Thank you to Foxy K for the beta. Long chapter is long.

-Before-

"Your brother is an utter twat."

I snorted, glad that my face was turned away from John on the small bed. The feeling of elation was like a hit of cocaine, electrifying every single one of my nerves. I had a tremendously difficult time keeping my body from reacting.

John had not spoken to me in four days and twelve hours, almost to the second. Six-thousand eighty minutes. Three-hundred, eighty-eight thousand, eight-hundred seconds.

I closed my eyes, biting my lip.

"Obvious."

It was John's turn to snort.

I attempted to ignore the sudden surge of dopamine that swirled around my bloodstream at John's small sound of amusement. I was utterly unsuccessful. Weak starlight shone onto the bottom half of John's strong chin, leaving most of his face in shadow. John deigning to acknowledge me after so long was like the first drag on a cigarette after a week of abstaining- an utter shock to the system.

There was only one window in the small room. The small flat was clearly a converted loft space that had seen better times. It was a small step up from a bedsit in that there was a tiny toilet and microscopic shower behind a Japanese screen in the corner, but my bastard of an elder brother had not exactly gone out of his way to spare the Commonwealth's taxpayers the expense of providing another safe house for John and myself. There were exactly two steps from my side of the bed -and wasn't that curious; the fact that I had an actual side when John and I had never shared a bed before; a small slice of domesticity that was almost painfully intimate after so many months of only seeing John through a computer screen- and the loo.

Two hotplates, a sink, and a tiny fridge exemplified the extent of the kitchen, and that was a mere four paces from the edge of John's side of the bed. There was a small table, but for some reason Mycroft had specified that there were no chairs. There was no room for them anyway. As it was, John had an uncomfortable squeeze from the corner of our bed and the corner of the small table if he wished to go out to the door.

Mycroft had refused to allow either of us the freedom to leave the tiny little flat. He had seen that there were some amenities, such as a change of clothes for the both of us. We had two mugs, some silverware, and two plates. There was one kettle (imagining John's fury at being denied tea had been rather amusing) and plenty of sugar and milk for tea.

Curiously though, food was delivered regularly.

John, after waking up, had stormed to the door, only to be deterred by several of my brother's minions. They had standing orders to subdue either John or myself should either one of us leave the flat for any reason. I had seen agent Moss twice. Once with a gargantuan with whom I had no wish to tangle. The others were hardly worth mentioning. It didn't matter. As I had no desire to leave John's presence, their presence was a non-issue for me. John however, had reacted predictably.

The first day, John's belligerence was expected. He was furious with me. John refused to speak though, and I found my desire to provoke a conversation that would no doubt be infused with untoward levels of sentiment to be less than rampant. John had tended to the wound on my forehead with fingers that barely brushed against my skin, yet for all that were almost trembling with suppressed rage.

He refused to look me in the face.

To my absolute and complete shock, I found that I could not delete the … uncomfortable reaction from seeing John this way, and spent rather a lot of time wallowing on my side of the bed, pathetically trying not to make too much noise.

The third day I did everything in my rather extensive repertoire to annoy John into acknowledging my presence. When I attempted to provoke him into hitting me (most people wanted to hit me after all; one could only assume that it was cathartic in some way), John's eyes had flashed with something so dark that I closed my mouth up mid-syllable, almost biting my tongue in my haste to cease speaking immediately.

He didn't make food for me. Nor would he make tea. Any attempts to make him food were ignored, to the extent that John would actually dump out the perfectly good tea before making himself his own cuppa.

It was infuriating.

This morning, I had attempted to push John into speaking by making my own frustration with this intolerable situation audible. My own anger brought my damnable brother into the mix. He didn't deign to speak, but the look on his face – so childish, Sherlock, really- had me biting back my own vitriol and assuming my natural thinking pose, taking both of the pillows so that my head would be propped up for the most efficient amount of blood flow to my brain.

John had simply refused to come to bed until I gave him back a pillow. All in all it was an overwhelmingly unsuccessful endeavour.

Most troublingly, was that now I had found that I had a viable excuse to watch John all that I wanted, I had no desire to do so. I found that I wished to question Irene on the motives behind my recent sexual proclivities.

I had no outlet to research. Mycroft had refused to give me my laptop. The rather ratty knapsack had been found and my cell phone (the one glimpse John had of the cracked screen had caused a look had to cross his face that had actually made something in my oesophagus hurt, before John had about-faced immediately and crossed to the loo- taking the only privacy that this safe "house" afforded either one of us) had also been confiscated by our jailers.

It wasn't like I could ask John. I could well imagine how that conversation would go.

My Mind Palace had been surprisingly unhelpful. I understood that fetishizing voyeurism was frowned upon in most sexual constructs. Irene had seemed rather blasé on the subject, at complete odds with my brother's obvious disapproval. The idea of ever seeing anyone other John was utterly repugnant. Yet, without his permission (true, he had given up on keeping Mycroft's monitoring equipment out of the flat during our first month as flatmates), but not having John's explicit permission for what I wished to do, my actions were at best somewhat alarmingly creepy, and at worst … illegal.

I was not accustomed to such an overwhelming feeling of guilt. Well, that was not entirely true. Rather, John was the only person for whom I would ever acknowledge any sentiment such as guilt. My brother had once told me that caring was not an advantage, and now more than ever did his words bring home how very right he was.

Not that I would ever tell him that. Git.

I had barely registered that John had climbed into the bed beside me, carefully lying so that no part of his body touched mine before he spoke, the insult to my brother after so many hours of deafening silence bringing a delighted grin to my face.

John shifted slightly. I could see in the dim amount of light that he was lying with his hands fisted loosely over his stomach.

Feeling greatly daring, I shifted so that my shoulder brushed John's arm. His exhale was loud and shaky and caused things low in my body to tighten.

"I'm sorry. I am so very sorry, John." I bit my lip in the dark. Had I been in less control of my transport, I would have winced at the utterly pathetic way I blurted my apology.

The silence was painfully loud. There was very little street noise from our attic flat, and since we had no neighbours, every inhale and exhale sounded like the crash of a symphony. "You're sorry." John repeated my words with no verbal inflection to the syllables. My throat went strangely tight. I found that I had the simultaneous urge to confess every transgression since I had set my mad plan into motion and to bite my tongue to keep myself from speaking.

I nodded, then rolled my eyes in the dark at my own stupidity. "Yes."

John made a soft sound, something between a grunt and a snort. "Well. How nice for you, Sherlock."

The tightness in my throat increased, panic lighting up my synapses as John moved off of the bed. My hand whipped out and closed around his bicep before I quite realized what I was doing.

"I'm just going for a shower. Getting a bit wiffy." John's voice had finally lost that strange, furious flatness. He almost sounded... fond. Still, it took two tries before I could make my fingers unclench from his body. My hand fell onto the mattress like some dead thing, and I frantically attempted to order my thoughts, deleting and rearranging explanations and apologies with some semblance of coherence. I could not marshal my thoughts into what I could say, what I wanted to say, and what John needed to hear without losing the tentative peace. I knew that I could do it. It was simply a matter of confessing some of my misdeeds with enough truth to them so that John would feel predictably protective. His own sentiment would do the rest.

With the proper formula of truth and manipulation, John would forgive me before breakfast.

The hiss and clank of the pipes barely registered, but the short yip of surprise from the frigid water caused me to smirk. I turned my head without thinking, only to freeze completely.

The moonlight had shifted, slanting in through the small window and across the top of the bed. John had slung his towel over the small Japanese screen, and it had moved just enough that I could see a glimpse of John's naked body as he showered.

My air left my lungs with a feeling not unlike a punch to the diaphragm. I heard myself make a strangled, panicked sound.

"Was there something?"

Oh God. It did not matter that I could only see a small slice of John's back, the curve of one buttock. I had seen the rest of his body, and my mind had no problems whatsoever filling in any blanks. Panic and arousal caused me to screw my eyes shut, biting the inside of my cheek to keep the whimper in my throat where it belonged.

I only had to look. John wasn't fussed about privacy; he'd been a soldier for years before I had met him. Public showers were common.

It was very unlikely that I was the first man to catch a glimpse of John naked in the sh-

My eyes popped open, then narrowed. I could feel the pull of wanting to look, but forced myself to sit up and turn away from the sounds of water sluicing down on John's shoulders, his spine, down to his-

Oh, Christ.

"Sherlock?"

I carefully rolled over to John's side of the bed, standing and searching at the very bottom for my trainers, flung haphazardly into my rucksack once I deduced that I would be going nowhere for a very long time.

"Oh fine." I cleared my throat, forcing my voice into some nonchalance. "Just yawning."

Normally the small lie would not have bothered me. Now though, it grated on my already raw nerves.

I had been holding the small pack of fags in reserve to really ensure that John lost his temper with me, but right now I just needed a bloody cigarette. The window went up with a surprisingly silent sound, and I was out and balanced on the ledge before I had thought about it, the wind from the cool evening whipping my hair into a fury. I bit down on the small pack, unable to take my hands from the top ledge. As I had deduced, there was a small slope to the roof, and it took very little to swing myself up and over, sitting on the flattish surface with my forearms resting on my knees. There was not much room. Had I attempted to stretch the length of my body, either my neck or my knees would dangle off the slope of the roof.

I had just taken a deep drag before I heard a muffled shout from our room.

Shit.

"Sherlock!"

Oh bugger. "Yes, John." I didn't need to force myself into meekness. I inhaled shakily, and indeed seconds later, John's hands appeared on the same ledge. I shifted my arse over, forcing my gaze to the tarred surface of the roof.

"You... you..." John was almost incoherent with rage. He was much less graceful than myself, plodding into my leg and scrambling up onto the roof's surface with a muffled curse.

I chanced a glance up at him and immediately forced my gaze back down. Little droplets of water still decorated his neck, chest, and shoulders. The moonlight fairly glinted on the proof that John hadn't bothered to dry off when he discovered that I wasn't in the room, throwing on his trackies and scrambling out after me.

"It." I stopped, cleared my throat. Forced myself to inhale, tremendously grateful that John had no talents at observation, for surely the way my hand shook screamed at my inner turmoil. I tried again, casting about desperately for something to say. "It occurs to me that, given recent events, fleeing to the roof was not, perhaps, my most well-thought out idea."

"No shit, Sherlock. You- you... complete fucking idiot." John's hand gripped my upper thigh. He quite possibly had no inkling of how torturous his grip was, although if he moved even the slightest bit to the left he would have a rather rude shock. It was humiliating that I had no control over my own body. My transport had failed me; no, my control over my transport had failed me. I did not know if it was John, or the unexpected glimpse of him during such a private moment, or my own reaction and imagination that caused me to harden so abruptly, but I was finding it hard to think with the blood that should be in my brain so quickly diverted. I could feel the heat from John's body, and it was absolutely agonizing to have him so close to me.

Slowly, John released his panicked grip on my upper thigh. I smoked in silence, enjoying both the nicotine rush and the heady rush of norepinephrine and testosteronewreaking havoc with my system.

John sighed and stretched slightly on the roof, looking up at the sky.

"Where are we, do you suppose?"

I had no idea. A city, obviously, but not one that I readily recognized. My mind was in such a whirl that we could have been sitting on the roof of Mrs. Hudson's building and I wouldn't have noticed. The small, intense moment when John first saw me in Mycroft's guest bedroom wouldn't leave the foreroom of my Mind Palace. The heat from his body, the sharp smell of sandalwood from the shampoo he had just used gave the quiet night a strange intensity that I was not sure if I wanted to break.

A confession? An apology? An accusation?

I did not know.

"Sherlock?"

I almost jumped at the sound of my name. "I am unsure. I have not been able to hear any colloquialisms of the native speakers. Mycroft's minions have kept the flat utterly bare of even a hint of where we are. We could be anywhere. Minsk. Middlesex. Mars."

"Mars?"

If this had been anyone else, I would have mocked them ceaselessly for the pathetically obvious way I had included the planet's name, purely to remind John of how much he had teased me about not knowing trivial planetary information. I cast a quick glance down at the street. We were only about four storeys up, which did not account for the small, dizzy spurt of breathlessness in my chest after glimpsing the small grin on John's face. My pulse increased at the tiny acknowledgement that I had indeed amused John, if only for a minute.

"Yes, Mars." I waved my hand around vaguely at the starlit sky.

John shifted slightly, closer to me on the small space. I tried not to watch the small trickles of water from his hair as they played over his skin and failed completely.

The silence stretched. It didn't take someone with my brilliance to deduce that John was still upset with me. Still, he was talking, albeit haltingly, and I had made him smile. He hadn't shouted at me too much, and the nicotine was a godsend, soothing my shattered nerves.

Neither of us was surprised when one of the minions popped his head out of the window. He looked vaguely familiar. He had been one of the agents to pick me up at the airport.

"You shouldn't be up here. Snipers, you know. Best get back to where you're all nice and safe, Mr. Holmes. Captain."

I blinked then huffed out an impatient breath. Snipers. Ridiculous. Mycroft would have cleared the area in every direction.

John's shoulders straightened at the title and he nodded. "It's Doctor, actually. Haven't been a Captain in a while now."

The agent said something innocuously boring and popped back into the flat. I was too distracted by John's calloused fingers on my shoulder. I gasped and dropped the cigarette. My reflexes were dormant as I tried to catch it, hissing when it burnt my thigh before falling onto the roof. Humiliating. I attempted to grab it before it pitched over the roof and managed to burn my finger in the process.

John was laughing again, hard enough that his grip tightened on my shoulder so that he could keep his balance. "Go." He managed to wheeze and feeling my face burning, I was more than pleased to pop back down off the roof and into the loft window.

The nameless drone ignored me, unpacking something from the shops and setting it up on the table. I had to flop down onto my spot onto the mattress before John could swing in, and I would be lying if I didn't say that I stared at him, at the strength in his arms, muscles bulging just enough as he swung his weight into the small window. He was much more graceful than I. I do not know why that surprised me.

I frowned at the burn on my hand, and then poked at it. Which was fairly stupid, but it did cause John to huff in exasperation and sit down beside me on the mattress. I jerked my hand from his touch when John's fingers closed around mine, flustered.

"Don't be such a baby. Give it here." John's fingers grabbed my wrist and he tilted my hand in the poor light so that he could look at it.

"Oi!"

We both looked at the agent. I'm quite certain the look on my face was less than friendly, and I quickly schooled my features into some semblance of blankness before John could see. I didn't miss the wink the agent sent at John, nor the way he tossed the first aid kit at us, causing John to let go of me in order to catch it. I certainly didn't miss the bright smile on John's face.

I did not care for the way John smiled his thanks, a genuine, full-on smile at someone else.

"It hurts." John's attention was back on me, where it belonged. I hissed in pain (only a little embellished- anymore and John would know) and some of the light left John's face as he opened the kit for some burn cream. I suppose that someone else might feel guilt at the small manipulation, but if I could have glared over John's head without him seeing me, I would have done. John's smiles were mine. It was hard not to gloat when the door shut, leaving the two of us alone once again.

I watched John stroke the burn cream over the small blister and only huffed a little at the picture of the cartoon dog on the plaster.

"Scooby-Doo?"

"Mycroft believes himself to be amusing." For some reason this caused John to snort in laughter. We were so close that I felt the puff of air against my cheek, and I could not help the way my gaze darted up to John's. Held.

My gaze flicked down to John's lips, then jumped guiltily back up to John's eyes. My heart rate jumped crazily when I saw the darkness there. I moved a breath closer, pulled towards John's gravity like the moon to the Earth. Or the Earth to the moon. Whatever. Deleted as unimportant. John's grip became almost painful on my wrist, and still he didn't move towards me.

Perhaps I was not being obvious enough. John's intelligence was several steps above the average idiot's, but he could still be terrifically stupid at times. My heart was beating so loudly in my chest I was almost shocked that John could not hear it. I moved a fraction of an inch forward. Brushed my lips against John's, my eyes closing in shock as data flooded my brain. He was wonderfully warm. Hair still slightly damp from his shower. Lips chapped, strong. In a remembered flash of sensation I saw John with his hand on the nameless stranger's wrist, pressing him tightly to the wall as he-

John jerked away from me, dropping my wrist as though burned.

There was a beat of silence where my eyes popped open in shock. No. He wasn't meant to move away, he was-

"No. No, Sherlock."

Oh.

"Of course." Even with my stellar acting skills, I was amazed that my voice was so even, given the waves of humiliation and rejection that were rolling through me. I settled back on the bed, assuming my most common thinking position. Laughable, really. I couldn't think. My mind was curiously blank from cognizant thought, but John did not know this. Long habit of being lost in my Mind Palace set a precedent for me to ignore John's agitated pacing.

"Sherlock- I didn't mean..." John trailed off. I could picture him behind my closed eyelids, running a frustrated hand through his hair as he attempted to gather his thoughts. "Oh, bugger. Sherlock? Sherlock?"

A child could have been able to deduce the John was going to reach out to me, and I was able to keep my body relaxed, continuing to ignore him, while simultaneously being almost painfully aware of every breath that he took.

John cursed under his breath. I heard him walk the few steps to the light switch and turn it off. Having nowhere else to go, John crawled under the blankets next to me.

Rejection wasn't new. Being rejected by someone who mattered this much, was. Victor had been simple. I had been curious about sex, and Victor had been terribly shy. I had not formed the emotional attachment that I had with John. Victor and I had manually stimulated one another, and I had been curious enough to attempt fellatio, but had never seen much point in kissing. Victor had tried, and I had ducked away, appalled, the names of each bacteria found in the human mouth rattling from my mouth before I could stop myself.

Victor had distanced himself not long after.

"Sherlock?" A tentative hand on my shoulder.

Delete. I could only delete this. John did not want me in that way. Why would he? It was stupid, stupid to have tried. To have attempted to.

"You're not fooling me, you know." The mattress dipped. "Open your eyes and look at me, Sherlock."

I refused, actually tightening my lids like a child, hoping the monsters under the bed weren't real.

"You cannot do that, Sherlock. It's dishonest. Yes, I am furious at you. I will likely be furious at you for a long time. You throwing a wobbly to get me to react to you didn't work, and neither will kissing me."

John flopped back onto the mattress and I opened my eyes in the darkness, shocked. John thought that I-

"I think that I put some of it together. You jum-" John cut off speaking with a strangled noise. I was still too frozen to move. "Your fall, the bicyclist. Molly is a terrible actress, by the way. At first I thought she was avoiding me because of awkwardness, but I know what guilt looks like, Sherlock. I'm not an idiot."

No. Yes, he was. But not about that. John knew people the way I could deduce the minutiae of their sad, pathetic lives. His instant empathy, even when he chose not to act on it had fascinated me from the beginning.

"So I asked myself, what on earth would Molly Hooper have to feel guilty about? So I did some investigating on my own. I'm afraid poor Mike thought me more than a bit mad when I insisted on seeing your body. Molly said that it had already been released to Mycroft. Odd. No inquest. No hearing. You were thought to have killed yourself, Sherlock. Why was there no hearing? No record of a hearing? How had the body been released to the family so quickly? Certainly, it was possible that Mycroft had been pulling strings like the puppet master he is, but."

John stopped abruptly, and I found myself listening acutely, almost straining to hear his soft voice as he spoke in the darkness.

"The bicyclist. The fact that Moriarty had ate his gun. Molly. I was convinced, Sherlock. Convinced that you had done it- that you had pulled off a magic trick. But, you didn't return. I... begged you to come back. You are brilliant, and if anyone could do it, you could."

Hearing John calling me brilliant had the same effect as always. Some of the rolling chasm of humiliation subsided, allowing for the small spurt of warmth, squirming hopefully in my chest.

John sighed. "But you didn't. You didn't come back."

The silence was appallingly loud, echoing through my brain as though I had shouted in an empty, cavernous room.

"I." I shut my mouth with a click of teeth. Did I confess that I hadn't been trying to kiss him out of his fury? Then he'd know that I... that I wanted... no. I wouldn't risk it.

John snorted. "You giant faker. I knew it."

"I am... sorry, John." Surely an apology wouldn't go amiss. To my shock, John's fingers wrapped around my wrist again, careful of my burnt finger. For the first time since our incarceration, it was ... nice to feel him next to me. I could not put a name to the emotion he was giving off, but it wasn't anger, or fury, and that was tremendously pleasant.

I matched my breathing to John's in the darkness, still unsure of what to say. What to tell him? John had accused me of being dishonest, and I found that I was disgusted with myself. I listened as John fell asleep, listened to his deep, even breathing. His grip around my wrist loosened as he slept, and I bit my lip, easing out of the bed. I stripped and dressed into my pyjama trousers, easing myself back into the bed under the covers. Normally, I could keep myself awake for hours by concentrating my thinking. Now though, I welcomed the oblivion of sleep, knowing that for a short while at least I wouldn't have to feel such guilt and disgust with myself.

Wakefulness came slowly.

I was warm. Almost too warm. I heard the heartbeat under my ear increase before John eased slowly away. My sleepy mind snapped to completely awake in an instant when I registered that I was hard, throbbing against John's thigh, having wrapped myself around him in my sleep.

Oh god. Images flew behind my eyes, images of John's sadness, of John touching himself, of John's buttocks as he thrust, his neck bent as though lost in the carnality of what he was doing. I was horribly aware that I had left a damp spot against my pyjama trousers, and that they would hide nothing- not that there was anything to hide; not even John could miss this. John moved again from under me, and between one breath and another I had run from the warm cocoon of blankets, hiding behind the screen. Hiding from John.

I refused to touch myself with John knowing, just steps away. The water was frigid and I welcomed it, shivering as my body forgot John's heat. I could only hide so long without risking hypothermia. John had left my clothes on the screen and I dressed as quickly as I could.

John looked up from his tea when I left the bathroom and I couldn't help the flood of embarrassment that stained my cheeks at the look on his face. Oh this was intolerable.

I tilted up my chin and took a belligerent sip of tea. John laughed outright when I immediately burnt my tongue.

"You know that is perfectly normal."

It was? Normal? To molest your flatmate's thigh in his sleep? There was more than one reason I had never aspired for normality. I took another sip of my tea, refusing to look at John.

"So. Er. I didn't realize that you..."

"Had a penis? Tremendously unobservant of you, John."

John choked, wheezing for a moment as he inhaled his tea.

I rolled my eyes. "I do, in fact possess a sexuality." If he only knew. "I am not a virgin, depending of course on your definition of virginity. I simply choose not to act on my baser instincts is all." I stole a look up at him from under my eyelashes.

John licked his lips, and I almost dropped my mug of tea.

"Uh. Yes. Of course. I just didn't think that you... married to your work, you know?"

I thought the fact that I managed to bite back the fact that I had been out of work for quite a while was exceedingly well done of me.

John rummaged in the bag, clearly looking for a distraction and found a coffee cake. My stomach gave an obedient gurgle and John's smile was fond as he looked at me. We ate in companionable silence, foregoing our meagre supply of plates as we ate over the box.

I was pleasantly full of tea and sweet pastry, John wasn't ignoring me, and he hadn't punched me for putting him in two very awkward positions in a very small amount of time. I didn't realize until much, much later that John had waited for just the right moment, manipulating me as much as I ever had manipulated him. The question had been simple enough:

"How did you know to call me?"

And I answered, without thinking of the repercussions of my answer.

"I was watching."

John pounced on the words, all at once the cold, purposeful man who had killed Jefferson Hope without hesitating; without losing a night of sleep. This was very much Captain John Watson, and I was flummoxed at the change in him.

"Were you?" John's voice was cold.

I nodded slowly, focused on the way John's lips tightened. "Yes."

"Watch me a lot, did you?"

Shit. Panic. I closed my eyes, feeling as though I would vomit. John knew. How could he know? How could he possibly...?

Mycroft.

"I. I did. Yes."

John's laugh was grating to my already painfully stretched nerves. "You sick fuck."

I flinched as though he had punched me. He had known. He had known this whole time and said nothing. No wonder he'd been so furious. No wonder he'd stopped my feeble attempt at kissing him. John was disgusted with me, rightfully, hatefully disgusted with me. I had gone so far into a Bit Not Good that there would be no respite; no recovering John's trust.

"Hours. Mycroft said that you watched me constantly, for hours, Sherlock. Do you know how pathetic that is? You lord above everyone with how brilliant you are- how aloof you are, yeah? But you're not, Sherlock. Content just to fuck off into the sunset and leave little John Watson, poor, sad..." John's words were like knives digging into my heart. "Do you think that I'm that weak? That I need minding like some... some child? I. Am. Not. Weak! You're weak to think-" John broke off mid tirade. He pinched his forehead, looking equally frustrated and appalled at himself. "I know that you don't understand things the same way that normal people do-" I flinched again but John hardly seemed to notice. "-but surely even you can see how- God!" John stopped himself from talking, picking up his mug with shaking fingers. The cheap ceramic clinked against his teeth.

I carefully set down my own mug and tried to step away. Before I could, John grabbed my bicep, pulling me forward, off-balance, so that I crashed into his smaller, sturdier body. Dimly I heard the mug hit the floor, exploding like a small bomb. Within one blink and the next, John had crowded me up against the wall near the door. I was too dumb to react, shocked into immobility by the suddenness of his actions.

I almost collapsed when I felt his mouth on my neck, felt his hand on my throat. John kissed me like he wanted to punish, forcing his tongue into my mouth and tasting all of me, and it was good. So very,very good. Perfect. He kicked my legs apart so that I was even further off-balance, angling his hip so that he was pressing against my rapidly-hardening cock. I moaned, a sound lost in John's forceful kiss. I started to touch his shoulders, but before my hands had fully settled on his body, John twisted my hands up against the wall, holding them with a grip like iron. For a smaller man, his hands were quite strong.

"You watched me get off with that bloke. You let Mycroft spy on me, then watched me yourself. Did you like it? You did, of course you did. Knowing that I was thinking of you whenever I touched myself, probably loving that I cried over you, dreamed about you."

Wait- no. That wasn't...

John's hand cupped me through my jeans, causing me to cry out in shock and want, mind shuddering to a complete halt.

John's hand left my prick, up my stomach under my shirt. I knew that he could feel my heart beating, and I twisted in his grip, desperate for his mouth. I bent down to kiss him. I knew that I didn't have the talent for it that John did- I almost managed to knock myself out when I didn't tilt my head enough- and John's low laugh did nothing to calm the way I was rocking my hips, wanting his hand back on me again. I was desperate. Needy. Stupid with want of the man in front of me.

John's hand rose higher, scraping his finger over my nipple and I couldn't help my gasp of his name. John pulled back and smirked up at me, then frowned as his fingers moved again. Not over my body this time but the pocket of my shirt.

The pocket.

Oh no.

John froze completely, staring at the small packet of powder in his hand. He took a step back.

I tried to speak, but couldn't get words past the blockage in my throat. I watched the emotions flicker across John's face. Shock. Fury. Disgust. Pain. Frantically, I pushed forward, trying again to kiss him. It was my turn to grab his wrist. I didn't even have time to blink before John had flipped me. I was so off-balance that I landed onto the table, sending it crashing to the floor under my weight.

"You... you disgust me." John threw the packet at me. It bounced off my arm onto the floor. I had landed hard enough that it forced the breath from my lungs and I still couldn't move, immobile in the face of John's fury. "Don't you touch me, Sherlock. Just. Don't. Don't fucking touch me, you twisted little fuck. I'm done with this shit. Never touch me again, Sherlock."

And John, my careful, tediously protective best friend, jerked his gaze from where I lay sprawled on the ground in shock, forgetting completely why we had been trapped in this miniscule little flat and stormed out of the door, slamming it so hard behind him that the flimsy lock broke.

I had done it. I had finally found the thing that would cause John to leave me. Not faking my suicide and making him watch. Not confessing to watching John at all hours of the day and night. But the drugs? The drugs that I had purposefully kept on me? The proverbial straw that broke the camel's back; that was what broke John Watson's faith in me.

It took a few heartbeats before I could force my body into action, springing up and running down the stairs after him. I hit the street just in time to see the huge man behind John, intent implicit in the way he reached for him. I had just enough time to cry out a warning before there was a bright burst of agony from the back of my head.

Then nothing.

-Now-

John had only woken up with Sherlock once before, but this was as different from that time as night was to day. The last time (and had it only been a few days ago? Was that even bloody possible?) John had woken up panicked at the thought of Sherlock that close to him. He'd stupidly wanted to cling to his anger, had been disgusted and ... desperately turned on at the thought of Sherlock's attention on him. Had he really cared about John that much? To watch over him?

Mycroft had obviously felt that John should be aware of that fact- telling him in that plummy voice of his that yes, indeed, his younger brother had a few ... idiosyncrasies with which he felt John should be aware.

Idiosyncrasies. Mycroft was a complete and utter sod. He had deemed it best that Sherlock wake up in the tiny flat instead of in a hospital, and John had agreed that that would likely keep him safe if Sherlock couldn't work out where he was. Oh god, he'd been furious. But it wasn't until he'd been locked in that fucking box; choking on his own snot and tears that John had been able to be honest enough with himself to admit that... god. Sherlock.

And now he was here, curled up against John's body like he was part cat. John tilted his head and saw that the great, lanky git was sprawled against and on him, his head tilted awkwardly so that he could share John's pillow. Sherlock was snoring softly. There was even a tiny bubble of drool on the corner of his mouth that John refused to admit was ridiculously endearing. The ginger curls were weird enough that Sherlock didn't seem quite like himself, but the cheekbones were the same. John reached out a finger and touched the plaster on Sherlock's cheek softly, with the barest hint of a touch.

He'd shot Sherlock. Shot at him. He, the crack shot, had thank god- thank god been so out of it that he'd missed his target. Sherlock could have been, John could have...

"Do stop thinking so loudly, John."

John jerked, then met Sherlock's raised eyebrow somewhat shamefacedly. He watched as Sherlock then made a horrible, scrunched face and scratched rather frantically at the dried semen on his stomach, looking utterly disgusted.

"Where are we?"

"Later. Ugh, this is. Good Christ, are we cemented together?!" They both winced when Sherlock pulled away. Clearly, last night they had both been too knackered to clean up as thoroughly as John had thought they had.

"Not anymore."

"Shower. Come."

John didn't miss the fact that even as imperious as Sherlock was, he was careful with John's burn and his shoulder as he poked and prodded and huffed until John was standing under the shower with him, covered more in Sherlock's long fingers than soap suds.

"Will your burn-" Sherlock turned so that John's back was under the spray, holding him so that he wouldn't fall. It felt like utter bliss.

"It's fine. I'll have to wash it with saline later, but the bandage should stick through the shower and keep the soap off the wound."

The erstwhile nurse might have been terrible at reading John's chart (more likely she'd been distracted by the huge, bat-like, broody man in front of her and had made a very simple mistake) but she had packed and bandaged his burn extremely well, using high-grade gauze and tape so that he was as protected as possible.

Sherlock attempted to keep his touches clinical as he washed John, but John had no such compulsion. Having Sherlock tend to him was tremendously satisfying, and John fully intended to enjoy it while he could.

They were both half-hard by the time the shower ended, trading slow, drugging, lazy kisses whenever the mood struck one of them. Sherlock helped John to sit in the rather plush chair and briskly dried him off, frowning at the bruising around John's shoulder.

"Looks worse than it is. Some of that discolouration is from my scar."

Sherlock sniffed, as though affronted that John would need to point this out. John was then utterly astounded when Sherlock leaned forward to kiss the biggest bruise. It was such a sweet gesture that John couldn't breathe for a moment.

Before he could do anything, Sherlock had sprung up, shaking out his wet hair like a dog, and dressing himself in a t-shirt and jeans. The room that they were in was much bigger, and much, much more opulent than the microscopic flat that Mycroft had sent them to. John was perfectly content to sit there naked, and wait for Sherlock to fill him in on his plan. Surely Sherlock had a plan. Sherlock always had a plan.

"I am sure that you are wondering how I found you." Sherlock took a few gazelle strides into the kitchen- a proper kitchen this time, not a mere kitchenette- and began moving things around.

John rested his head on the chair. He hadn't been, exactly, but it would do for now. He was bloody exhausted, and he felt as though he were several paces behind Sherlock, and quickly losing sight of him. Well, he often felt this way, but sitting here, naked in a rather fine squashy chair while Sherlock fussed over him, John could deal.

"You might not be aware that Moran sent me a video of you."

John's eyes popped open. "Wait. Wait, you were kidnapped! He showed me you passed out on the floor!"

Sherlock froze for a moment, the look of guilt on his face so profound that John ached for him.

"I... was. I... escaped. You told me that..." Sherlock shifted his weight, looking very much like a child that had been caught out doing something naughty.

John held up a finger. Sherlock stopped mid-fidget. "If this conversation is going where I think it's going, then I think I'm going to need pants." It took John two tries to get up, and he could feel Sherlock wanting to help him into his boxers, but he managed, limping slightly as he collapsed back into the chair, settling in and looking expectantly at Sherlock. "Now. Yes. I've told you hundreds of times to escape if you ever had the chance. Thousands. You did the right thing."

"How can you say that? I just left you there!" Sherlock roared, slamming the pan onto the hob in his anger.

"Sherlock. If ever there is a human being capable of finding me when I am lost, you are that person. And that's exactly what you did, yeah? You found me. You couldn't have done that if you were still kidnapped. Idiot." John couldn't resist the insult, noting that Sherlock's lips twitched a little in answer. "So you escaped, then what?"

"Moran found me through my phone. I don't know how long he'd had my phone under surveillance."

Bullshit.

John could tell Sherlock was lying from all the way over on his side of the room. Sherlock knew exactly when Moran had taken his phone, but was refusing to tell John. No matter. John knew he could get it out of him later. "Hmm." John made a small agreeing sound, shutting his eyes again as Sherlock carefully didn't meet his gaze. It was silent for a minute, then Sherlock started clattering about in the kitchen again. John peeked through his eyelashes, somewhat astounded that Sherlock even knew how to use a hob.

"He had been two steps ahead of me the whole time. The plan to have you-" Sherlock's voice faltered and cracked. "He knew that I was watching you. Clearly it was not the secret I thought it was." The small bit of self-deprecation made John snort. "He had been working with Mycroft enough to have a high enough clearance to certain files. He knew that I was alive, but needed to draw me out."

"And I was bait."

"And you were bait." Something crashed and Sherlock cursed under his breath. The smell of butter and onions made John's mouth water. "Very well-thought out bait. Mycroft believes that Moran had a plan in place to stop you from actually shooting yourself," Sherlock's voice wobbled slightly, but he continued, "and from there it was just a matter of monitoring me. He was on the detail in Mycroft's house. The bomb was a simple pipe bomb, not remotely up to Moriarty's standards, but well enough for the job, I suppose. There was a crack and the hiss of an egg hitting the butter and John wanted to moan.

"So how did you find me?"

"I'm getting to that." Sherlock sounded petulant at being asked to rush his explanation. John had almost forgotten how moody he got when he was forced to hasten his big reveal. "From there, it was child's play to figure out where we were. He just had to wait until he was up on rotation. Once he had a place, he could put the kidnapping into motion, and take you from me."

Sherlock paused and peeked at the bottom of the egg with a rubber spatula. Sherlock's voice was brittle when he spoke, almost too quietly to hear. "He sent me a video of you. To my phone. My phone was practically the first thing I insisted on having when I showed up on Mycroft's doorstep, and neither of us thought that it might be compromised. So, unforgivably stupid. The video showed you being..." Sherlock's voice broke for real this time, and John couldn't stand it. He was up and limping over to Sherlock as quickly as he could, wrapping his arms around Sherlock from behind. Sherlock stiffened, and John started to step back, forgetting for a moment that Sherlock did not care to be touched, but before he could, Sherlock took a step back so that he was closer to John, pulling his arms tighter around him. It wasn't sexual, but so very, utterly perfectly what John wanted to do, and what Sherlock needed him to do, that neither one of them moved for a moment.

"Shit." The mutter made John smile and he let Sherlock go to rescue breakfast.

John took his time seating himself back in the chair. He understood that Sherlock would need a moment to compose himself, and didn't want to push.

"The video was very graphic of course. You were screaming in one of them, delirious in another. It was obvious that you were drugged. Confused. you kept slurring one thing over and over though. 'My house'."

"My house? But I don't have a house."

Sherlock favoured him with a look so disgusted that John shut up. It was such a Sherlock thing to do, that it heartened John in a weird way, to know that he hadn't ruined everything between them last night.

"Of course you don't. It took me no time at all to deduce that you weren't talking about your house, but were slurring 'Mycroft' and 'warehouse'."

John sat up so suddenly that his teeth clicked together. Now that Sherlock had said that, he could remember. The weird dream. The familiarity of the building, even though he had only been there once, and even then on the second night that he'd known Sherlock. Mycroft had played 'evil nemesis' in a dilapidated old warehouse, and somehow... Somehow...

"Yes. Moran found out the location. Well, more likely that Moriarty found out the location. This whole scheme reeked of his incompetency." Sherlock wiped his hands on a towel and turned towards John, pulling the table closer to where he sat so that he could eat.

"Eat."

John blinked up at Sherlock, not at all certain that he wasn't in some parallel universe somewhere. John thought, rather wistfully, that this must be what Heaven felt like. Whatever force had Sherlock serving his every whim, making him breakfast was... no. That wasn't fair. John knew why Sherlock was taking care of him so well. Sherlock had whispered why into John's sweaty skin just a few hours ago, after all.

But ... now was not the time to deal with that.

The omelette was only a little rubbery, and the jam covered up the burnt spots on the toast rather well. John watched as Sherlock stole John's toast and nibbled at it, even though he loathed marmalade, eyes far away.

"Sowuffahn." Sherlock blinked and raised an eyebrow. John swallowed and tried again. "So now what?"

Sherlock's fingers twitched. Instead of replying, he crossed back to the kitchen and brought John his tea, settling it down carefully on John's table before flouncing over to the bed and flopping down on it in his customary sprawl. His quicksilver gaze landed on John, on John's bandage, before settling on the ratty knapsack and laptop that he had left by the door last evening. Sherlock stretched out an arm and pulled his phone from the drawer on the nightstand. John stopped mid-chew, noticing that the overdramatic twat popped the battery into its place with enough flair to make seasoned thespians roll their eyes. The jingle of his phone being turned on made the food in John's mouth taste like dust.

"So now...? We wait." Sherlock's smile was shark-like. "It don't anticipate that it will take all that long."

TBC!