John POV

The door didn't slam this time. Sherlock just closed it behind him, like he had just announced that he was tired and going to bed early (the thought of that was, though, unheard of, so really, it was an appalling comparison). What he had, in reality, said, was amazingly even more incomprehensible.

John shut the lid of his laptop, put it under his arm and went slowly up to his room, and closed the door in the same controlled manner as his (ex-) flatmate had just done.

Sitting on his bed, his laptop on the neatly made covers beside him, he tried to understand what had happened. The small hint of panic in the back of his head was kept in control by his habit of reacting to chaos and crisis in an almost automatic, emotionless way. Slowly, he did what the doctor and soldier in him told him was the only way to minimize the damage and control the situation; he looked at the facts, made an assessment of the situation and then formed a course of action.

Two hours and fifteen minutes later, he was in soldier mode as he knocked on Sherlock's door. He knew that the change was visible not only through his actions and his tone of voice, but also in his posture, as the emotionally immature man on the other side of the door had so readily told him that first day in the lab at Bart's. The thought of that day, of what it had been the beginning of, helped John to relax a fraction, letting his posture be a little less army-like and his facial expression going from soldier on a important but probably deadly mission to a doctor that was facing a patient who needed John to make the decisions for him but not accepting it, fighting it.

'Sherlock. I'm coming in now.'

There was no sound. John took a last breath before he opened the door.

Sherlock was sitting by the small desk he had quite recently bought with the purpose of storing more of his case related papers from being disturbed by either Mrs. Hudson or John, who both seemed to think that things that were in the sitting room was supposed to be kept off the floor, no matter how important they were. Even if the case had been closed for a couple of weeks, Sherlock might need his papers, but that was clearly not understandable to the mundane minds of those living with him. At least, that was what John had been assuming was his line of thought. Now, the man sat with his own laptop, looking up, annoyed.

'Have you decided? Should I text Mycroft?'

'Does Mycroft know about this?'

'If he didn't before, he would surely now' Sherlock said, unaffected. 'But yes, he knows.'

'And what is his opinion on this latest of your brilliant ideas?'

'He agrees with me completely. Normally, that in itself would cause me to second guess my decision, but in this case, no.'

'He agrees with you?'

'Yes. Therefore, I expect that he will quite happily agree to help you logistically.'

'Alright, whatever. Now, let me try something, would you?'

'What would that be?'

'Deducing.'

'John...'

'No. Hear me out and tell me if I am totally and fully wrong on this one, and if I am, I will let you alone and make preparations for moving out.'

There was no response from Sherlock, but he kept his eyes on John, not looking away.

'Is the thing you were, to be frankly, trying pretty hard not to tell me, in fact that you have fallen in love, and that this scares you shitless? And now, you want to solve the situation by throwing me out, hoping that those feelings will evacuate your mind if you evacuate me from your life?'

Sherlock held his gaze, but there was something deeply complicated going on with his facial expression, even though he hardly seemed to move a single muscle. If it had been under any other circumstances, John would have been fascinated by this facial acrobacy. As for now, he mostly held his breath, trying to appear calm on the outside, getting back to his detached determination.

'Very amusing, but hardly accurate. You miss to take into account the fact that I am incapable of such emotions as you suggest I harbour. And if I were to possess the ability to feel those… feelings, it still wouldn't be relevant, so I suggest that you go prepare you departure.'

John tried keep Sherlock's gaze, but his friend averted his eyes back to his laptop with clear dismissal.

'Why would it be irrelevant?'

'That's so obvious I should not grant that with an answer.'

'Oh, please, enlighten me.'

'Very well' Sherlock said, sounding rather exasperated. 'I'm not interested in that kind of relationship since I lack the necessary emotions, interests and skills that would prove useful under such circumstances. You are not interested either, since you are, as you are rather fond of exclaiming, 'not gay!'. Therefore, I would say that it's highly irrelevant.'

'What if you got one or more of those parameters' wrong in your assumption?'

'And what would that be, if you may? You are secretly gay and now wish to open the door to your metaphorical closet by engaging in sexual intercourse with a sociopath without any interest in such activities?'

'Here we go with the sociopath delusion again. I thought you hated repetition? Anyway, how about we test these assumptions? There can hardly be any more damage done to this friendship anyway, I would say.'

'Oh, there could definitely be more damage' Sherlock said dryly. 'I'm attempting damage-control, but you are clearly determined to throw that approach out of the window.'

'Yes, and you are attempting to through your best friend out of your life, how appropriate.'

Silence.

'How would you attempt to test these assumptions?'

Sherlock finally turned back to face John, although from across the room. His eyes were seemingly blank of emotion.

'By testing each and everyone one of those statements that you just made, I would suggest.'

'Why would you want to do that?' Sherlock said, actually sounding curious.

'Because unlike you, I am not ready to throw away the best friendship I have, although it is also the most frustrating and annoying friendship I ever had.'

'So you are what, willing to attempt at some sort of romantic relationship with me, even though you are not attracted to me and I am not interested in a relationship, in order to save this friendship?'

'That doesn't sound very clever, not when you put it that way. But, before you celebrate that little verbal victory of yours, my suggestion is that we examine if all those things you said just now really are true? If they are, it's a lousy idea. If the aren't, well, we'll just have to take it from there.'

'And how would we examine the rate of truth in these statements?'

The tone was doubtful, but not totally dismissive, which was a far better outcome than John had dared to hope for. Now, though, came the problematic part.

'Well, I don't know, that hypothesis and examination thing is far more in your area than mine, isn't it? You come up with some scientific approach. I don't know, make a spreadsheet or something!'

John was frustrated, but he was also well aware that he played on Sherlock's pride in those areas by announcing himself unable to come up with something. After all, showing off was one of Sherlock's biggest interests in life.

To his surprise, John caught a half second of something resembling a smile twitch in the corner of Sherlock's mouth. It was over so fast that he was not entirely certain that it had actually been there.

'A spreadsheet would probably not be the most effective approach in these matters. And besides, I asked you to move out because all your emotions and their effect on me is bothersome, and your suggestion is to try and add more of the problem?'

'I'm suggesting that those 'effects' on you might not be so bothersome if they were reciprocated.'

'If you reciprocate my feeling of annoyance?'

'Is it annoyance that you experience, really, or is it annoyance over the feelings you experience?'

'That doesn't even make grammatical sense!'

Sherlock suddenly stood up, his chair pushed back so forceful that it almost tipped over, and he took three quick strides towards John, playing up the height difference seemingly to make John back off, out of the door while Sherlock loomed over him, eyes dark with frustration.

'I am very sorry that I misused the English language.' John said calmly, piercing his eyes into Sherlock's. 'Now, could you just shut up and decide whether you dare to experiment with this or not?'

'You still doesn't have a suggestion as to how such an experiment would be accomplished, and I am, quite frankly tired of you trying to postpone the inevitable, which is you moving out by offering to experiment with your heterosexuality and my ability to tolerate interfering emotions. I suggest you go pack now, because when I get back here, I wish to be alone.'

His voice was cold, detached and lacked every trace of the warmth John thought he had seen a glimpse of in that 'almost half smile' just minutes ago. He pushed to pass John in the doorway, but John had also lost his patience and grabbed a hold of Sherlock's arm with a bruising grip and crowded him towards the doorpost. He hesitated for just a second, then he got on his toes, pushed the other hand to Sherlock's cheek and part caressed, part held his head still as he leaned up and closed almost all the distance between them.

He stopped when there was only a few centimeters separating their lips, caught Sherlock's eyes, that was a surprising mix of astonishment, indifference and hesitance, that should logically speaking not be able to express all these things at once, yet seemed to do so. Sherlock didn't try to move away, he was tense and reluctant in his body language, but he was not actively trying to push John aside anymore.

'Now, could we get on to some kind of testing my hypothesis?' he said with an odd voice that he couldn't really recognise himself.

There was no reply, and after a second, John let his lips brush against Sherlock's. Warm air from Sherlock's nose, unmoving lips under his, the smell of Sherlock, so strong at this proximity and the tiny, almost unnoticeable twitch that he could feel in the two points of contact between their bodies, their lips and John's grip on Sherlock's forearm. Nothing more, nothing less. He backed away just an inch with his mouth before he again brushed his lips against his friend's. His friend, who was still unmoving.

John backed off, but kept his grip on Sherlock's arm. He forced himself to seek the other man's eyes, and was utterly unprepared to find that they were closed. Just as he noticed, Sherlock's eyes flew open and there was so many contradictions in that gaze that John himself began to feel totally lost. Then, Sherlock closed the distance between them, his lips met John's with a rather uncoordinated force and he kept pressing their mouths together as he let his free arm fumble to find the back of John's head and using his hand for even more leverage into the thing he did, which was probably supposed to be some sort of kiss. He held them together like that for almost a minute, moving his own mouth to nib at John's lips, but they were pressed to tight together by his grip on the back of John's head, so the effect was probably not what Sherlock had intended, it mostly felt like he tried to push different parts of John's lips between his own, not being able to decide what to do next.

Then, as suddenly as his appreciation of John's kiss had begun, it stopped. He released John from his grip, but John was too shocked to remember to release his own grip on his friend, so they stayed close, breathing uneven and in tandem without looking at each other.

Finally, John cleared his throat, his voice even more unrecognisable than just a minute ago.

'So, I'll take that as an agreement on the matter of giving this a try?'

And, shit, this had happened. Really happened. He had kissed Sherlock, who had kissed (if that was the word for what that had been) him back. If he was sure before that this was a trainwreck of an idea, he was now just too stunned to even care about his own doubts about this whole thing. This thing, that was sure to qualify itself to be a whole new level of bat shit crazy in their already derailed way of life.

Shit.

Author's note:

Intellectualization as a psychological defence mechanism, defined (once again) by Wikipedia:

Intellectualization is a defense mechanism where reasoning is used to block confrontation with an unconscious conflict and its associated emotional stress where thinking is used to avoid feeling. It involves removing one's self, emotionally, from a stressful event. Intellectualization may accompany, but is different from rationalization, the pseudo-rational justification of irrational acts.

Intellectualization is one of Freud's original defense mechanisms. Freud believed that memories have both conscious and unconscious aspects, and that intellectualization allows for the conscious analysis of an event in a way that does not provoke anxiety.