"Here?"

"No."

"Here?"

"No."

"Sherlock!" I retort, having played the following scenario out over and over again for the last five minutes.

"John, you really aren't a very patient doctor. I'm having trouble locating the source of pain, obviously, and instead of supporting me, you just jab your finger into my chest until it actually does hurt there." Apparently, he'd "broken a rib."

I glare at him, sinking into grey eyes. He doesn't get it. Really, really doesn't, because the longer I press my skin to his, in any way, shape or form, the more electricity runs through me. Bliss is poor word to use to describe attraction—at least between us—as the sensation contains so much pleasure it hurts, and then it no longer fits into the category of "good feeling".

The best thing to compare it to is pressing your hand against a working radiator. At first, it's just warm—a little bit too much so, but warm. Then hot. And the second before your hand burns, the heat is so intense that it feels cold.

Touching Sherlock is that second.

I know that any emotion, any physical contact is wasted on sociopaths. That on some level they can sense some shallow feeling for you, but it's nothing more than specks of dirt in a city puddle. A grain of sand on a beach. And I know, someday, I'll get washed out to sea.

"Fine. Is this better?"

I pressed three fingers softly against his chest.

"Yes, thank you."

I move my hand slowly across the cotton, but raptly focused on the delicate skin encasing the hard muscle beneath it. Broken ribs, John, broken ribs.

"Anything here?"

Sherlock closed his eyes, reclining his head back in an expression of deep thought, only with his forehead relaxed. Pale lips pursed slightly, drinking in the flickering light of the kitchen.

"Hmm," was his response, before placing a long, calloused hand on top of mine. Soft. It was soft and dry, delicate lines and scars etched into the skin like scratches in sidewalks. It stayed there for a moment, before guiding my hand upwards towards the buttons on his shirt. Inwardly, I gulped, as I felt my rough, short fingers slip under his shirt and come into contact with ethereal skin that looked as though it had never bathed in warm light.

He's cold from the weather he just emerged from into the flat, but I feel him heat up under my fingers, his heart beat stirring in his chest like a reawakened beast.

His wide eyes meet mine, and I lean into his seated position on the table, slightly shorter than me from his angle. He tips his head up, blinking with eyelashes designed to block out specks from his fog like eyes. My heart accelerates within my chest, like a caged tiger clawing at my ribs. It hurts, it's good, it hurts, but oh, it's so good…

"You look almost innocent, from that angle."

He smirks with broad and wide lips I know I want to bury myself into, like a child thoughtlessly jumping into a pile of leaves.

"I'm not innocent from any angle."

I chuckle under my breath. "I know."

"And yet you spoil me with innocent emotions."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Love."

Shocked, I instantly withdraw my hand. I try to open my mouth, let some words form, but all that fills it is silence.

He glares slightly, blaming me for the sudden absence of contact. "Oh, don't pretend you thought I was ignorant. At first, you would do all you could to brush up against me—reaching for the milk, falling "asleep" on my arm in every other cab ride, grazing hands the second we were alone, borrowing my hairbrush—"

"Okay, I get it!"

"But then, you stopped. Abruptly. As if you realised what you were doing and what it made you feel. It scared you. I scared you. But please don't be scared. Please. Because I know that I'm not Sarah, or a woman, and hell, probably not even that close to human, either. But I love you."

"You shouldn't. You're a sociopath. You said so yourself. You can't feel the same way. You just can't."

"But I do."

"No." I step further back, anger and pain eating through me like a swarm of locusts. "You don't get it Sherlock. You know you don't. You had to look up the word love in the bloody dictionary. You don't love me. You can't. I'm just the guy you can fall back on when you're sick of standing against the rest of the world."

"Is that what you think of me?" He stands up slowly, as though unsure of where his feet are supposed to placed so he doesn't fall over. His voice is as quiet as a short exhale, but his eyes have darkened from the fog I know to the coal that created it.

I'm shaking, now, trembling because I forgot to breathe in between the hasty cadence of my heart.

"Yes."

"They warned you. From the first time we met, they warned you. You didn't listen. My brother warned you. You didn't listen. I warned you. You still didn't listen. You did what every great explorer has done long before you—you ignored the most obvious answer and searched everywhere you could look for one so abstract, so fantastic that it couldn't possibly be the truth. But it was. And you only found it because you were too stubborn to put up with a lie that was more or less half the truth. So I'll ask you, John, one more time. Do you believe any of what you just said?"

I paused. "No. Not really."

Sherlock continued. "There was only one tiny, cracked piece of my heart that was left to save, out of the thousands that once were. You could have broken it. There wasn't much left of it to break. But you took the time to glue it back together."

"I'm a doctor. It's what I do."

"But the means wasn't worth the ends. Any other doctor wouldn't bother."

"I would. I'm John."

"I know. Believe me, I know. So I give you, Doctor John Watson, the only piece of my heart I have left."

"You already have all of mine."

"Yes. And I'm selfish and possessive, so I promise you I'll never give it away or break it."

"Good. Can we kiss now?"

"I would love to, but I just realised I have an extremely acute pain in my third rib down on my right side and it has been troubling my breathing for the past three minutes."

"Son of a –"

OoOoO

And I return from hiatus with a getting together chapter! I might write a better one later if I'm motivated, but I'll keep this one up. Cookies go to those who can guess the name of the band that wrote the song "Tell Me Where It Hurts" which inspired the entire plot of the chapter. :D My amigos D and Felt With The Heart (who likely won't read this at all) aren't allowed to guess.