JOHN P.O.V.

"You hate tattoos." Sherlock sat back on his heels in front of me, sounding as shocked as I had ever heard him.

He glanced up and I nodded. His gaze returned to the ink, one big hand still curved around my hip where he had held on while peeling back the dressing.

"You say they're unsanitary. An unnecessary disfigurement."

It always amazed me how he could churn out verbatim quotes from one-off comments I had made, sometimes months previously. Considering his attitude towards extraneous information, I suppose it was flattering that he never seemed to delete anything to do with me... even though I found it annoying at times.

He looked up when I didn't reply, and I nodded again. His eyes were immediately drawn back to the tattoo, he seemed almost transfixed by it. He raised his left hand as if to touch it, but halted the movement before he made contact, meeting my gaze again.

"May I?"

"Sure." I shrugged. "It's your present."

He froze for a moment, then started tracing over the letters with his fingertip, the thumb of his right hand holding my boxer shorts out of the way so they didn't slip back up and cover his initials.

"You already have scars," he murmured, almost to himself. "Wounds earned in battle. Marks on your body which mean something; sacrifices made, risks taken..." He was leaning closer to me, any minute now he was going to whip out his magnifier.

"But this..." He must have decided to take me at my word regarding ownership because he suddenly rose to his knees, leaned forward and kissed the mark, then I felt the tip of his tongue running over it, no doubt able to feel the raised edges of his name, now permanently etched into my skin.

I pulled back. That felt a little bit too good and I wasn't ready to take that road with him just yet.

He lifted his head obediently, but didn't loosen his grip. "This, you did for me," he said, with a new smile; it was a blend of pride, ownership and lust, but it faded quickly.

"You did it because I don't 'do' Christmas," he said slowly. "But you do, don't you, John?" His brain was racing ahead as always, but it tended to circle when it came to emotional issues. He knew the ones he needed to – he could identify a hundred ways that love could drive someone to murder, but when it came to something like this he often floundered, and if it involved his own feelings he struggled even more.

"You wanted to have a proper Christmas, and I wouldn't let you buy me a gift; I ridiculed the whole idea." He was watching my face now, looking for clues, but I don't think he was getting very far; I could feel that my expression was blank. I was still pretty numb from the thoughts which had been running through my head, mostly since Mycroft walked into the drawing room and I realised that Sherlock had deliberately not told me there was another door, and going rapidly downhill from there, but this had been building up for months.

His gaze had switched back to my hip. "So you did this," he said, his voice still bearing traces of his shock. "Even though you hate tattoos." He sat back on his heels again and looked up at me. "What do you want to know?"

I raised my eyebrows. "What don't I know?"

He grimaced; impasse.

"Look, I think we need to talk," I said, although it was going to be very difficult to express my concerns in a way he could understand. "Let me just get dressed."

His hand tightened immediately, long fingers digging into my hip before he deliberately relaxed them. He appeared to be on the brink of suggesting that I just wear my jumper but wisely restrained himself, stroking his thumb over the tattoo one more time before rising to his feet and stepping back, although he kept watching until I pulled my jeans up.

Part of me wondered if I should instigate this discussion on Christmas Day, having just heard about his previous trauma - and it was trauma, whether he admitted it or not. I hadn't been joking when I'd claimed to sometimes understand his feelings better than he did. But then I thought of the many times I'd tried to raise these issues with him and the equal number of times I'd completely failed to do so. I couldn't miss this opportunity. I would just have to hope that it went well and wouldn't be another log on his 'I hate Christmas' fire.

I looked around, wondering where was best to do this and he reached out, linking just the tips of our fingers together.

"John?" There was a new note in his voice which made my head jerk round to face him. "Is that code?" he asked, his eyes searching my face. "I don't know about these things, but I've read that, 'We need to talk' is code; that it means something else." He was very tense. "Does it?"

I stared at him. "When are you going to stop reading those ridiculous websites?" I demanded, starting to feel a bit better in the face of his obvious anxiety, then wondering if that made me a bad person. "Lucky for you, I don't speak 'pubescent girl'. Lucky for you, when I say 'we need to talk', that's exactly what I mean." I thought about that for a moment. "Well, at least I need to talk, and I need you to hear me."

He still looked worried, but he raised his eyebrows slightly at that.

"Remember what you said to Lestrade that time about seeing and observing?" I asked, and he nodded. "That's what I mean. I know you listen to me, but you don't always hear what I'm saying."

He looked confused. "You said 'if', John. You said 'If we are going to go forward with this relationship'."

I thought back. "I suppose I did. But my emphasis was on the go forward, not the if. I meant, 'Are we going to improve our relationship or let it stay the same?' not 'Are we going to proceed at all?'."

He was watching me closely. "So you're not thinking about leaving me?" he checked, his fingers tightening on my hand.

I shook my head and opened my mouth to speak, but then my breath huffed out in a rush as he suddenly wrapped his arms around me and squeezed tightly, burying his face in my neck.

"You scared me," he muttered, and I could feel his heart beating faster than normal against my chest.

It was so rare for him to admit to any vulnerability, I was quite startled, and I automatically started stroking his back until his grip relaxed a little. When I got my breath back, I tried again. "We definitely need to talk."

He pulled away slightly to look at me, then glanced at the bed. "Can this be a horizontal conversation?"

I frowned at him, stepping back until he was at arm's length, and he shook his head. "I'm not suggesting anything like that. I just mean... if we have to talk, we may as well be comfortable?"

I considered his words, then discounted them and looked at his body language instead. He was still anxious, I really had scared him. Whatever issues I had, I knew full well that losing me was probably the only thing he was really afraid of. There was no way I would ever leave him – I thought that would have been obvious from the tattoo but, as I had often thought before, it seemed that I was the only case where he tended to doubt the evidence. Apparently, emotions and deductions don't always go well together.

Taking his hand, I led him to the bed, where we settled facing each other on top of the covers, his right hand still linked to my left, but not so close that we couldn't focus. I was beginning to feel the familiar butterflies in my stomach, the ones which started flapping every time I considered opening this discussion, but this time I wasn't going to let them rise up and choke me.

"What happened earlier, when Virginia made a point of knowing things about you which I didn't, do you understand why that upset me?" I started.

He looked torn. "Immediate and honest answer, Sherlock." I knew he would get the reference to the conversation we'd had when we first got back together after those hellish weeks apart, and hoped it would get him into the right frame of mind.

His fingers tightened a little, but he nodded his agreement. "Not really," he admitted. "I will tell you whatever you want to know, but I don't see what bearing things that happened in the past have on our relationship now. Surely such trivia is irrelevant to our lives together?"

I regarded him curiously. He didn't seem to find it remotely odd to refer to being abandoned by one of his parents as 'trivia'. "So you didn't tell me about it before, because you consider it irrelevant?" That didn't tie in with the way he had distracted me.

His expression clouded a little even as he nodded, and I waited while he considered my question. "No, I..." He sounded surprised by what he was saying. "I do think that my history is largely irrelevant, but no. I didn't want you to know about this." He paused. "I'm sorry, John."

I dropped it. Having finally worked myself up to having this talk with him, the last thing I wanted to do was get side-tracked into a discussion about his father. With a bit more thought, I could probably work quite a bit of it out anyway.

There must be some proper way to start one of these conversations, to bring up concerns which have built up over the course of a relationship, but I didn't know what it was... I held onto his hand and jumped in.

"I don't like it when you pick me up," I said.

He looked startled. "I know that. But I..." He shrugged one shoulder. "I like the growling." His expression was distinctly sheepish, but then his gaze sharpened. "But you don't always bite me... sometimes you seem to enjoy it?"

"OK, yes," I agreed. "Occasionally, when it's one of those urgent, desperate times when we just can't get at each other fast enough, then it can be quite... hot," I admitted. "But I'd rather not have it at all, than feel like a toy. You're very dominant. And I don't mind that really, I'm happy in my role, but sometimes you just steam-roller over me - like before, when you pushed me down on the table and didn't let me support myself. It makes me feel lesser, as if you're just overwhelming me and I don't have a say." I was approaching my main problem.

"If I say 'No', or 'Not now', that doesn't mean 'Persuade me'," I told him. "You can read me so well that you tend to ignore what I'm actually saying. It's insulting." I looked at him steadily, wanting him to see how serious I was. His eyes were focused on my face, occasionally flickering down my body, no doubt checking all the signs he used for his apparent mind reading.

"I know that sometimes the information is contradictory, like in the drawing room, obviously you could tell that my body wanted you, that I wanted you." I released his fingers and stroked my hand up and down his arm, knowing that this was going to upset him. "And I'm not denying for a moment that you are right. I did want you. I do want you. Always." I drew a deep breath. "But 'No' means 'No', Sherlock. If I say 'Stop', then you should stop - I need you to pay more attention to what I'm actually telling you, to hear me, otherwise," I shrugged, "it's like I don't have a voice."

His face had paled. "You mean 'choice', don't you? It's like you don't have a choice... Do I force you, John?"

I sighed. This was why I had put off saying anything for so long. However cool and rational Sherlock might be, he was always dramatic. "No, of course you don't force me. As if you could!" I scoffed, which drew a small smile. "I could definitely take you."

He put his hand on my waist, glancing at my face to check it was OK. "Any time, John." He deliberately used that husky voice which seems to slide down my spine. "You can take me any time."

I raised my eyebrows at him. "That's the other thing. Manipulation. Deliberately using that voice, distracting me, misleading me - you locked that door in the drawing room to give me the impression we were reasonably private, but you knew full well there was another door in the corner." I remembered the shock I had felt when Mycroft just walked in on us.

"You don't treat me as an equal. I know that in most ways, we aren't. God knows, you're a million miles above me in intellect, intelligence, all of that." I waved my arm to indicate his superiority. "But in this..." I put my hand over his heart. "In this, we should be even." I looked at him. "I know that you want me. And I do believe that you need me, even that no one else will do..." I trailed off and lowered my eyes. "But I think that I love you more."

"John!" His voice was shocked. "John, you... you're everything." His hand tightened, and I realised that it had slipped down from my waist and was resting over my hip again. "I'm sorry, I didn't realise..." He paused for a moment. "I know that I am possessive of you."

"You are, and that's OK," I told him honestly. "I don't mind that really, as long as you're not unnecessarily rude to people. If I minded, I never would have done this." I indicated my hip, which distracted him immediately. "But it's too one-way... you want to have all of me, but you'll only share part of yourself. You deliberately keep things from me, whether it's an important part of your history, or the fact that there's a door in the corner, but you resent it when I go to the surgery."

He was starting to look a bit sulky, now that his anxiety was fading. "Do you think I never want you when you're on a case?" I asked him. "Do you think I don't miss you in our bed when you're working, or stop myself from approaching you if you're focused on something, afraid that you'll be angry with me for distracting you?

"Earlier, you said you wouldn't change me. That was probably just a line, but it made me think..." He was shaking his head at the 'just a line' part, but I had my doubts. "You haven't needed to change me, because I've changed myself. I've adapted myself to what you wanted, fitted in with what you needed." His thumb was stroking right over the tattoo, I wondered if he was aware of what he was doing, or whether it was going to become the equivalent of a comfort blanket for him.

"I think I'm a little intimidated by you, to be honest," I admitted. "By your genius, by your importance. It's like you're the star attraction and I'm just the supporting act. You're more significant than I am, so I should be the one to adapt."

He opened his mouth to object but I put my finger over his lips. "I'm almost done," I said. "Can I just get this out? It's been festering for a while now and I'm feeling better already just for saying it." He nodded and subsided, but edged closer to me on the bed, abandoning my hip at last to start stroking his hand up and down my back.

"It didn't matter so much when we were just friends, because I had other areas of my life where I was in charge... and I still have the surgery, of course, that's still there." I thought for a moment. "But I think, in terms of self-worth, I'm starting to lose myself a little bit and I think that sometimes I resent you for that, even though it's my own fault for putting up with it and not saying anything."

He raised his eyebrows, silently asking if he could talk now and I nodded. "How long have you been feeling like this?" he asked. "And why haven't you said anything before?"

I shrugged, feeling embarrassed. "It's been building up gradually and I have tried but..." Why was it so hard?

"This is the first time I've been in a relationship that didn't have a woman in it," I realised. "They're so much better at this communication business; I've never had to instigate it before." I thought back over past conversations. "It's a lot harder than it looks. I'll have more respect the next time I'm..." I trailed off.

He was glaring at me. "The next time you're what, John?" he asked coldly.

I thought quickly, even though it was clearly a waste of time as he could see the wheels turning. "Next time I'm talking to Harry," I finished lamely.

He looked at me, then his gaze flicked downwards. "I want to see it again."

It was fifteen minutes before Mycroft tapped on the door, and we pretty much spent them kissing - mostly also with Sherlock's hand down my trousers, although not for the usual reason.

He hadn't really responded to what I'd said, but then again, I didn't expect him to. Sherlock wasn't one for talking about his emotions, he would barely admit to feeling any, other than that he loved me, which he announced quite often. Given our history, I might have suspected that he had some kind of schedule worked out, but he often looked quite surprised when he said it - as if he wasn't quite sure where the words had come from or what they thought they were doing emerging from a logical person such as himself.

I knew that he had heard me. I knew that my concerns would be percolating somewhere in his brain, and just to have voiced the worries which had been sitting on my chest for months was a huge relief. I felt happier and more relaxed than I had in a long time.

There had been no ultimatum in my words and there never would be. Virginia could keep her 'bathroom incidents' and her sniping; Sherlock and I were together and that was that.

When the knock sounded, Sherlock slowly drew his head back. "Ready to go home?"

I nodded, and he suddenly got a gleam in his eye, then slithered down the bed until he was level with my tattoo – well, his tattoo I suppose. I heard a soft click but didn't pay much attention since he was running his tongue over the mark again, then he kissed it, straightened my underwear and fastened my jeans for me.

"Much as I would love to show this off," he said. "No-one else gets to see you like this."

He went to answer the door as I finished throwing our things into the bag he had packed for us. As usual, his lubricant to underwear ratio was ridiculously high. I zipped up the bag and turned towards the brothers, who were both watching me.

Mycroft's expression seemed to relax infinitesimally when he saw my face – I had found that I could read him slightly better now, as I learned Sherlock. They certainly had more in common that my boyfriend would ever admit.

He turned to his brother. "I take it you liked your present?"

Sherlock glowered at him and I rolled my eyes – I should have known better than to think I could keep a secret from both Holmes brothers. The fact that I'd managed one was nothing short of a miracle.

The journey home started off normally enough, in another anonymous black limousine. Mycroft was going through some work in the seat across from us and we were sitting side by side, with Sherlock to my right. He hadn't let go of my hand since we left his room, but soon his fingers started moving, his thumb tracing circles against my palm. After a while, it became hard to focus on anything else.

I shifted in my seat and he turned his head to look at me. I looked back, my gaze roaming over his face, the wide-set eyes, the pale skin, the incredible cheek bones. I found my attention lingering on his mouth and his lips parted, his breathing sounding shallower. I met his eyes again. They looked hungry.

There was a level of tension rising in the car which took me by surprise, since the kisses we had shared in his room had been more affectionate than passionate, designed to reassure rather than inflame. His eyes were having a strangely hypnotic effect on me, they almost seemed to be getting bigger... I realised that I was leaning towards him, or was he leaning towards me? I couldn't tell.

A rustling of papers caught my attention and I glanced round just in time to catch Mycroft's smug expression as he lowered his head. A tug on my hand pulled my focus back to Sherlock, who then released me in order to slide his arm diagonally around my body, easing me forward a little so that he could squeeze his hand between my back and the seat to end up, unsurprisingly, resting on my hip again.

I leaned against him, feeling the heat of his body all the way up the side of my thigh and along my arm. Not enough. I reached my arm forward, out of the way, putting my hand on his leg, then edged that little bit closer.

His hand slipped into the top of my jeans pocket as usual, but his fingers didn't rest and I was shocked to suddenly feel them against my bare skin, pushing under the waistband of my underwear to resume their normal position. How had he done that? I looked down, but couldn't see any difference. My jeans were still fastened, they looked exactly as normal.

I turned my head to look at him and he quirked a brow. I remembered the click sound just before he had fastened my trousers and realised that it had been his penknife - he must have sliced through the lining of my pocket. His fingers were moving now, stroking over his initials and he leaned his head down to whisper against my ear. "Do you want me to stop?"

I couldn't remember him ever asking me that before. I shook my head, wondering how long it would be before it was no longer safe to carry things in the left hand pocket of any of my trousers.

Artwork for this chapter (Link on my profile page):

TRLT Christmas by Zenyr