, and the only safe thing is to stay on the path. You don't always, of course; you're trained to fetch folks in who've wandered off a bit - but still, mostly, you're like everyone else. Just walking. Until you see it.

There, off to the side. In the dark. What was that? A glimmer in the night; something bright and red and flickering. Something quite far off the path, and you have to cross the woods to get to it; you have to leave the safety of the well-trodden route to find out what exactly is out there. So you do or you don't, and if you don't you probably have good reasons for it but if you do, what reason can you give? Wandering around a dark forest alone at night just for curiosity? It's not something most people would do, or even understand. But when you get there, oh.

Because it's not just a little campfire, oh no. It's a bonfire. It's a mad giant inferno, blazing up and lighting the forest for miles around, and the closer you get the more it strips you of your protection - coat, hat, gloves - until you're there in your skivvies and still sweating, and it's nearly too much to bear, being near the fire like that. Roaring and dangerous and terrible, not safe at all. It'll burn anything that touches it and you *know* that but you're still there, setting yourself up a little camp, feeding it and trying not to let it burn the whole woods down and…. and you think you've got it all to yourself. How could everyone have missed this, you think? You feel pity, and just a touch of contempt for them.

Then, out of the darkness, out of nowhere - just when you're starting to really get the hang of this thing - someone else comes along. Someone who lives in the dark woods has wandered out of her natural environment and is standing there too, and at first you see her as an invader, a thief - what are her intentions towards your fire, then? And then there's this, this utterly unwelcome and uninvited sympathy, and you get it. She's not like you, not from the path - she walks the wild woods unafraid all the time. Lives in them. But now she's here in the light by the fire, and she's become a creature who crossed her boundaries too. Fascinated with the thing burning in the heart of it all. Just like you. Two complete opposites, both stuck like bugs in honey.

Except that unlike you she's willing to say it. Not afraid, not at all.

She wants to know what it feels like to burn.

And oh, you do too, but that's not a sensible want at all, is it now. And even if you wanted it - even if you could say it out loud - the fire, the living breathing burning fire in the hear of the darkness - would it want you back? Would it burn you clean and set you aflame or just blister your skin and singe your hair, and send you running broken back into the night?

Would it accept you or would it reject you?

She's ready to try the moment she walks into the clearing. You, living there beside it for months - you've been too afraid. Dancing around the edges, trying to work up the courage, trying to be content to just be nearby in the reflected light.

You're as jealous of that as of anything else.

There's a noise. Her voice. A moan. The same moan he's heard a dozen times now, and he knows exactly where it comes from and oh - shit. Bugger damn and hell, that's Sherlock's phone which means he's followed John again he's here and he's just found out she's not dead but if she wasn't dead wouldn't he already have known? Or maybe not, could she fool even Sherlock? John is turning, about to bolt over - to explain? Excuse? Damn it, he has nothing to excuse, he didn't know! But he'll stammer something out anyways, probably, and he's moving when she holds up her hand and stops him.

She's got that power, really. Her mind is sharp enough that for nothing but the gesture, even in what's close to a full panic John holds, stops and waits. She just looks at him with that look she's got and a sort of calm comes back. Her meaningful look, the speaking one, is much easier to bear than Sherlock's. His flays the skin off your bones; hers is more like a teacher holding a ruler but not using it. Implied threat instead of full-on visual whipping. Still - her voice is not entirely steady, but when a bonfire has just followed you to a warehouse and discovered you lied to it, your voice is allowed to be a teensy bit off. "I don't think so, do you?" she says, and no, John doesn't think so either. Now that he's thinking instead of reacting. That's the difference between them then; she thinks, he reacts.

One of many differences, John knows. But still.

Still they're the same.

Because of Sherlock.