CHAPTER 36 - Pillow talk

After the revelation about the toxin, Molly's weariness starts to show.

"Why don't we tackle the rest of this tomorrow? By now Toby will be screaming for his supper so loud that the neighbours will complain," Molly says, as she finishes typing up notes of their discovery into the evidence database.

John collects up the printed chromatography sheets into a folder.

Sherlock is trying to ignore them both as he sits in front of a computer, reading the fine print of an article he has dragged up from some journal or other.

John peers over his shoulder to read the title:

Confirmation of Gelsemium Poisoning by Targeted Analysis of Toxic Gelsemium Alkaloids in Urine by Chi-Kong Lai and Yan-Wo Chan

Department of Pathology, Princess Margaret Hospital, Hong Kong

"Do you really need to read that right now, since we already did exactly that? Bring it home with you. You could read it tomorrow while we wait for your appointment at the hospital. You always complain that the sorts of magazines they provide in waiting rooms rot people's brains."

Sherlock looks up at John, frowning.

"Appointment...?" It's a rare moment when Sherlock looks completely confused, his mind clearly attempting to leapfrog from chemistry to whatever John is talking about, but drawing a blank. "John, what-"

John stares at him for a moment, then blinks and snorts. "You deleted it, didn't you? Your follow-up appointment at the National's post-ITU discharge clinic," he reminds Sherlock.

"There's finally a break in the case, and this is what's on your mind right now? Priorities!" Sherlock berates him, and continues reading. "Too busy; I'll reschedule. The case is finally approaching fascinating." Sherlock hums briefly, as if the nervous energy released by the breakthrough has got to escape somehow. "This paper is based on nine cases of accidental gelsemium poisonings. In China, it's called Gou-men; that means 'Lethal Kiss'."

Molly is almost out of the door, carrying the remaining sample vials John had created from the urine - the ones they hadn't needed, after all.

Sherlock's head snaps up to look at her. "If you're going back to the mortuary, can you bring me his stomach contents? Apparently, ingestion is the usual method of delivery for the poison, at least in accidental cases."

Molly's shoulders slump. "No, I am not going to bring you the stomach contents. I am going home."

"But I need to know how the poison got into him." Sherlock insists, looking perplexed at her decision.

John decides to intervene, to tell Sherlock that they all need to go home, get something to eat and get some sleep, but before he can get the words out, Molly turns to face them both.

"The simple answer is no, and it also happens to be the truth, because there were no stomach contents, apart from the smallest amount of bile and stomach acids. No evidence of any food at all in the stomach. Also, no vomit was found at either the mill where the body was dumped, or at the victim's house. The only thing that was noteworthy about the GI tract was that there were signs of long-term reflux in the oesophagus, even the start of a Barret lesion, but that isn't rare, or caused by any sort of poisoning. I checked all of this last week. Now, good night."

Sherlock's frown is still on his face long after the lab door has swung shut behind her.

"She has a point. We need to get home. I'm starving and you need to eat, too." John looks at his watch. "You're also four hours late for your evening meds. And we are going to talk about that appointment, because you are going, even if I have to frog-march you there myself."

Perhaps it's the lateness of the hour that keeps Sherlock from arguing. John realises that if he and Molly are tired, Sherlock must be utterly spent, even though his brain must still be going a million miles an hour.

In the cab on the way home, Sherlock still has enough energy to lecture John from the article that he's now reading on his phone.

"Of course, now that we know what to look for, it's easy to see what technique would have worked best. We were on the right track, but the Chinese used American equipment - a real beauty: an API 2000 LC–MS–MS triple-quadruple mass spect with a TurboIonSpray ionisation probe."

Even as tired as he is, John can hear the envy in Sherlock's tone. He has no idea what such a machine does and makes a mental note to tell Mycroft sternly not to get them one, no matter how much Sherlock pesters him about it. Lord knows there is enough of his chemistry equipment cluttering up the flat already.

As the taxi rounds the corner onto Baker Street, Sherlock's enthusiasm is undaunted. "No wonder they could do it all in a fifteen-minute transit time, what would have taken us hours. They did the chromatographic separation and ended up with five of our seven unknowns: gelsemine, obviously, but then koumine, gelsenicine, humantenidine, and humantenine."

John is so tired that his brain cannot tell the difference between the words, since they all sound somewhat alike. "If you say so, Sherlock."

He gets a puzzled look in reply. "I did just say so, John; aren't you listening?"

As soon as they get through the door, John brings Sherlock's medicine into the kitchen from the bathroom. By the time he gets the tablets and a glass of water to the living room, Sherlock is on the phone.

"Yes, I am perfectly aware that it is after midnight. You are the Emergency Scientific and Medical Services helpline for the Guy's and St Thomas's Medical Toxicology Information Services, are you not, and the last time I checked it is listed as operating 24/7?"

While Sherlock listens to someone on the other end of the phone, John holds out the tablets and gives him a stern glare.

Without a word, Sherlock takes the pills, shoves them into his mouth and then grabs the glass of water. He takes a sip and tosses his head back in an accentuated manner to get them down.

John collects the glass, and heads into the kitchen to try to get some food going. In the background, he can hear Sherlock cough slightly and then begin to pace.

In a moment, he launches off again, "Yes, I want the ChiMas service. Obviously. No, as I told your colleague, who is probably sitting right across from you, I am not a medical service provider or a patient; I have not ingested something suspicious, nor am I suffering any side effects from some Chinese herbal medicine. However, I do need to know right now how long it takes for a lethal dose of Gelsemium elegans to take effect? It's for a murder investigation and the Coroner needs the evidence. I can't find it in any database that I have access to, but I assumed you might have better sources."

There's a pause, at the end of which Sherlock stops in his tracks. "What do you mean, 'there's no data available'? Surely at least one idiot in the history of British toxicology has accidentally taken it, or more preferably, tried to off someone with it!"

Sherlock drums the mantelpiece with his fingertips as he listens to what the person at the other end of the line is saying. Judging by Sherlock's expression they're not providing the answers he wants. "Then surely you would know who to call in China to find out, if your databases failed to deliver?"

John gets the frying pan out, heads for the fridge to fetch eggs and butter, grabbing a bowl and whisk on the way. The kitchen clatter drowns out whatever conversation Sherlock might still be having. John decides that an omelette will have to do; he has neither the energy nor the ingredients to whip out anything resembling a salad to accompany it. The main goal here is to get something hot and nutritious into Sherlock before the man falls over.

Two minutes later, Sherlock comes into the kitchen, and slaps his phone and keys down on the counter, clearly annoyed.

"No luck?" John asks, cracking the last of six eggs into the bowl. Sherlock peers into it, disinterested.

"No. Apparently, these idiots offer a 24/7 service without having access to anything useful, and their actual toxicologists work on a nine-to-five basis on weekdays. They told me to call back tomorrow morning, when they can find out who I should talk to at Kew Gardens' Sustainable Uses Group, whatever that is. There's someone specialising on plant toxins there. Finding out how fast gelsemine works could crack the timeline wide open."

Sherlock is then off on a march route back to the sitting room, muttering about alkaloids and Chinese medicine under his breath. Every step seems to semaphore irritability.

"Anything other than the useless poison helpline bugging you?"

Sherlock stops to stare out of the window onto Baker Street, quiet now, devoid of traffic. "What we found out tonight is all well and good, but it doesn't yet give us the connection to Watford, to any of his coworkers, to Aiden Cole - or any of the other trainers. There's something, there must be, it's just…. Stuck." He plants his palm on the back of his head. "I can't make the pieces fit together. I am so stupid these days." He lowers his hand but John sees that it forms a fist of frustration.

"Maybe if you gave yourself a chance to eat and sleep, then it would come to you. Sometimes we process stuff in our sleep." John leaves out the fact that the memories his own brain still keeps processing at night don't seem to be doing him any good. It would be logical to assume Sherlock would want to avoid sleeping in order to forgo the nightmares.

Sherlock resumes pacing. "Never worked before; in fact, both slowed me down. Now, I seem pathetically unable to put even the simplest things together, regardless of whether I've done your tedious routines, which pretty much debunks your theory."

John smells the butter in the pan starting to brown, and he has to hurry back into the kitchen to turn the gas down.

He had long ago become accustomed to Sherlock's restless, seemingly aimless flitting about the flat when he's trying to think. Usually, John just gives him space, but now he's left wondering which part of the restless ghost act consists of drug cravings, and how much of it is due to Sherlock's new default state of barely contained anxiety. This is not Sherlock's old-fashioned, positive giddiness at a good case, but a whole new emotional entity that feels malignant and contagious.

John has to admit that the man seems almost manic, gesturing to himself as he wanders around, muttering as though he's having an argument.

Suddenly Sherlock starts firing off questions. "How long does it take for food to exit the stomach?"

John ponders whether that is rhetorical, or if Sherlock actually wants him to provide the answer. He shoves two rounds of bread into the toaster. "About five hours. Depends on age and gender a bit. Not everyone is the same."

"How long does transit through the small intestine take?"

John lifts the edge of the cooked egg and allows the runny bits to flow under it. He then starts to grate cheese into one side of the pan. "We're about a minute or two from eating, so maybe another topic?"

"How can that possibly make you squeamish? You're a doctor; just answer the question. It's for the case," he explains in a tone usually reserved for the word 'obvious'.

In Sherlock's books, the fact that there's a case on justifies pretty much anything. Even getting arrested. Or ignoring everything one should do to keep happy, healthy and sane.

John is finding it hard to focus on the Work right now - he's preoccupied with trying to rack his brain how to manoeuvre Sherlock into actually attending his appointment tomorrow. Sherlock could well get by without going there, and even John is sceptical whether it will achieve much - even if they offered further rehabilitation services, he'd most likely dismiss those suggestions. Still, this is about principle. Clearly, when there's a case on, which used to be most of the time, someone needs to make sure Sherlock doesn't run himself to the ground. In a perfect world, he would have learned those skills himself, but John isn't holding on to a lot of hope of that ever happening. He clearly needs to be the one to remind the man where the rails are to keep from going off them, and going to that damned appointment is a part of that process. Perhaps Sherlock will listen more to other doctors telling him how important good nutrition and rest are to his recovery. John also hopes it might offer some perspective to how well Sherlock has done in many respects.

He remembers the Harwich physician's words which fit Mycroft's statements: Sherlock can easily put on a show of dealing with things, when in reality he really isn't. The thought of returning to the National is a bit worrisome – how will Sherlock react? The fact that he seems completely preoccupied with the case could be a sign that he isn't bothered enough by the thought to pay it much mind. Or, it could be a distraction he's desperately clinging onto.

His train of thought is interrupted by Sherlock poking him in the arm with a fork. He doesn't need one right now, but he has a tendency to pick up things and use them as a sort of a conductor's baton to his one man show. The bow is his usual choice. "Stop ignoring me. Small intestine! How long?"

John sighs and scrapes the edge of the pan to keep the mixture from sticking to it. "It depends. Given a standard diet and a healthy gut, it can take two and a half hours to empty half of your small intestine, or it can take upward of ten hours for the whole lot to move on. People who eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains tend to have shorter transit times than people who eat mostly sugars and starches."

Behind him, he can hear the toaster popping up. "Butter your toast while it's warm. My hands are occupied." John flips one-half of the omelette over the cheese and slides the half-moon shape into the centre of the pan.

To his relief, Sherlock obeys. John can hear the knife being scraped across the crunchy surface of toasted bread before the next, inevitable question is fired off.

"Watford was a health fanatic; you heard his colleagues say that at the bank," Sherlock muses, "How long before the food exits the large intestine?" This question is mumbled around a mouthful of toast.

"That also depends – on the type of food and the state of health. But at least twenty-four hours before the bulk passes on. Traces will hang about longer."

John is relieved to find two clean plates in the cupboard. He uses the spatula to cut the omelette in uneven halves. Sliding the bigger one onto one plate, he turns and puts it down in front of what has become known as Sherlock's chair. John has deduced that he favours that particular one, because it faces the oven, and whenever he does an experiment that requires putting things in it, he likes to watch what happens in real time.

As he sits down to his own plate, he mutters, "Can we choose another topic of conversation, please? You're putting me off my food."

This isn't even remotely true – John has had many a more graphic conversation with medical school mates over meals, but he likes to think he should perhaps use these opportunities to stealthily educate Sherlock on how to value the experience of eating as something more than just the intake of fuel, and how not to ruin dinner parties and alienate people. Someday, he might even get Sherlock to realise that this is 'John time' – the chance to simply be together and enjoy each other's company. It's certainly not his job to school or mother a Cambridge-educated genius who has walked this Earth for over thirty years, so maybe it could just be described as an experiment of John's - to see if any of it ever rubs off on Sherlock.

He gets ignored. "We need to dissect the entire gastrointestinal tract. According to what you just said and what the post mortem could tell about time of death, the gelsemium would have been still been going through his small intestine when he died, assuming he ingested it in the presence of the killer. I need to know how long it takes to for the poisoning symptoms to take full effect when someone ingests a bit of the Gelsemium elegans plant, how much toxin the plant contains per gram, and at what levels of toxicity it's going to kill him. The GI tract could well confirm ingestion as the method of delivery, since digestion stops at death. I'll phone Molly to see if she kept the bowels…" Sherlock starts to get up, hand already reaching for his phone on the counter behind him.

"SIT DOWN."

Startled, Sherlock freezes halfway out of his chair.

"You will eat. NOW. And let poor Molly get some sleep."

Sherlock folds himself back into the chair and surveys the omelette as though it were something hazardous. He picks up a fork, pokes at it, then takes an experimental bite.

John breathes a sigh of relief when Sherlock continues eating, and silence reigns for the next seven minutes as the two of them demolish the food. Sherlock eats almost half of his portion, which John considers a great triumph.

After quietly attending to bathroom routines, Sherlock retreats to bed without any further monologues on the case. Such behaviour might have once lulled John into thinking that all it takes to calm Sherlock down is to be firm with him, but he has recently learned to take everything that Sherlock does with a pinch of salt, especially the things which, on a surface level, appear to be wholesome.

While Sherlock had been brushing his teeth, John had quickly made himself a cup of instant coffee. It will wreck his sleep tonight, but that is precisely the point. He means to be ready if Sherlock leaves the bed, as John suspects he may well do, as worked up by the case as he now is. What worries John the most is not Sherlock spending the half the night thinking about the case, but what would happen if frustration with the case tips over into looking for shortcuts. It wouldn't be beyond reason to think Sherlock might actually try to slip out into the night to buy himself a new dose of whatever he is convinced his brain requires to function at maximal capacity. He has relapsed once already, and John is certainly not going to let it happen again. The risk must be exceptionally high – relatively little time has passed from his last fix.

John knows that the brain cells of an addict can be permanently altered by the substances used. Maybe that's what lies behind Sherlock's belief that he needs cocaine to feel normal. The idea still shocks John. It's not just the biochemical truth in the notion that he finds hard to stomach but the conviction with which Sherlock clings to that excuse – that he needs it to function the way he used to. In that notion, there is a disturbing undercurrent: the assumption that he is, somehow, flawed and damaged to start with, something in need of fixing.

That notion is clearly not something that the GBS has introduced. If Mycroft is right, Sherlock has believed for years that he needs chemical stimulation to realise his potential. Had someone put that idea in his head, or had it been the result of a chemistry student's curiosity to find out what the effects of narcotics felt like? Still, how it had started is irrelevant, and John doubts Sherlock would be very forthcoming if he tried to discuss it. If anything, Sherlock seems motivated to hide from him everything relating to his drug use.

John had finished every drop of that coffee, because he wants to stop Sherlock from leaving their lovely, warm bed and escaping somewhere to wallow alone. That must be what he's still doing, and it's got to stop. At the least, John is going to try and convince him to stay in the bedroom. If leaving Sherlock alone with his worries results in acts of blatant self-destruction, then John can no longer respect his wish for solitude.

John burrows under his duvet, giving Sherlock space after patting him on a sheet-covered hip. It isn't the only fabric separating them - since they had begun sharing a bed, Sherlock has taken to wearing significantly more clothes at night than he ever had before he'd become ill. At Dartmoor, when forced to make do with a king-sized double, he'd respected John's boundaries by leaving his pants on, but at home, when they each slept in their own bedrooms, he often wore just a sheet to breakfast, or even less, if he assumed John wasn't up yet. Nowadays he carefully armours himself in silk pyjamas that cling to his torso in a manner that somehow seems to give him an air of regal detachment that John doesn't feel comfortable breaching. The effect might be calculated, coming from a man who owns a closetful of disguises.

John tries his damnedest not to let it upset him. Sherlock still does elect to share this bed, even if he acts strangely in it.

Eyes closed, John lies still in the darkness, listening to Sherlock's quiet, even breaths and making note of every movement. Sherlock isn't tossing and turning like someone trying to find just the right position to fall asleep in. No, he's waiting, making the atmosphere in the room feel like the air is holding its breath in anticipation of something.

After what must be at least half an hour, Sherlock whispers his name in a tentative manner. John doesn't reply.

A few minutes more pass in silence. Then the bedding shifts and Sherlock starts getting out.

John's arm flies out to where he's sure the electric cord and the attached light switch to his bedside cabinet lamp are. His muscle memory does not fail: the room is soon flooded with yellowish light.

Sherlock, now sitting, freezes on the spot.

John turns to his side under the duvet to face him, tucking his hand under his pillow. "Going somewhere?"

Sherlock squints in the light that isn't all that bright, but after the darkness both their eyes need an adjustment period. "Can't you turn that off?" he asks, sounding displeased.

"You'll stay if I do?" John asks bluntly.

Sherlock grunts in frustration, and drops back onto his back on the bed.

John kills the light.

"Nightmare?" He hadn't seen any evidence of it before Sherlock got out of bed, but he felt he needed to ask, just in case.

"No."

"Is it the waking up in here that bothers you?" It's a shot in the dark, based on what Sherlock had said about the ceiling, but John needs to start somewhere. Sherlock himself has said that a good way to get people to talk is to claim something they'd be tempted to debunk.

Night-time is a strange thing. Somehow, it acts like a shroud of safety, making truths revealed within it feel less threatening. There's a reassuring intimacy to it that allows a kind of a plausible deniability the next morning as to what had happened.

Even talking feels so much more intimate, when done in bed at one in the morning.

"No," Sherlock's voices floats into John's ears from somewhere in the darkness. It sounds as though they might be face to face, but he can't be sure. "That's been... A bit better, recently."

"I'm glad," John says, hoping his tone carries the smile he has on. He'll take any improvement nowadays, just as they had rejoiced at even the smallest things at the hospital when Sherlock had finally begun to get better. How could Sherlock not see the staggering difference between then and now – why won't he see how well he's done?

"Must we go to that thing tomorrow?" Sherlock asks all of a sudden, and John can practically hear the frown.

'That thing', as in the appointment at the National's Post-Intensive Care Clinic, with the purpose of assessing late outcome after discharge from hospital. Sherlock hasn't raised the subject before, apart from once, at Harwich, when he'd said that he didn't really see the point of such an assessment. John had pointed out that the hospital would probably see his performance level as very impressive, and that the information gathered at such appointments might help the ITU develop their services. This had earned him a full-on sulk from Sherlock.

"Is that what's been keeping you awake lately?" John asks.

"Of course not, don't be ridiculous."

"Look, it's not like a court appearance, you don't absolutely have to go, but I think it's a good idea. They want to know how you're doing, and you get to air your grievances."

"Grievances? And what might those be? What could I possibly say that they could somehow change, or assist with? It's not their fault that I got it, and they couldn't fix it."

'It'. Another euphemism. John suddenly realises Sherlock never says the words of his diagnosis out loud. "You never call it by name," John points out. "The Guillain-Barré," he adds, slowing down his speech lightly to emphasise the name.

"It's hardly a magic word, John. Saying it, or not saying it, doesn't change a thing."

"Trying to avoid saying it means that you're giving a word much more power than it deserves."

Sherlock snorts. "You sound like some ridiculous self-help book."

"Maybe the people who write those books know something."

"They don't know me."

John grits his teeth. "You're special, and I don't mean that in a bad way. You're probably using 99% of your brain cells, when the rest of us have to make do with much less. That doesn't mean that everything about you defies everything that we know about how the human body works - including the brain."

There's a pregnant silence, and John wonders if Sherlock is still appalled at the suggestion that he is, in fact, not entirely exceptional. Then, he shifts slightly closer, as though John had piqued his interest.

If nothing more, at least Sherlock probably thinks he can create a nice little argument from this that will give him something to do.

John decides to rise to the occasion. "At the hospital, we used what we know about the physiology of an average human to keep you alive, and it worked. Is it really all conjecture, then, to claim that some other things we know about what could be good for you at this point, might be true? Or that things we know might benefit any functioning human being, ill or otherwise, could work for you?"

"I'm not anyone… There are differences between me and the norm."

John sighs, "Granted, modern medicine operates on averages, because it isn't yet capable of catering to individual differences in drug metabolism, or other physiological functions."

"I've been telling you for weeks that my reactions to drugs are different." There is something in his tone of voice that makes John think he is smirking, even though in the dark, he can't see it.

John stifles a snort. "There's obviously a lot of room for improvement over the current cookie-cutter approach, but that's not an excuse."

Sherlock takes up the challenge. "Isn't it? Take an opiate like codeine. The amount of codeine O-demethylated to morphine by a single individual varies between zero to fifteen percent of the drug ingested, yet the same doses are prescribed for everyone. Who knows, maybe I need a different tramadol dose because I'm not actually metabolising even a tenth of it."

Typical of Sherlock to try and trip him with science.

"Twenty years from now, we'll probably be laughing at how doctors could ever have been prescribing drugs without testing the patient's genetic makeup, but right now I know that genetic differences are not being taken into account," Sherlock's tone is heavy with disapproval.

"And you think those differences we'll discover will be big enough that we'll find humans who don't need any sleep or food to function?"

"Unlikely." It's said a bit grudgingly, "I can hope, can't I?"

"No, impossible. I just don't get it. Some things that they recommended you do, you almost overdid, and some you completely dismissed as pointless, and there doesn't seem to be any logic in your choices. Whatever you might believe about your genetic makeup, you need to sleep, and you need to eat. Otherwise, the exercise isn't going to work. You aren't going to build any muscle if there are no materials from which to build it, or rest during which to construct it. You're not going to be able to do your job, or get back to your old shape, if you don't give your body what it needs."

"Why does my body deserve anything? It's betrayed me," Sherlock proclaims.

"Jesus," John says before he has even realised doing so. "Please tell me you're joking. You can't punish yourself for what happened, that's crazy!" he blurts out, still reeling from what he has just heard. He feels distressed – this had never occurred to him, at least not in this level of pathologic thinking. A part of him wants desperately to believe that this is just Sherlock being his typical, grandiose, melodramatic self, but he can't shake the feeling that it would be only half the truth. John had simply thought that Sherlock had reverted back to his old ways, where the needs of the Transport, as he detachedly calls his body, were something he kept forgetting about, because there were much more interesting things going on. It's like a whippet chasing a rabbit, until it collapses from exhaustion.

"Crazy?" Sherlock asks in a venomous tone, "I'm glad we established that." He grabs the edge of his sheet, raises it and begins twisting his torso, clearly with the intention of making a dramatic turn on the bed to face away from John.

Either John's eyes have re-adjusted to the dark, or clouds have parted to let more of the moonlight in through the window, because John can now see enough to make out where on the bed they both are. He quickly lowers his arm on top of both Sherlock and the sheet. Sherlock could easily still finish turning away, but he doesn't. Instead, he settles on his back, not facing John, but rather staring at the ceiling with what in the dim light looks like an angry frown.

"If I'm not insane, then… What am I?" Sherlock asks.

There should be a defiant challenge in these words, the verbal equivalent of a slap in the face with the glove of armour. There isn't. Instead, it's a genuine question, presented in wide-eyed confusion, one that sounds as though Sherlock might be slightly afraid of the answer.

When John doesn't immediately offer an answer, Sherlock turns his head and their eyes meet. "Tell me."

There is an urgency in his plea that confounds John. He is amazed at the sudden honesty – Sherlock genuinely doesn't seem to have an answer of his own to offer; instead, he lies there quietly, waiting for John's verdict, looking as though braced for impact.

The last time John had seen this precise expression had been in the winter garden. Carefully hidden between moments of determination, there had been this - a complicated mixture of fear and uncertainty that makes John want to pull him into his arms, to reassure that he doesn't need to feel like that, ever again.

"What are you thinking?" Sherlock demands, a more steely, distant expression setting in.

John realises he should have answered more quickly. Sherlock has probably already cooked up all sorts of conspiracy theories in his head. "You. At the hospital-" John starts, but he trails off when a sudden, unexpected flash of rage flickers on Sherlock's expression.

"Is that all you see, now, when you look at me?" Sherlock asks with what must've been an attempt an venom, but his voice breaks the slightest bit at the end.

"Of course it isn't-"

"It's a wonder you never seemed to get fed up of watching such a thing - can't have been pleasant."

"I like looking at you," John says, "always have," he tries, but Sherlock sits up and flings away his sheet, obviously planning on leaving the bed.

John scrambles to a sitting position under his own duvet and manages to snatch Sherlock's wrist right before he's about to start sliding his legs towards the edge of the mattress. "Wait. Stay. Please. I'll stay awake with you if you want to. We don't even have to talk."

"Let me go, John. Please," Sherlock adds, and that please breaks John's heart.

He can't let Sherlock retreat to wherever he goes to get away from the bedroom, to get away from him. Not anymore. It shouldn't be like this. This was supposed to be the easy part, once they'd struggled past the difficult bit of saying out loud what they both wanted. This was supposed to be the beautiful afterburn of a destiny realised, not this bloody purgatory they're stuck in.

John lets go of Sherlock's hand, scrambles to turn on the light again, and practically tears his own T-shirt off himself. He pushes his left shoulder forward and frames his bullet wound scar with his thumb and forefinger. "Is this all you see, when you look at me?"

Sherlock's momentum off the bed stops, and he leans slightly closer. John knows he's always been curious about the scar, in that slightly creepy scientist way of his. He'd asked to see it once, a few months after they'd met, and John had declined. He knew, of course, that Sherlock was going to see it eventually. He had hoped it would be in a situation very different to this, when it wouldn't be the main talking point. But, if he's to prove a point to Sherlock right now, he needs to meet the man half way. He needs to prove that there are things they shouldn't be hiding from each other, even if they are hard to talk about.

Sherlock reaches out his palm and places it on the scar, then gathers his fingers together to match its rim. The skin has remained over-sensitised after the scar had healed, but this still doesn't feel unpleasant at all to John. Sherlock's forefinger tickles a little as he runs it across the crater-like indent in the middle, but John forces himself to be still. Sherlock is being very gentle, very appreciating in a way that lessens John's sense of unease over being scrutinized in such detail.

"I didn't know you when that happened," Sherlock says slightly dismissively when he finally removes his hand. "It doesn't affect what I think about you, because you've always had it. I haven't watched you change because of it."

While it is true, it's not the point. "I thought exactly like you back then," John says, "That this damage was all I was, all I'd ever be – that what happened took away the life I'd built. I thought that what I couldn't do, defined me. Then this strange guy I met at a lab who wanted to borrow my phone and share a flat took one look at me and saw something completely different."

"Saw you."

John smiles. "Exactly. I did know you before the Guillain-Barré, but that just means I know who you really are, and I know that a setback like this isn't going to knock you down for good, if you don't let it."

"Is that what you call this? A setback? Yet you insist that I'm the one resorting to euphemisms and avoidance."

"What would you call this, then?"

"Hell," Sherlock says bluntly, and despite the extreme nature of the claim, his expression betrays worryingly little emotion, as though this notion is something he's already made his peace with.

"Fuck no," John snaps back. "This isn't it. You can't think-"

"STOP TELLING ME WHAT I'M ALLOWED TO THINK!" Sherlock yells, looking as though he might be getting out of bed, but instead, he plants his palms on the duvet and leans forward to fix John with his eyes, blazing with anger.

John had flinched at the sudden outburst – Sherlock rarely manages to intimidate him, even when he really attempts to do so, but the raw fury emanating from him, mixed with something frighteningly broken, is making John feel like they're both at the edge of a cliff.

"You misguidedly think you have some sort of a right to define whose bad days and sulks and depression are or are not equal to what you had after you were discharged," Sherlock seethes. "You've only flirted with hell, John. I've been in it, since-" he theatrically glances at an imaginary watch on his wrist, "the twenty-seventh of March this year at around half-past ten in the morning."

John is familiar with the date. That's when Sherlock had fallen ill. It hadn't properly registered with John back then that Sherlock had noticed something had been wrong that early in the morning, but at the moment it's all irrelevant.

Sherlock crosses his arms defensively. "I assure you I have a very good idea of how I feel or don't, and you have no right to tell me what that is. I know you think hell is what it's like to sleep with a gun under your pillow, hoping that you had the guts to use it. What you haven't considered is how it would feel if there was no guarantee that you'd even be able to fire that gun, and everyone else knows it, and they look at you with a much more malignant sort of pity than they look at a decorated army hero who took a shot in the shoulder, because they're not exactly sure who you are anymore. You came back only with your physical limitations, I lost-" he trails out, suddenly blinking and staring at the wall as though he has suddenly, willfully disconnected from the conversation because what he'd been about to say had been too much, somehow. He brings his knees up and wraps his arms around them.

John reaches out and curls his fingers around Sherlock's bicep, but Sherlock doesn't turn to face him. "You know, I don't think you really do," John tells him as gently as he can, "understand how you feel, I mean. I think you're- that we are both still trying to see the big picture here. What I don't get is why you insist on doing it all alone – why you won't talk to me."

"I'm not like anyone else. What good would it do, then, to talk about any of it?"

"What I was trying to tell you, before you blew a bloody gasket, is that hell is what I had before I met you, before you changed everything." He swallows. "If I can't be that to you, now, even just a little bit, then we've got a problem." He breathes out, shocked at the bluntness of his own words. Sherlock is not the only one under pressure or the only one fearing failure.

Sherlock slides back under his sheet, tucking even his arms underneath.

"Cold?" John asks.

Sherlock nods and turns onto his side again to face John, shifting slightly closer.

"If you don't want this, us I mean, then tell me," John says, "Because trying to force yourself into something that you're not is going to wreck you, especially combined with everything else that's on your plate right now."

He waits with bated breath, expecting an execution, fearing that Sherlock will say it: tell him that it's all been a mistake, that he doesn't want this, that the experiment is over and they should go back to sleeping on different floors.

The thought is so sad, somehow – if Sherlock doesn't want him, does he want anyone? Does he even know how, or is this just an unexpected incompatibility issue, and one day Sherlock will meet someone he truly falls in love with, at a time when there's no distorting baggage of tragedy hanging over the whole thing?

"This is the-" the rest of Sherlock's answer is just mumbling under the duvet, which John lifts a bit.

Something tells him he needs to switch off the light again, so he does.

The darkness envelops them once again. They aren't touching, but somehow there's a connection there, and it feels as though it's practically vibrating with tension, like a violin string pulled taut.

Sherlock draws a ragged breath. "I have never been anything but honest with you when it comes to my intentions. I don't like the way you keep questioning them."

Guilt hits John like a punch into the solar plexus. He shouldn't be the one demanding reassurances. He should be the one offering them. He feels like apologizing, but he doubts that would help all that much. "I'm not questioning you, I'm just trying to keep up with what's going on." It comes out slightly more defensive than John had intended.

"This is the only thing that's ever been worth wanting, but I don't know what to do with it, now," Sherlock says quietly but pointedly.

"And you think that's something you're supposed to work it out all by yourself?" John asks, feeling almost giddy with relief. "There's two of us in this, you know."

Sherlock doesn't reply.

"You think too much with that brain of yours. Just be. That's what I do."

"I don't know what your expectations are."

"Fuck expectations. My expectations are what made us wait for too long until we faced what's going on here. I'm not going anywhere, and nothing you say, or do, or don't say or don't do will change that."

Emboldened by what they've both just declared, John inches closer and plants a kiss on Sherlock's cheek. It ends up half on the lips, since it's hard to aim in the dark. Sherlock reciprocates a little, cupid's bow curling up as he gently pressed back against John's lips. Then he leans back, seeking distance once again.

John is quite certain both of them are now thinking of a different kiss: their first one, which had almost led to disaster. Its aftermath had found John storming off from the hospital, convinced he'd fucked everything up, that he was a travesty of a doctor, a destroyer of friendships and Sherlock couldn't possibly want this with him.

This, meaning the notion of something sexual occurring between them. In terms of intimacy, their friendship had already rivaled the most intense romantic partnership John could imagine, so there was only one direction left to deepen what they already had. Unlike his relations to the women he'd dated while trying to pretend that he didn't feel what he did about Sherlock, John knows that this relationship was founded on love first and foremost. On the first few times that sex and Sherlock had occurred to John within the same thought and he'd been half-willing to accept that he wasn't as straight as he'd always believed, the notion of the two of them together had felt deluded. Just look at the man, John had berated himself, convinced that most likely it would be someone like James Moriarty, all perfect angles and bespoke tailoring, who got to bed Sherlock Holmes.

Those months at the National had nearly killed John, too, and exposed his priorities. Watching Sherlock lose basically everything, slipping away into nothing but an astonishing mind inside a wax figure, had been so devastating to witness that he'd nearly lost it several times. Being at the hospital was exhausting, but going home had been even worse. The guilt of not being at Sherlock's bedside ate away at him, and he couldn't have worked even if he had tried. He hadn't slept much during those months, and when he did, he had recurring nightmares of returning to the hospital and finding an empty bed with crisp sheets, a teary-eyed nurse showing up to tell him that there had been a complication.

His timing of their first kiss had been wrong, but nothing that has happened since changes one iota of how he feels about Sherlock. What he should have realised during his ill-fated dating attempts during their flatmateship was that sex is sex, and love is love, and trying to compartmentalize those things to be associated with different people is impossible for him.

And love is so much more important.

As far as John is concerned, those months of, yes, hell watching Sherlock fight the GBS had proven, once and for all, the nature of their connection. He trusts it, and he thinks that maybe, just maybe, Sherlock might be starting to do so again.

"Talk to me?" John asks, hoping that the way he'd become lost in his thoughts hasn't left Sherlock alone too long.

"We could do better," Sherlock says.

John doesn't ask for clarification. There are a great many ways in which he agrees that yes, they could do better. Especially himself.

Sherlock doesn't offer any further explanations, either. Instead, he shifts closer to John and presses his lips on John's again. Sherlock tastes like tea, minty toothpaste, and something that could only be called the very essence of him, quite indescribable. This one, too, is all quite chaste, as kisses go - no tongue, and instead of hungry and demanding, it's languid and gentle. Still, there's no mistaking that this is no polite peck among friends. John rather thinks he'd like to avoid hearing that word for a while. There's no hesitation in the kiss, nor is there the urgency of preparation for more. It's a reassurance, a confirmation. Right before he pulls back, they both melt into smiles while their lips are still joined. John snakes a hand behind the small of Sherlock's back and tugs him closer so that their foreheads lean against one another. Sherlock closes his eyes and slithers a hand onto John's hip.

"Yeah," John answers, "I think we could do a lot better. And I know we will."

Author's Note: Sherlock is dismissive of the idea that not even one idiot in the history British toxicology would have ingested gelsemine, and he's absolutely right. A British doctor has experimented with gelsemine - on himself - and he was none other than Arthur Conan Doyle!