[Author's Note: Yet again, what was supposed to be a brief pre-smut conversation turned out to eat the whole chapter. Sorry!]
"Sherlock, if you're trying to seduce me, bringing up Mycroft is entirely the wrong tactic," John mumbled sleepily.
He had gone to sleep alone hours ago and woken up to find Sherlock wrapped around him like an overly-affectionate octopus, blathering on about something. Apparently he had been talking for some time, although John had woken fully only in time to catch a mention of Mycroft's name. Much like his physical presence, apparently John's consciousness was no requirement when Sherlock was bent on conversation.
He opened bleary eyes to see that Sherlock seemed torn between sulking and laughing, finally settling on a dry twist of his mouth. "I would certainly hope so," he answered snappishly. "I'm just clarifying the issue. I am safe. You are safe. There is no need to raise suspicion or alarm by purchasing or pilfering from the surgery...supplies...when we can make do quite adequately with what we have."
Sherlock slanted a keen gaze in John's direction before his face turned carefully blank, his voice taking on a detached tone as he pulled away to lie next to John, staring at the ceiling. "That is assuming that a doctorly punctiliousness is in fact behind your avoidance of certain sexual activities rather than some threshold of attraction beyond which you find my gender to be an insurmountable impediment."
John yawned, and then threw a heavy arm around Sherlock, hauling him in close again. "You're a wordy ponce when you're insecure," he muttered into the slightly damp skin of Sherlock's neck. "Are you asking if we haven't shagged yet because you have a dick? Because I thought you might have deduced from what's happened so far that I've actually become quite a fan — ow! Unnecessary!" The sharp elbow to his ribs had pulled him out of his drowsy, comfortable haze.
"I am just making it clear that you have no need to worry about our respective statuses," Sherlock continued haughtily.
John rubbed his ribs with disgruntlement. "And Mycroft enters into it how?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "As I said, I have to be tested quarterly as a condition of my trust. Mycroft put the condition in place when I had...substance issues...and has been inflexible on the matter. And your blood was drawn the day I...left..."
"Hold on — I don't even remember that." John was sitting up now. "Are you telling me that with your body apparently dead on the pavement, Mycroft was secretly having me tested for STIs?"
Sherlock seemed deflated now, all his haughtiness gone. His eyes ducked away from John's sheepishly. "It was in the records on the hard drive. Mycroft was suspicious of the bicyclist knocking you down, and he thought you seemed...not yourself. He had a full panel run for toxins, metabolites...the STI testing was incidental."
John blew a harsh breath out between his teeth, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Bloody hell. Naturally. Rather than concluding that I was, in fact, acting strangely because I was in shock and grieving the loss of my best friend, Mycroft's logical reaction was to sneak my blood and test it for fucking cobra venom, no doubt. Just great." He shook his head. "You Holmes brothers and your..."
"...cold-bloodedness?" Sherlock finished his sentence.
"What?" John looked at Sherlock in surprise. He was still avoiding John's eyes, staring fixedly at the ceiling now. "No, I was going to say 'You Holmes brothers and your devious minds.'" He lay down again, his anger fading. He turned toward Sherlock, placing a hand on his chest. "The very last thing I would describe you as is cold-blooded."
The muscles of Sherlock's chest were tense beneath John's hand, his breathing a touch too rapid, even though his face stayed carefully blank. "It should come as no surprise to you by now, John, that we Holmeses do not...feel emotion in the way others do." The pale gray eyes raked over John's face. "I don't know how you do it."
"Do what?"
Sherlock shrugged, but his hand had unconsciously drifted to John's hip, gripping almost painfully, as if to keep him from moving away. "The things you say to me. So easily." A tint of pink started to color those high cheekbones. "How you call me — call me 'love,' and — and 'beautiful'. I thought people only said things like that so casually if they didn't mean them, but...you mean them."
John leaned in for a kiss. "I do."
Their lips met, briefly, clingingly, but then Sherlock was pulling back, his brow still furrowed. There was something he was trying to convey that John was obviously missing.
"I don't...I don't know how to do that. I don't think I can. If that is something you need..."
"Sherlock." John snuggled in closer, the wave of tenderness almost overwhelming him. "I don't need declarations of love, or grand romantic gestures. Christ, I wouldn't know what to do with those things. You've already told me how you feel about me, more than I ever hoped to hear. Even if you never say the words, I'll still know it." He smiled. "You wooed me with crime scenes. Nothing about us is typical and that's the way I like it. It's...all fine."
He felt Sherlock relax against his body. "In any case, if you think you Holmeses are cold-blooded, you're an even bigger idiot than I thought," John added.
Sherlock brushed a hand through John's hair. "It's true, though. Emotion is — not our area. Caring is not an advantage." He said the last line as if he were quoting someone.
"Bollocks. Who says?"
Sherlock made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Mycroft said that to me once. 'All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage.'"
John couldn't help it. It started with a giggle, and then before he could stop himself he was laughing uncontrollably. He finally subsided, wiping his eyes, still chuckling from time to time. Sherlock was looking at him in adorable befuddlement. "I fail to see the joke, John," he said frostily.
"I know you do." John pulled him closer, kissing him slow and soft, finally breaking off when they were both breathing hard. He settled Sherlock comfortably against his good shoulder, marshalling his thoughts.
"In addition to being probably the most melodramatic statement I have ever heard, that is complete and total shite, and Mycroft knows it." He had a feeling when Mycroft might have said something like that, damn Irene Adler to hell. Another memory followed, Mycroft standing in the rain outside Speedy's, uncharacteristically smoking a cigarette, his face drawn and pale with worry for Sherlock. "Mycroft said something to me too." John could feel Sherlock's whole body tense with the need to know and smiled internally, knowing that he would never ask. "He said that you had the brain of a philosopher or a scientist, but chose to be a detective. He asked me to deduce what that meant about your heart."
Sherlock snorted, but John felt him relax again. Sherlock would never admit how much Mycroft's opinion meant to him. "Mycroft's the same," John continued.
"Mycroft and I are not the same," Sherlock protested reflexively.
"A brain like that? He could probably make a billion in the markets quicker than he can open his umbrella. He could be Prime Minister — hell, he could own a country somewhere, ruling from the mountaintop. But he didn't choose finance, or even politics, really. Instead he chose a 'minor position in the government.'"
"As you said, our minds are devious. He likes the intrigue," Sherlock argued, but John could hear the shade of uncertainty in his tone.
"Because there's no intrigue and deviousness in corporate finance or politics?" John said gently. "He takes care of everybody, Sherlock. Of the nation. Watches over England, probably as relentlessly as he mother-hens you. At least one can hope so."
John felt the sleepiness starting to creep over him again. He could practically hear Sherlock's mind whirring, thinking over what he had said, and he let his own thoughts drift a little. Wondering what life had been like growing up in the Holmes household, thinking back to what life had been like in the Watson household. It was so easy, in retrospect, to let the bad times at the end color his recollections. He'd almost forgotten until now the easy affection — how his mum would give him a hug or call him her handsome boy in passing, how he would lie in his bed hearing his mum and dad laughing together in the other room. Even how he and Harry would protect each other after his mum's death when his dad's drinking first got out of hand. Until Harry had become every bit as angry, and bitter, and uncontrollable as his dad, and John had simply escaped.
"Everybody thinks I'm easygoing," John suddenly murmured. "But they're wrong. My mum, she was the easygoing one." He sighed. "Like it or not, I have my dad's temper. Harry too. That's why Clara left. Harry's given up on controlling it, but I..."
He stopped, trying to find a way to put it into words. "More than anything, I wanted to not be like that. So I push my temper down, deep, and act like it isn't there. It makes it seem like nothing bothers me, but when it finally comes out it's...it's overwhelming." Even just thinking about it was making his heart speed up, his fists clench. "That night with Jefferson Hope...it came out like that then. My life had been so empty and pointless, and you had shown me how different it could be. You were brilliant, and amazing, and when I realized you were going to swallow that pill..."
Sherlock made a noise of distress and John buried his face in the top of Sherlock's head, taking a deep breath to steady himself. "All I could think of was — how dare he? How dare he try to take you from this world — try to take you from me, when I'd only just found you. And I shot. I shot to kill."
"John." John realized Sherlock was pulling at his hands, trying to unclench his fists. "He was a bad man, John."
John took another deep breath and tried to force his body to relax. "I know. I'm not sorry I did it. I would do it again, but...I wish it had been a conscious choice. Instead I just...acted. The anger took me, and that was it." John realized he had wandered somewhat severely from the point, and yet he was glad they had a chance to speak of this. It was part of him, and Sherlock needed to know. As much danger as they had been in at times, somehow Sherlock had never really seen John like that.
"What I'm trying to say is that I think I understand why you and Mycroft do what you do. Tell everyone — even yourselves — that you don't feel anything." He kissed the top of Sherlock's head. "You feel so much. So overwhelmingly much, and so you push it down deep, and try to pretend that it's not there. But it never goes away, does it? Not really."
Sherlock was quiet for a long time. So long that John found himself starting to drift asleep again. Finally, he felt Sherlock let out a long, shuddering breath against his neck. "It doesn't," he whispered. "Not with you."
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