[Author's Note: Hope I didn't oversell this one, I was just very excited to get to it. Enjoy! And as a reminder, I posted two chapters today, so make sure if you're just tuning in that you also read Chapter Ten: The Flat.]

Sherlock was unusually quiet the rest of the evening, even eating a few bites of dinner without an argument when John put a plate next to him. John himself tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, still uncomfortable with how much he had revealed.

By midnight, John couldn't hold back the yawns anymore. It had been an exhausting day on every level. Sherlock had long ago kicked the duvet off the bed to make room for yet more papers. John picked it up, holding it awkwardly.

"You'll be okay if I take this?"

Sherlock made a vague noise of assent, not even pausing in his relentless keyboard tapping. When John started to lay the duvet down in the narrow strip of floor next to the bed, however, the tapping abruptly stopped.

"What are you doing?"

John felt the blush start to creep up his neck again. "Thought I'd kip on the floor tonight, give you some room. I don't mind." He pulled his pillow off the bed and tossed it on the floor at the head of his makeshift bedroll.

"Don't be ridiculous, John." Those intense, changeable eyes were narrowed on him, as if trying to lay his motivations bare. "You're a soldier, surely you're not shy about kipping in close proximity to another man. Besides, we've slept in this bed the last two nights."

John's mind tumbled with all the things he couldn't say. That was before I woke up tangled up in you. That was before I told you that losing you almost destroyed me. It hardly mattered, Sherlock had already swept the papers onto the floor, tossing the laptop on top of them, and rounded the foot of the bed. He began to tug on the bottom of the duvet, pulling it back on the bed, and John childishly grabbed the top edge, tugging back.

"Sherlock," he snapped in irritation as Sherlock gave a sharp pull, yanking the duvet free from his grasp.

Sherlock threw the duvet on the bed and advanced on John, reaching for the pillow. John picked it up, mutinously holding it behind his back.

Sherlock stopped a step away, glaring at the pillow. John raised his chin defiantly. Something shifted in Sherlock's expression, and then suddenly...

Sherlock lunged and John braced himself, so intent on his defence of the pillow that it was several heart-stopping seconds before his mind could even process it.

Sherlock was kissing him. Clumsily, awkwardly, noses bumping and Sherlock's mouth closed and too firm, but Sherlock Holmes was definitely, positively, ohmybloodyLord kissing John Watson.

Before John could do anything, before he could even start to kiss back, Sherlock was pulling away. He took a step back, his expression carefully blank even as his eyes scanned relentlessly over John's face.

"Never mind," Sherlock said crisply. "I'll delete it. You do the same."

He reached past John, picking up the pillow that had fallen from his numb fingers, and threw it on the bed. "Good night, John."

John had a sudden image of himself, eyes wide and mouth gaping, with a giant bloody question mark floating over his head.

Because seriously, what the bloody fuck!?

Sherlock lay down on the bed on his back and closed his eyes, hands folded on his chest, giving his best impression of a sepulchral statue. John finally opened his mouth to say something, to do something, because Sherlock was by all that was holy not pulling this bloody pretending-to-sleep bit again...and then he looked closer.

Because for all that Sherlock was pretending to be calm, John could see the signs. His folded hands were white-knuckled with tension, his breathing quick and unsteady. The man was bloody petrified, and it made something in John shift, causing a sharp tug deep in his chest. He bit back his words, stamping down hard on the impulse to stride over there, delve his hands into that dark hair, and kiss Sherlock to within an inch of his life.

Instead he sat on the edge of the bed, taking off his socks and shoes with slow deliberation. He pulled his jumper over his head, folding it and putting it aside, and removed his belt. Then he turned off the lamp and lay down next to Sherlock, letting the darkness enfold them.

He lay quietly in the dark, listening to Sherlock breathe, feeling the heat of his body radiating across the small distance between them. For a man who looked like carved alabaster, Sherlock was remarkably warm.

When Sherlock's breath had become more slow and even, John took a deep breath of his own. "Sherlock?" he said, his voice a near-whisper.

"Yes, John?" The answer was immediate.

John hesitated, trying to keep the confusion and frustration and embarrassingly naked hope from his voice.

"I'm just an ordinary man," he said. "I can't just deduce, you need to tell me. What do you want?"

He could feel Sherlock drawing away, curling in on himself. "I think..."

John flailed his hand out suddenly, grasping Sherlock's wrist, panicked that he would leave. "I didn't ask what you think, Sherlock. I asked what you want."

He could feel the pulse beneath his fingers growing rapid in Sherlock's slender wrist. He softened his voice again, moving his hand up that wrist until their fingers were interlaced. "Whatever you want, Sherlock, it's fine. Just...just tell me."

"I don't know." John tried to interpret the tone of Sherlock's voice. Frustration, definitely, but was that also fear?

John squeezed Sherlock's hand, making a soothing circle on his palm with his thumb. "It's okay, Sherlock. We'll figure it out. Do you — do you want things to be as they were? When we were friends, and flatmates, but not..." John let his voice trail off, not even knowing how to finish that sentence, even if he could speak past the lump that was suddenly in his throat. He hadn't meant to push so much...

"Yes," Sherlock said, and John felt the lump in his throat growing bigger, choking him with regret. Christ, he had hoped, but...he could handle this. He could. Better to know. He started to pull his hand free, and yet Sherlock's fingers tightened on his, his grip almost painful.

"And no," Sherlock added.

John barked a bitter laugh, relief and annoyance washing over him in equal measure. "Jesus Christ, Sherlock..."

"I want you to stay," Sherlock interrupted, his voice sharp and abrupt, overly loud in the quiet room.

John froze. He finally turned, facing the dim silhouette of Sherlock on the bed. The darkness had been making the conversation easier, he thought, but suddenly he wanted desperately to see Sherlock's face.

He squeezed Sherlock's hand, letting it go, and then reached out blindly. By luck and instinct, he found Sherlock's face, letting his fingers trace lightly down his temple until he was cradling that ridiculous cheekbone. He traced his fingers back, through the short curls behind his ear. Was that a shiver he felt? He finally settled his hand on Sherlock's shoulder, the knob of the scapula sharp beneath John's palm.

"I'll stay," he whispered, his voice suddenly rough. "No matter what. You don't have to worry about that." A thought suddenly struck him, his stomach lurching at the idea. "Is this — do you feel you have to...do things, to make me stay?"

"What?" Thank Christ, Sherlock sounded completely puzzled at the idea. "No, certainly not. I wanted..." He seemed suddenly flustered. "I don't do anything I don't wish to do," he finally announced loftily.

"Good." John took a deep breath. "That's...good."

He could feel Sherlock propping his head up on one arm, could almost feel that intense grey gaze stripping him open, even in the dark. "You were worried that you were — taking advantage of me?" Sherlock deduced, the sentence hardly a question. "I'm not an innocent, John, no matter what Irene said," he scoffed.

John had no answer to that, because in some ways, Sherlock was an innocent, so obviously out of his depth when it came to intimacy. It didn't even matter if John had the words, however, because Sherlock was on a roll, his voice practically bristling with injured pride.

"Perhaps it would be easier if you would clarify your intentions, John. What exactly do you want? Fellatio? Penetrative intercourse? While we are on the subject of Irene, do you enjoy — what did Mycroft call it — recreational scolding?" Sherlock's voice was sarcastic, challenging, rattling out the terms like automatic gunfire.

"Bloody hell, Sherlock!" John felt a flush wash over his whole body. Even though the terms were clinical, hearing them in Sherlock's rumbling coffee-rich voice brought up images that took the breath from his lungs and made his heart pound. Sherlock's beautiful mouth on John's body, Sherlock's pale chest straining upwards with pleasure as his hands were bound over his head...

"What's wrong, John? Are you shy?" Sherlock mocked. "I would have thought that Three Continents Watson..."

"Stop it." John's voice cracked through the room, sharp and commanding. It was his Captain Watson voice, his I-have-finally-had-enough-dammit-Sherlock voice, and he was gratified to note that Sherlock instantly fell silent.

John took a deep, steadying breath. Sherlock was trying to goad him, knowing the nickname some of his Army buddies had bestowed on him had always rankled. Sure, he had managed to pull more women on leave than any short, ordinary-looking bloke had a right to, but he wasn't some kind of — user. And Sherlock was not just another pleasant diversion from deployment.

He forced himself to calm down — he would not let Sherlock derail this conversation with an argument. He cast his mind back over what Sherlock had said, taking out the vitriolic tone and looking for the kernel of truth at the heart of the sarcasm. Sherlock was intimidated by John's sexual experience. Sherlock was defensive about his own sexual experience. And Sherlock wanted to know what John expected sexually.

Oh.

The wave of tenderness caught John by surprise. He wanted nothing more than to hold and comfort Sherlock, and so he did.

"Come here, you prat," he said, reeling Sherlock in closer. He pulled on Sherlock's stiff limbs until they were tangled comfortably together, Sherlock's head on John's shoulder, his leg pulled across John's thighs. God, the man was tall, but he managed to curl up against John's side all the same, his resistance seeming to fade as John wound a bracing arm along his back.

John closed his eyes for a moment, just breathing in the closeness, letting Sherlock settle a bit. He traced his fingers gently through Sherlock's hair, smiling as Sherlock seemed to press up into the touch like a giant gawky cat.

"I'm not talking about sex acts, Sherlock," he finally said gently. "That's not what this is about. You don't need to pick those things in advance, like it's a damned menu. If you want us to be more than friends, if you want us to be — to be intimate — we can decide what we like together. It's not like I've done this with a man before. We can figure it out as we go."

John fancied he could almost hear Sherlock's mind whirring, his brilliant intellect probably reeling at the thought of making things up as they went along. He kept stroking Sherlock's hair, waiting patiently for his response.

Finally, Sherlock spoke, his body tense once again in John's arms. "I will disappoint you, John," he said, his voice carefully diffident. "I will be constantly disappointing, in every way possible."

John squeezed Sherlock closer, feeling his throat close up with emotion. "That won't happen, Sherlock. It's not — "

Something clicked into place in John's head and anger rushed through him, tensing his muscles and heating his blood. He bit out the words without forethought. "Who told you that?"

He could feel Sherlock shifting, evading. "It's not..."

"Don't you dare try to tell me that it's not relevant, or some such rubbish. Somebody told you that you were disappointing, didn't they? Some — some ridiculous wanker didn't understand you, didn't appreciate you, and you are letting that get in the way — get in our way — "

John was practically incoherent with anger. The idea that someone had hurt Sherlock like that, had poisoned his mind, told him — him, this brilliant, amazing man — that he wasn't good enough...

He gritted his teeth, trying to get control of his temper. This wasn't about him, it was about Sherlock.

He breathed in sharply through his nose, letting it out slowly. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, Sherlock. But...we have to be able to talk about things, eventually. And whatever you are thinking...whatever you're afraid might happen..."

Sherlock was suddenly in motion, pulling away. John tamped down on the urge to grasp at him, sitting up on the edge of the bed instead, feeling Sherlock start to pace in the narrow space between the bed and the kitchen.

"It's not conjecture, John. It is fact," he finally said, his voice as agitated as his actions. "I am obsessive, and yet easily distracted. I might spend an entire day examining your earlobes, and then will forget that you exist for the next week. I — "

He stopped pacing, the sudden stillness unsettling in the darkness of the room. When he spoke again he had that distant detached tone to his voice. "I am...hard to arouse, and am easily put off. I have been informed that when I am giving pleasure I am clinical and insincere, and when I am supposed to be pleasured in return I am instead...unresponsive. It made Seb quite — irate."

Seb. For better or worse, John's mind latched on that piece of information, and couldn't let go.

"Seb?" he gritted out through clenched teeth. "Sebastian Wilkes? From the bank? That — that unbelievable twat?"

["We hated him," Wilkes had confided to John so casually, sitting behind his big glass desk, speaking about Sherlock as if he weren't sitting right there. "You'd come down to breakfast in the Formal Hall and this freak would know who you'd been shagging the previous night."]

John could almost hear Sherlock's shrug. "We did not end on...good terms."

"Why on earth would you take his case then, Sherlock? Why help out that wanker..." He swallowed suddenly, his chest tight. "Oh. You weren't helping him out, were you? You were helping me out." He shook his head, his anger now turned inwards. "Because I said I needed money."

Sherlock was silent, and then a moment later John felt the edge of the bed dipping under his weight. Sherlock's hand brushed John's leg, and then settled tentatively on his knee.

"Not only that," Sherlock said. "I think I also wanted to show him...that I had found someone who could tolerate me."

["This is my friend, John Watson," Sherlock had said. "Friend?" Wilkes repeated skeptically. "Colleague," John had corrected.]

Shame roiled in John's belly. "I should have seen it. And I — fuck it all — I corrected you when you called me your friend. Sherlock, you know why I did that, right? It wasn't because I didn't consider you my friend. It's just...I was unemployed, and broke, and useless, and his office was so swank, and it sounded more official to call myself your colleague, and..." He took a deep breath. "Christ, I'm babbling. It doesn't matter why I said that, I was an arse. And Seb — Sherlock, that little piece of shite is not fit to lick your boots."

"Well, I know that now," Sherlock said drily, his humor easing some of the tightness in John's chest. "But at the time...well, at the time I thought he was my friend." The hand on John's knee squeezed. "Before I knew what a friend really was."

John felt a rush of tenderness, so thick he felt like it was choking him. He put his hand over Sherlock's on his knee, his own damp palm pressed tight to the back of that elegant, long-fingered hand. Then he picked up that hand, holding it palm up in his own.

"I will always be your friend, Sherlock," he said, his voice shaking with the intensity of his emotions. "But if you are interested, if you think you want more, we can do more. Whatever you want, as long as you want. And we can stop whenever you want."

Slowly, slowly, giving Sherlock plenty of time to pull away, John lifted their joined hands. He bowed his head, placing a gentle kiss to the pale skin of Sherlock's inner wrist. And then, because he was so close and he could no longer resist, he let his tongue slip out, licking a slow circle soft and wet over that tender skin, feeling Sherlock's pulse jump underneath his tongue. Sherlock made a low, desperate noise, and John knew Sherlock must be able to feel him smile against his wrist.

"Hard to arouse?" John said, his voice taut with suppressed exultation. "That sounds like a fantastic fucking challenge."

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