A/N: Just a really little one today as I'm not feeling too well but felt the urge to write. Don't you just love it when it flows from your fingertips? I certainly do. Hope you enjoy it!

Chapter Twenty-Nine

"Just tell me John, stop being so frustratingly reticent. What do you want me to be?"

John was wishing he'd never even mentioned the idea of Sherlock being something other than himself. He hadn't meant it... or at least, he didn't think he'd meant it. There was something else, too, something wrong with the situation – Sherlock's tone was odd, an edge of desperation or a quality equatable to it making the question seem as if it wasn't as straightforward a demand as it first seemed, an extra meaning that John couldn't even begin to define. He felt his fists unclench and raise to his face, barely conscious of what he was doing as he rubbed them over his face.

Ouch. He'd forgotten about his injured palm in the heat of the moment.

The tall man standing two metres from him shifted, arms falling to his sides. "I understand that it's a difficult question." A familiar mocking thread wove its way through Sherlock's voice, though the indefinable edge was still there. "Should I rephrase it?"

"No," John said, suddenly exhausted, "no, don't bother. Look, I didn't mean it. I don't... expect you to be anything else than what you are. You're fine. You're fine as you are."

"Apparently not. Apparently you'd rather I was more of a human being than I am." As Sherlock shifted again John found that his friend's face was suddenly dimly illuminated in the light coming in from outside, revealing half an expression which was incredibly difficult to read. "Is it truly so difficult to communicate with me?"

"No," John repeated. "It's not. You're fine."

Sherlock's patience was clearly wearing thin. "Stop telling me I'm fine, John, I know very well what I am." The man took a deep breath, the half of his face that John could see momentarily becoming a mask of calmness. "Perhaps this isn't the time to be having this conversation. You're tired."

"What conversation? Am I missing something?" He felt very much as if he were. "I'm not tired, or not so tired that you can't talk to me. Something's obviously on your mind, I..." He didn't know how to finish that sentence. "Talk to me, Sherlock. You're all..."

"Yes? All what?"

John sighed. "Intense."

"Ah." The lips that John could see twitched up into an almost insignificantly small smile. "Of course I am. And so? This is yet another part of myself that I'm seemingly unable to change and therefore something that you think to be... fine."

"I... all right, yeah, it's fine. That's... good, whatever." John was becoming increasingly intent in his mission to smooth things over, to return things to normal. "You don't need to change it."

Languorous, one pace forward, half a metre closer than he was before; Sherlock advanced towards John with the all the grace of a feline. It was unnerving. John fought the urge to take a step back. "And yet you're currently holding all the tension of a stretched rubber band, John. Is that... fine? The fact that you're currently physically holding yourself in place in your desperation to move away... is that fine too?"

He was doing it on purpose. He had to be. The intensity of the atmosphere around them had shifted from uncomfortably awkward to something else entirely, not completely dissimilar to how it had been before Sherlock had fled from the room after... taking care of John's hand. Wait, fled? Was that the right word? Fled would infer that there had been something to run from, but there hadn't been. Not really. The images flooded back to John as he recalled the brushing of Sherlock's thumb on his wrist, the sensation of the warm cloth in its firm strokes over his chest and finally the feel of fingertips pressing briefly, unintentionally against his bare skin -

Nothing to run from, John told himself heatedly, undoing all of the good work he'd done whilst Sherlock was gone, thinking of the things he'd determinedly ignored in the hours of Sherlock's disappearance, nothing at all. Get a grip.

He didn't realise he hadn't responded until Sherlock took yet another step forward; his whole face was in lacklustre viewing now, revealing the half-smile and the odd glitter in his eyes that made John suddenly feel as if he were hunted and Sherlock the hunter, a mask of pure intent set against Sherlock's long, curved face. John decided that there was no time like the present to take the first step – so he did, a foot shuffling back on the hard floor beneath him and carrying him the smallest step back and away from the man who was suddenly disturbingly unfamiliar.

The intensity wasn't at all like before. Before it had been unintentional. This... this had intent.

Sherlock's voice was so low it practically reverberated across the space between them. "Don't."

John froze, one foot behind him and the other still firmly planted on the ground; he teetered slightly, managing to steady himself without making it too obvious that he had almost lost his balance. He forced his tone to adopt a casual lilt. "Don't what?"

Sherlock did not move his stare from John's face. "Don't move away."

There was something in it... there was nothing in it. John felt his palms begin to tingle, a clamminess beginning to make itself known as he stood and tried as hard as he could to maintain eye-contact – yes, it was very much the hunter and the hunted. He did not want to break eye-contact. That would leave him vulnerable.

To what? To Sherlock? Sherlock wouldn't hurt him. That wasn't his intention.

But there was intent. He'd already figured that out.

His steady heartbeat picked up slightly.

Sherlock took another gliding step forward. "Stay exactly where you are."

John resisted the impulse to do the exact opposite. "I..." This was becoming obscene, all this tension and no viable reason for it, it was ridiculous. "Sherlock, we just need to talk about what...whatever's bothering you. You're..." Why was he struggling to find words? It was as if he couldn't get enough oxygen, his rapidly accelerating heart berating him for not breathing enough. He took in a deep, unexpectedly staggered breath. "You're not... yourself."

A low laugh, a rumble in the back of the white throat that was steadily getting closer. "No, John, this is exactly who I am. This is what you want from me. You said it yourself."

"I don't understand," John stressed, putting his hands out in front of him as if to physically stop Sherlock's advance – then again, that might be his last hope of righting the situation, if it came to it. "I didn't say that. Are you drunk? Did you have brandy with Mycroft?"

"Why are you so intent on defending yourself?" The question was full of genuine curiosity. "Do you think I'm going to hurt you?"

John felt his fists start to clench again, the clammy texture of his palms uncomfortable. "No, I – you have been drinking, haven't you?" That would explain it, that would absolutely explain it. "Look, sit down, we can -"

"You said that you wanted who I was, what I am, however you want to phrase it." John searched what was visible of his friend's face for a sign of inebriation, anything that would explain his behaviour. There was nothing. Nothing. "And this is it. You said yourself that I have a habit of being intense, quite without my knowledge."

Which obviously wasn't the case now. The words left John's lips without his permission. "But you know what you're doing now."

Sherlock allowed a tiny nod. "Indeed. Does that change your mind about me? About our relationship?"

He couldn't stop himself. "Friendship."

-X-

Sherlock failed to cease the small exhale of air from between his teeth; it was his fault, he had allowed the situation to become something that it shouldn't be and he had let the word fly from his tongue without a single thought as to what he was saying. Of course John was still blissfully ignorant – or not so blissful, if the palpable strain currently rolling through John's tense body was anything to go by – and had simply assumed that Sherlock had used the wrong term, or the wrong term for what John deemed it to be, at least. But Sherlock was not ignorant. He was so aware of it at that moment that he was steadily losing control of his resolve to allow John to figure things out in his own time. It was the reason behind the intentional increasing level of intensity in the room and the reason that he was watching John's every movement in order to read as accurately as he could in the darkness how John was reacting to it.

He had to compromise in his response. He wouldn't force it, but he wouldn't overlook it either.

"Call it whatever you want to call it, it's not particularly important right now. Does this -" he extended a hand towards John and back to himself, " - change your desire to... know me?"

John looked away, turning his head to the side; his profile again, slightly visible in the dim light and his steady adjustment to the darkness. He could see the tension in John's jaw, the flicker of muscle beneath the skin. It shook his resolve further still.

"No," his best friend responded tightly. "It's fi-"

No. No, he would not say that damned word again. Sherlock took the remaining few strides to close the distance between them and reached out with an impatient hand, grasping the wrist of John's tightly clenched left hand and dragging it towards him, the bandage practically brushing against his cheek as he pulled it up beside his face. His entire body pulsed with unfamiliar heat as he came quite as close to John as he had ever been, so close that he could now accurately read the confusion and brief flash of panic on his friend's face, close enough that the scent of him which rose up and clouded around him was almost overwhelming. His mind quickly raced with errant and useless thoughts, his conversation with Mycroft earlier at the very forefront – he had told his brother that he had no sexual desire towards John yet there was something about the body-warmth emanating from the shorter man in front of him that made him wonder if he perhaps had spoken too soon, the effect on his inability to focus rendering him into a state of clarity and awareness that made him feel quite overpowered by his senses. He took a dragging breath inwards, cursing himself at doing so as it was almost as if he were tasting John... oh, he was so out of his depth now. His body was responding, humming – no, it wasn't sexual, it wasn't quite that; the part of himself that should be making itself known in its frustratingly obvious way hadn't yet kicked into gear, he didn't feel the urge to do anything other than breathe his best friend in, he didn't want to... touch him, not like that, though he was devastatingly aware of his fingertips against John's hot skin and knew that he liked it, knew that it was a good feeling and one that he wanted all to himself...

The idea of someone else ever being as close to John as he was now filled him with a fierce sense of possession that was very much akin to being lit on fire, from the very depths of his stomach streaking upwards all through his torso.

He breathed the name as if it were the only word left in his vocabulary.

"John."

He caught it the moment it appeared – the almost delicious flicker of resistance against John's torn expression. He felt the shudder of weakness that resonated through John's body, saw the separation of lips as a stuttered exhale of breath fell against Sherlock's throat. He liked that. He liked that a lot. He wanted more of it, wanted more moments of John not being able to pretend – because surely he was pretending. Surely he couldn't miss the intent behind Sherlock's intensity.

He had to know. He had to know if there was any possibility that John would eventually come to realise, if not his own possible feelings, then at least the reality of Sherlock's.