AN: Three words: "married or whatever." By the way, in case you all haven't heard, the Series 2 release date was announced this morning. New Years Day, how exciting.

In the meantime, continue to gorge yourselves on fanfiction and enjoy Chapter 12, in which the boys are married or whatever.

Each step up the stairs to the flat seemed to add another layer to his apprehension. He forced himself to walk, not run. Nothing bad was happening. Nothing bad could be happening. Sherlock was fine, sleeping on the sofa. He was fine. He breathed deeply to calm the pounding of his heart and reprimanded himself again. One step at a time. His legs trembled.

When he finally reached the landing he could no longer restrain his pent-up fear. He threw his weight against the door as he turned the knob, all but stumbling as he crossed the threshold, and was bathed in warm lamplight.

"Please tell me he ate it?" Sherlock queried with devious glee, glancing up from the sheet of paper he had been so intently focused on. He looked better. Not fully recovered, but better. Three hours of sleep had done him good. He had relieved himself of his socks and his belt in John's absence, unbuttoned his cuffs, and had allowed one more undone shirt button than usual.

John was panting slightly, his relief quickly replacing itself with determination. "Where is it then?" He demanded, glancing around the room as though Sherlock would be stupid enough to leave narcotics out in plain sight.

"You were supposed to deliver it to Mycroft, if you've misplaced it somewhere along the way, that's your problem."

"The drugs, Sherlock, not the cake!"

He raised an eyebrow. "Ah… I knew you wouldn't be distracted forever, but I didn't expect you to be so abrupt about it." He dropped the sheet of paper and leaned back into the sofa. "What makes you so sure I have any more?"

"Oh come on, I may not be Sherlock Holmes, but I'm not a bloody idiot."

Sherlock chuckled. "Perhaps you're not," he admitted, "in that case, what makes you think I'll give you everything? We've already established that my capacity for deceit far outstrips your creativity."

John's head tipped back in exasperation. "Can we please not make this a game?" He pleaded, his voice a snarl. "Can you just let this be easy for me, this one thing? Can you just let me care about your well-being?"

"You can't stop yourself from caring about my well-being, you're a doctor. It's what you do." Sherlock decided crassly.

"You have no fucking idea how much I care about you!" All the fear, the pain, the frustration, the anger of the last twenty-four hours burst unexpectedly from his chest in a torrent that cracked his voice and sent an uncontrollable shudder through his body. He swallowed what felt treacherously like a sob and counted back from ten, waiting for his emotions to subside. It was less effective than he had hoped.

Sherlock's reply was quiet, hesitant, and there was an element of stillness to it that was far-removed from his usual character. "Don't I?"

"I just…" he took another breath, well aware that he was doing more breathing than talking and that even so, he was not growing calmer. He crossed the room stiffly and dropped into his chair – Sherlock's chair, technically, but he had commandeered it since he had moved in. "We need to talk."

"We are talking."

"Okay, never mind, scratch that," he snapped, "I need to talk and you need to listen."

Sherlock's expression hardened slightly and he crossed his arms over his chest expectantly. There was a long, tense silence as John tried to sort out all the abstractions writhing in his chest.

"You're right," he said finally, "you're right, I can't help but care. I have some sort of…masochistic compulsion to feel needed," His hands flexed, flattening then curling into a fist. The left was shaking again. "I think that's how I was always so sure that I wanted to be a doctor. I mean, I really do care about people, I want to help people, but there's more to it than that. I'm desperate to...have a purpose, I guess. I want to be important to someone." He glanced up at Sherlock to get a reading on how his speech was going so far and met those piercing, calculating eyes. The detective made neither sound nor movement to the affirmative, but his gaze compelled John to continue.

He looked down, told himself not to lick his lips because he knew it made him look like an idiot, because he knew Sherlock was scrutinizing him like a microscope slide, because he had never really admitted this to anyone, least of all himself, and the right words were so hard to come by.

"When I was sent home to London," he continued, "I wouldn't go to Harry, true enough, but I wouldn't go to any of my old friends either. They offered, but to any of them I would just have been a freeloader, a self-righteous, depressed, ex-army doctor with a fake limp and some serious emotional problems. They didn't need me, they were just being nice. And, well, then I met you. At first, I thought it would just be a matter of putting up half the rent, and that was enough for me, at the time, but then I found out –"

He glanced up again, his anxiety lessening slightly, giving way to something he might have called frustrated affection "and don't take this the wrong way, because you know exactly what I mean – I found out what a brilliant, insufferable child you are." Sherlock's jaw tightened. He went on anyway. "I mean, Sherlock, you can tell where I'm going every morning by the length of my stride, but you can't do your own damn laundry. You can't tie your own tie, for Christ's sake!"

"I'll have you know that I can immediately distinguish a Pratt from a Windsor, even on grainy CCTV footage, yet the knowledge of how to actually accomplish either of those knots has never once proven useful."

"Yes fine, but not remotely the point." John snatched the conversation back from the jaws of digression, and Sherlock grudgingly shut up. "My point, Sherlock, is that I always thought that the reason I liked it here was because you needed me, in whatever small ways. To make a point to Lestrade, to do the shopping, to tie your damn ties." Sherlock shot him a warning look but allowed him to continue. "And I never thought much else about the arrangement, because it's made me happy, generally speaking, and I'm not the sort to question that. But then…last night…happened." He swallowed. "And it made me realise – Sherlock? Wait, what are you doing?"

He had sprung abruptly from the sofa and crossed the room with even more than his usual brusque spontaneity, headed for his bedroom. John didn't even need to see his face to know that something had upset him.

"Sherlock!" he shouted desperately, rushing after him, but he was a few seconds too late, the door had slammed long before he could reach it. He stood, panting slightly and shaking irrepressibly, partly because the declaration he had yet to make was burning a hole in his throat like acid, and partly because he had not forgotten the last time this door had slammed. "Stop it!" He cried, and he would have been loud even if he hadn't had to make himself heard through the door. "Come back and sit down and hear me out, God damn it!" He raised his fist to pound on the door, but to his surprise, it swung open. Sherlock hadn't yet jury-rigged it to lock since John had broken the latch.

The genius in question stood with his back turned, head lowered slightly, and leaning heavily with his hand on the desk chair. "For the record," he snarled dryly, "I hadn't planned on shooting up this evening, so no need to have an episode." He didn't turn around.

"Sherlock, please, just listen –"

"You can move out if you want." His voice trembled, and John was shocked into silence. "I won't stalk you, I won't go back to the drugs to guilt you into coming back. There's a time in my life when I would have, but…" he drew a shuddering breath. "And I won't try suicide or anything like that. I'm not an idiot."

John was so stunned that he very nearly burst out laughing. It wasn't funny, of course, but he felt so strangely giddy.

"You are an idiot," he scoffed, "utterly. You're the smartest idiot I've ever met, but god are you thick."

Sherlock turned to regard his flatmate cautiously. He didn't even bother to hide his look of pained confusion, one that was not at all becoming on him.

"Sherlock," he took a single, hesitant step closer. "I'm going to tell you what I have to say, and don't try to deduce any of it pre-emptively because maybe, just maybe, I'm having a thought that you don't yet fully understand. And regardless, you will bloody well allow me my right to say it to you."

Sherlock stood frozen in anticipation. John inhaled deeply.

"Last night, I should have taken you to the hospital, really should have, but I didn't. Because you asked me to stay with you." He paused, willing his shoulders to relax. "You would think…that this was just a result of that compulsion, that addiction to usefulness that I have, but I realise now that it wasn't. You weren't just a patient for me to wield my expertise on; you've never been just my incompetent flatmate. The reason, the real reason I didn't call an ambulance is because I knew that they would have carted you off for observation and I would have had to pace it out in some hideous sea foam-blue waiting room until 9 a.m. when they allow visitors." He raised his head slightly and waited for Sherlock's anxiously darting eyes to fix on his own. "And I couldn't bear that. I couldn't begin to fathom the notion of being parted from you when I felt you could die at any moment. I was absolutely as useless curled in your bed with you as I would have been in a damn hospital, but that didn't matter. I still wanted to be there. For better or worse, we've become this…symbiotic...unit. We're inseparable, you and I."

Sherlock could no longer maintain eye contact. He scanned the floor wordlessly, his lips parted, betraying little of what he was thinking.

"What I'm trying to say," he resolved finally, running his fingers through his hair, "is that in every imaginable way, I need you. And though you'd never admit it, you need me just as much. We're stuck with each other, so don't" his voice cracked "don't…bloody kill yourself with drugs…please, because…ugh, I'm shutting up... I'll just shut up now." He felt his voice faltering, felt the tightness in his chest, and realised his emotional stamina had run out. He desperately wanted Sherlock to answer him. Anything, he didn't care what he said; he just wanted something to distract him from the tears stinging the corners of his eyes. He lowered his head in the vain hope that he could camouflage his embarrassing spate of vulnerability, but he knew it was pointless.

He heard a soft footstep, then another, and then felt the gentle pressure of Sherlock's slender hand on his left shoulder, the left, the one punctuated by scars. He gave up trying to hide his crying, and the two of them just stood there for a moment, John sobbing gently and Sherlock, for perhaps the first time in his life, glad to be there for it. He gripped a little tighter and waited silently for his friend – his only friend – to expend the remainder of his personal burden, one that Sherlock knew he was responsible for.

"John?"

"Hmm?"

"Wait here." His hand slipped from John's shoulder and he rushed back to the sitting room. John took the opportunity to wipe the tears stoically from his face, but Sherlock returned almost immediately carrying – of all things – the skull. John stared, perplexed, for a moment as Sherlock turned it over and prodded his first and middle fingers into the foramen magnum, where the spine had once connected.

No. There is no way he keeps his drugs in that skull.

He produced a scrap of black felt, in which was wrapped a small pill bottle. "Oral morphine." He explained, offering it to John, who took it silently. He likewise produced two vials of liquid, a small bag of white powder, and another with four purple pills.

"Is that ecstasy?" It was the only coherent question he could form.

"Not my best experiment," he muttered dismissively, then began scurrying around the room, digging out more vials and bags from false bottoms in drawers, a torch with a secret compartment, and the inside of a jacket lapel. By the time he was finished, John had to cup both hands to hold the litany of unlabeled containers that Sherlock had given him.

"The skull?" He asked finally, "really?"

He shrugged. "Seemed appropriately melodramatic."

"No kidding. That's...that's very Sherlock." He sniffed slightly and let a few long seconds slip by. "Here, give us your hands." Sherlock looked confused, but held out his palms, and John, without the slightest hesitation, returned the awkward bundle.

"So…you don't –"

"You trust me, right?" John interjected.

A smile pulled weakly at Sherlock's face, and there was no shade of cynicism to it. "With my life, as I think I've aptly demonstrated."

"Well, I'm trusting you," John decided, resting his hands on his hips "as wholeheartedly as you trust me."

Sherlock shifted his bare feet, clearly unsure of what to do with his amalgamation of drugs. "John, would you –" there was an endearing tremor in his voice, "would you like to have tea on the sofa and watch crap telly with me?"

John smiled broadly; understanding that this was the closest Sherlock would ever come to declaring undying love, and nodded.