John closed his laptop and started rubbing his eyes. The backlight was starting to strain him, and after six hours of reviewing patient charts for his clinic presentation tomorrow, he was sick of the feel of his computer on his thighs. He gently replaced the computer on the desk, stretched his cramped vertebrae by leaning back and inhaling deeply, and then shook his head like a dog shedding water after getting out of the pool.

"You'd better be watching the effect that these EMRs have on you, John," said a dark voice from the back of the room.

John wearily blinked into the corner where the afternoon sunlight from the windows couldn't reach. Sherlock came more clearly into vision, curled on the couch, covered in a thousand pillows from all the bedrooms in the flat, probably a few from Mrs. Hudson's sofa besides.

"How'd you get all those in here?" John asked, focusing on the mountain of pillows. Then, with the hint of a smile, he walked over and picked up one that had fallen on the floor and put it right on top of Sherlock's head, which peeked up out of the stack.

"Hrmph," Sherlock intoned with the slightest annoyance, then added, "Did you hear what I said?"

"What was it you said?" John rubbed his eyes again, having already forgot. He really needed a little nap after having focused for so long and intently on this project, but he was a little too hungry to take a nap yet. No matter how snuggly-sweet Sherlock looked under the pillows.

"These EMRs. They're starting to take a toll on your figure."

Despite having looked at them for hours, it took John a moment to process that Sherlock was talking about the electronic medical records on his computer.

"And how's that?" John muttered, pretending at ignorance, already knowing what Sherlock was commenting on. John might not have been as brilliant or sharp-witted as his boyfriend, but John certainly was more self-aware. And thus the tightness of his trouser-band, the pinch of his top-most button-clasp, and the slight shrinking of his undershirts - none of this was unnoticed by John. He was accustomed to his weight fluctuating slightly with the season; like most city folk, he put on a bit during the winter because of the inclement weather, but it usually slipped off once the brighter days came around.

But here it was, high July, and his winter weight hadn't come off his frame - instead, it had multiplied.

John felt his face flush, as Sherlock, face hidden under the pillows, said flatly, "You're getting fat, John."

Truth be told, John had been expecting this conversation since May, and though he'd played out the different responses he might make to Sherlock's inevitable needling, his planning felt inadequate now.

"And that's a bit not good," John responded, trying not to sound as hurt as he felt.

He could imagine what Sherlock was thinking now - John had been privy long enough to Sherlock's insensitive comments towards Mycroft. In these past conversations, John had always felt uncomfortable, all the more so because he never said anything. He always sat by as an unwilling witness to these mean-spirited and cruel conversations, and never stood up to defend Mycroft. John supposed that he hadn't wanted to be seen as sympathetic to Mycroft's plight. He knew Sherlock would dismiss the gesture, and possibly lose his respect for John. And since John felt so inadequate in so many ways in their relationship, there wasn't much he was willing to do to jeopardize his standing, which meant that such a hot-button issue floated by, untouched by him.

"You might say that," said Sherlock sternly, poking his head up from under the pillows. His face was impassive, however, not condescending. He seemed to be studying John's face.

They made eye contact for a long time, not saying anything. John couldn't tell what Sherlock was thinking at all. Feeling uncomfortable, he pressed forward defensively. "Why on earth do you think the charts have anything to do with this?"

Sherlock shrugged, his face remaining taut and unchanged. "Under files and documents, check for a folder labelled '221.'"

John, suddenly curious and genuinely pleased for a diversion, picked up his computer and opened it, typed in his password, and went to look at the file in question.

A few scripts with alphabet soup names were included in the folder, as well as a few readable documents - an excel spreadsheet and a series of PDFs.

John clicked on the one simply labelled "jwg_2010" and was astonished to see a list of numbers and dates.

"Erm. Sherlock?" John asked, feeling a pit of curious apprehension in his gut. "What is this?"

Sherlock drowsily opened one eye and closed it again.

"What do you think it is, John?"

John scrolled through the sheet, which was neatly sorted by day.

"Well it seems perfectly obvious, though it's more than a bit creepy, mate." John swiveled to stare at Sherlock with as imposing a stare as he could muster.

Sherlock had developed the manners to look slightly mortified - but a shade less mortified than would have been polite.

"You've been tracking how much I weigh. Since we first met, it looks like. Why on earth would you do such a thing? We weren't even together then. You weren't even interested in me then."

Sherlock shrugged. "You were thin. And clinically depressed. And also, too thin. Below your recommended body weight for your height. So I had to do something. Even though at the time I didn't know I was in love with you - as I've said before, I was too startled to know that love was what afflicted me - I didn't want a person who liked me as much as you did to die like an African diamond miner, grasping for nourishment."

"You're… you're full of shit," said John with a huff. "Below recommended body weight my arse. You make me sound like…like I looked like you."

This was getting into dangerous territory, but frankly, John didn't give a damn. He spent too much time tiptoeing around Sherlock's vanity. Maybe today was the day he was going to stop condoning Sherlock's severe angularity.

As expected, Sherlock sat up like a startled cat, his eyes wide and absorbing, keeping his face impassive.

At seeing his lover in his most receptive - but also vulnerable - state of attention, John softened. "I think it's only fair that you acknowledge that I catapulted past being underweight before we even started thinking about dating. In truth, I've been fat for a long time, Sherlock. It just puzzles me why you're bringing it up now."

He turned back to his computer and kept scrolling down to the bottom of the chart, then opened the pdf document in the folder. It contained a chart demonstrating a clear path of increased weight from the year's beginning to the present day. Unlike the 2010 chart, this one measured far more precisely, in decimals as well as full pounds. He currently, according to the chart, weighed a hearty 221 pounds. "How'd you even do this anyhow? Do I even want to know?"

"A simple tracking device on the bathroom scale, which is already digital. Frankly, John, it was child's play. There are so many apps that track peoples' weight intentionally that it was simple to set one up covertly on your computer. I just didn't get around to installing a more precise one until last year. Not to mention there were days you didn't weigh yourself, which meant I had to guess. It was ridiculously simple to estimate."

John looked shocked and amazed at the chart, which, aside from some fluctuations, demonstrated a long-term trend heading up, up, up. Along the side, there was a note indicating when John's clinic had started using electronic medical records instead of hard paper copies. There were also some calculations demonstrating that John's weight gain had increased exponentially from the date of these charts' implementation.

In fact, there was even an 'anticipated' measurement that indicated that in about twenty years, if John continued gaining at his current rate, he'd weigh close to five hundred pounds. Clearly this was more of a programmed scare tactic than anything else, but it successfully rattled John, to think that as an older person he'd be in competition with Mycroft for fattest bloke on the block.

"For that matter, what did it matter if I was too thin? Why did you even bother tracking my weight?" he demanded, feeling his cheeks flush furiously. He fought the feeling of pleasure that came to him at the thought of Sherlock voyeuristically keeping track of every pound.

Despite himself, he put a hand on his belly to feel it. It was soft, and unambiguously hung over his waistband. "It wasn't as if you would do anything about it…"

But even as he doubted Sherlock's involvement aloud, John was taken aback with memories that seemed to indicate the contrary: Sherlock ordering enormous portions at Angelo's and pushing them across the table in John's direction, muttering "I just wanted a bite." Sherlock suddenly pressing bottles of venomous-smelling supposedly-amino-acid-rich concoctions and demanding, "drink it!" without warning or relent. Sherlock's springing off the couch with a ready - if sometimes obnoxious - excuse whenever John would contemplate aloud going to the gym. And so it went.

Indeed, John realized that Sherlock had meddled more than was warranted, and that probably most of his weight these days was a direct result of Sherlock's meddling.

Thus, John's anger turned from bewilderment to fury. "Never mind. I'm taking that back. How on earth can you justify this?" he demanded, looking down at his too-podgy body. "You can't feed me for years then tell me I shouldn't be fat."

"Now that," said Sherlock dryly, "is not what I said."

This statement did not compute for John, and he continued, "You have some nerve. This whole thing - Argh!" He threw his hands in the air. It unnerved him how thick and sausagey they looked. Everything about him seemed bigger than usual. His belly jiggled fiercely under his tight shirt as he gestured. "You just can't exist without controlling people, can you? Nothing is good enough, no one is good enough. If I can't be perfect, you try and make me perfect. Then you hold it against me when I go from one extreme to the other. It's not fair, Sherlock, you've got to realize that, somewhere in your idiot brain of yours. Heaven knows, I would have gotten fat perfectly fine on my own. And since you don't like me fat, you should have let me stay thin."

"Let me say that again," Sherlock said, and he sat up, his entire body tense with electric energy. "I did not say I don't like you like this."

"What," said John with a hoarse, scornful laugh, "Does that mean you like me like this? Tell me, you with the well-oiled machine of a body - how do you reconcile this with your own issues with food? When you yourself can't be persuaded to eat a single damn biscuit without me coddling you every bite?"

"Well," Sherlock admitted, his voice dropping to a confessionally-low range, "It's actually perfectly logical. My perspective has merely…changed a bit over the years."

"What the hell?" John groaned, and collapsed back into his chair with a sigh. He couldn't help but notice the way his belly wobbled when he thumped into the seat, the way his growing arse landed so well in the chair, the way his pants tightly gribbed his girth and pinched the underside of his growing belly. He rubbed his eyes exhaustedly. "God, Sherlock, you're so frustrating."

It took him a moment to collect his thoughts. Sherlock liked him bigger? That was bewildering. When your partner had such a vocal hatred of fat, the current situation was perfectly perplexing.

But there was something more underneath all this. Something in this picture didn't make sense. Sherlock was as rail-thin as he'd always been, John noticed as he looked at his partner. But Sherlock also looked worried.

It couldn't be about the weight-measuring thing, John supposed. While John sure as hell was irritated by Sherlock's record-keeping, John himself felt like it would be useful and productive to track his weight loss. (There was going to be some dieting after today, oh yes there was.) But John also knew his body fairly well, and knew that any weight loss was likely to be incremental and minor, and he'd be surprised if he lost more than fifteen pounds at this stage of his life.

"So what do you mean," John said carefully, "that your perspective has changed? In regards to me getting fat? Or something else?"

Sherlock didn't reply. Oh yes, it seemed that there was something else going on here other than John getting fat.

John, however, was not interested in sitting and waiting to tease out this information.

"There's something you're not saying. Something that you want to say. And because you can't get yourself to say it, you're going to make me draw it out of you and make me feel like an arse in the process." John sighed, pulling a hand through his hair. "I'm already sick of this argument. You already know what you want to tell me, so let's get to the point. No more browbeating. Tell me what you're thinking already."

As usual when John took this approach, Sherlock seemed to retreat into himself. They sat in quiet for several minutes, whereupon Sherlock finally said, "John. I like it when you persuade me slowly to do things I don't want to do. So telling me that you want to rush through telling you what's on my mind just to get to the end - well, I don't like it."

John felt his forehead furrow, and he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and putting his head on top of them. Oh god, he could feel the slightest bit of a double-chin growing there. Not to mention the warm softness of a belly squishing into his lap.

"So I'll tease it out of you, then."

But as relief seemed to flood Sherlock's face, a few things clicked into place in John's mind.

"Have a biscuit," he added, and pushed the half-eaten packet of biscuits he'd been mindlessly been nibbling all day.

Sherlock looked at John, looked at the biscuits, and back again at John. He proceeded to throw a pillow at John.

"Mmm," said John, suddenly inspired, and he took the pillow and shoved it up his shirt. Then he proceeded to stuff a biscuit in his face, moaning, "Oh, god. I'm so fat. Look at me, Sherlock."

Sherlock, indeed, was unable to tear his eyes away from John's middle.

John, since he was hungry after all, grabbed another biscuit, and another, and another. He made lip-smacking noises. He groaned and moaned, and rubbed his augmented belly, and he added another pillow that Sherlock threw at him. For his part, Sherlock's thoughts on this performance were met with dilated pupils and a definitive hard-on hiding under the rest of the pillows.

Sherlock was nearing the point of desperation, with gritting teeth and wide eyes hinting at his distress. Then John stepped out of the play space and asked, "So, how was that?"

"Quite… good," answered Sherlock, barely able to breathe.

"I just don't understand," said John, shaking his head and taking the pillow out from under his shirt. "Why on earth do you like this? And why on earth are you so averse to gaining even an ounce on your own body? Is it some sort of… power thing?"

"Erm," Sherlock said, and sighed. "I wouldn't say that."

"Then tell me." John sat and leaned forwards towards Sherlock. With a burst of bravado and confidence, he tore off his shirt, in order to let his tummy preside over the conversation in its fullest glory.

Sherlock swallowed, then said, "I… the truth is, John, for you, I… I guess I knew that when you're thin, you're sad. Depressed. And I know when you're happy, you eat a lot and drink a lot. It shows around your middle, you're much more likely to be a happy man than any other kind of man. But when you aren't happy, I feel like I'm not being an adequate partner to you. Being fat… I suppose that means that you're happy, if you're fat."

"So you yourself, Sherlock, are not happy, by that logic."

"Everyone has a different set of controls at their brain-wheels," Sherlock said, and John snorted. "I have other ways of showing that I'm happy."

"So, tell me," said John, deciding it was worth needling his partner about, "is the same for Mycroft? Is his weight a response to being happy? And, perhaps, is this why you are so cruel to him?"

This, however, seemed to be going too far, and Sherlock glared. John knew, however, that he seemed to have hit a sore spot for Sherlock, and John was curious to see where this conversation would continue.

Sherlock, after a few moments of gazing off in the distance, said plainly, "John, you're a medical man. You care more about what obesity means than I do. But there's one thing I know that makes me… uncomfortable: I know that if I ever got fat, chances are you wouldn't coddle me into eating anymore. And I've discovered I like that…that being coddled."

"God," said John, looking at his partner with disbelief. "You honestly think that?"

"Well," Sherlock admitted, "it's not precisely logical. But it has been my fear for some time now."

"I have no idea where you got that impression," said John with a laugh. "I, for one, would be delighted to keep forcing crisps and jam biscuits down your throat no matter how fat you were. Anything is better, Sherlock, than living with you the way you look now - too lean, too fatigued, too unhappy."

"I'm most assuredly not unhappy," insisted Sherlock, though John knew that the double negative was still a meaningful comment.

"Nevertheless," John said, getting up, "We need to do something about this fear of me overfeeding you goes. But didn't you ever think, Sherlock, that maybe if you'd talked with me about this, we wouldn't have been sitting obliquely looking at these issues for years?"

"I… suppose," Sherlock said, "though again, I'm… not exactly the most… effective at these things."

"No you are not," John replied, and sighed a deep sigh. "But that's all right." The tenseness left his body, and he mulled over what Sherlock had said.

"So, Sherlock," he said quietly. "How would you feel if I did some coddling of you in… in a bit more of a regular way?"

Sherlock met John's eye, and initially remained impassive. "Meaning what, eactly?"

"Well," John said with a smile. "I'm fat, but you're not. Perhaps for the near future, we can start to even the balance a bit?"

Sherlock looked nervous. "Perhaps. If you promise that if I get too fat, you will stop me."

John laughed. "We'll address that if the time comes. Sherlock, I love you. You've done really well this whole conversation. It's been hard, I'm sure, to talk about these sorts of… really intense things."

"There are other things in this room that are harder," said Sherlock with a glimmer of excitement. "Come here, John."

"You really get off on this, don't you?" John said, and rose.

Sherlock stood up and grabbed the nearest packet of biscuits. "Not until we've ordered and eaten dinner."

….

A little while later, John brought up the question again, as they spooned on the bed. "So why on earth did you decide to talk to me about this today of all days?"

"Didn't you notice?" Sherlock demanded with a slightly twinkly note in his voice. He squished himself more deeply into John's flesh with a slightly satisfied sound.

"Notice what?" John was fatigued, and not really curious even though he had initiated this conversation.

"Your weight today."

John shrugged, which made the mattress shudder. "What about it?"

"It's 221lbs."

John thought over this briefly. "And what of it?"

"Oh. Well." Sherlock sounded flustered. And his body became a little bit more tense. "Erm. Nothing, I guess. Just a whimsey."

John was strangely touched, and yet found himself teasing. "You're Sherlock Holmes. You don't have whimseys."

"Well. Perhaps sometimes, I do." Sherlock sounded petulant.

"No you don't." John's voice was softened by the clear delight he had in pressing Sherlock beyond his boundaries.

"...well, perhaps I do."

"What," John said with sarcastic amazement, "you were intrigued by the symbolism?"

"Shut up," said Sherlock.

"Well, it looks like I have my work cut out for me," John said with a laugh. "If I only truly become part of 221b when I weigh 221 pounds, then I suppose the same goes for you."

"Finally," said Sherlock with a gasp of irritation and relief. "Now we're getting somewhere."