We're past the halfway point now, so maybe we'll start to see some progress.

Harriet didn't come back to 221B until 9 pm. John fussed over her, but Sherlock knew she'd just fallen asleep during her latest excursion to Tesco. "Well, I'm still freaking tired," she said, "so I'm going to go to bed early, if that's alright with you two gentlemen."

Sherlock nodded, turning back to his experiment. Molly had brought over some hydrogen peroxide earlier, which was one of the reasons he knew Harriet had been detained. He'd purposely sent Molly over to talk to either Clara or Harriet and attempt to remold and reform their marriage.

For some reason that probably involved John, he didn't like seeing Harriet unhappy. She deduced that he was unhappy, which was so uncommon, John had only done it a few times since he'd been here. Harriet was more like her brother than she thought. She wanted to make sacrifices for other people, she was relentless, and didn't give up. Of course, Sherlock wasn't going to mention this to either sibling, for fear of a massive row. His head was aching a little, and he was sure it would get worse if prompted.

"Oh, and Sherlock?"

He turned back to her. "Yes, Harriet?"

"Thank you."

He smiled. "You're very welcome."

She wiggled her fingers in a goodbye wave of her hand, and went upstairs to the spare room. Harriet had gotten tired of sleeping on the couch, and she told Sherlock privately that she wanted him and John to have their space (at this, she winked, and Sherlock didn't understand that).

Sherlock watched her go with the smile slightly fading. She didn't know that their relationship wasn't real, but she was perceptive, so shouldn't she have picked up on it? Sherlock's brow furrowed a little. And, he still was working on why Moriarty hadn't hit Harriet with the Memory Toxin, as he called it. Harriet knew about him and his impact on John's life, so why hadn't she been targeted?

Maybe Moriarty didn't think she was important, like Molly.

Oh, Moriarty was clever, but not as clever as Sherlock! He laughed quietly, turning back to his experiment and putting it in the fridge for the night.

"Darling? What was that about?" John moved forward and wrapped his arms around Sherlock from behind.

"I guess I gave her hope that she and Clara would work out. Because Harriet didn't leave her wife because she was unhappy, she left because she knew she was making Clara unhappy. She's rather sacrificing." He moved John around 180 degrees to face him. "Much like you," he breathed, hoping John wouldn't hear.

"I sacrificed a lot in the war, but you didn't know me then," John said. "Is that what you mean?"

The corner of Sherlock's mouth turned up in an almost-smile. "You're asking the correct question, but I can't give you the correct answer. I'm sorry."

John ran a hand over Sherlock's shoulder, a finger tracing its contours. It was like he was mapping out Sherlock, as if he were a new and foreign land just being discovered. "Okay." He kissed Sherlock lightly on the cheek. "Mystery Man."

"Am I a mystery?" Sherlock wondered aloud. "Is that why you stay? Because I'm a puzzle? Is it because I'm different? Because I know there's a gun in your bedside table and I'm not frightened or repelled by it? Why do you stay?"

John just looked at him calmly and pressed another kiss to his temple. "Somewhere in my head says I need to. It says I need to be here."

"But do you want to be here is the question." Sherlock couldn't comprehend why John would want to live with a high-functioning sociopath, date one, and not know who they really were. He didn't understand that, and he detested not understanding.

The doctor smiled (when did he ever stop smiling at Sherlock?) and made a line of kisses up Sherlock's jaw. "I want to be here. You have something I've never seen before that I quite like. You won't get rid of me that easily."

Sherlock hummed, tapping the rhythm of a new song on John's neck. The music came faster and faster these days, flitting through his head like atoms through space. "I can't be rid of you. You seem to be my new addiction, and as you are much healthier for me than cocaine or cigarettes, I'll just have to keep you."

John looked up at him. "You were addicted to cocaine once?"

"He took it away. I didn't need it anymore." Sherlock shifted his gaze. "But when I...left...I went back to it, but then I told myself he would have hated it, so I quit, for good. I deleted all the names of my dealers, and their contact information. I was quite thorough, but I knew if something came up, I would find it again. But I found you instead, and you are very permanent. You, John, are a different sort of addiction. It seems I can only exchange one addiction for another."

"But I can't hurt you, at least."

Sherlock's face broke into a slightly wistful, slightly bitter smile. "He never meant to either."

John leaned forward when he heard this, carefully, elegantly taking Sherlock's lips captive. These kisses were gentle, quiet, speech without words, music without a tune, a painting without a title, but more beautiful than Sherlock Holmes had ever encountered. He wondered, just then, what could have happened had he let his best friend in. Maybe, Sherlock thought, it would look like this.

Soon the press of lips upon lips overtook all of Sherlock's outer senses. His mind palace stored no recollections or even formed memories of what he saw in the dilating of John's pupils, the erratic beat of his heart, the heat that spread through both their skins, but this emblazoned itself in every corner, making itself unable to be deleted. Sherlock could keep that forever.

The scene sped up, John's hands moved everywhere, Sherlock's mind engraved the details of the lines of feeling John tracked up his limbs, and the detective's last thought before he sunk deep below the surface of illogic and want was that he was doomed again, but he didn't care.

John woke up an hour later, curled around Sherlock. Their bodies were entwined like the curves of a mandala, John and Sherlock and Sherlock and John until he barely knew where the detective ended and he began. Close. So close.

"I think I'm falling in love with you," he murmured, but Sherlock didn't stir.

Sherlock's subconscious knew that he needed to have conscious thoughts, so he woke, not an hour and a half after. He unwound himself from the doctor, knowing exactly which movements to make as to not disturb him, taking just the sheet, and leaving the comforter that he rarely used behind. The flat was entirely quiet, only the sounds of London at night fuzzing their way in. Sherlock itched for his violin again, for the music that could organize his thoughts.

First things first: a list of the facts.

Sherlock and John weren't drunk, nor high; they were both fully sober when they had...slept together? No, too undefined a term. Had sex? Sounded ugly to his mind, which was rebuilding, since John had the unintentional habit of running through the palace hallways like a madman. Made love? Sherlock winced. No, it wasn't that either. It really couldn't be, for a variety of reasons. Oh well, he'd find something that fit.

He moved his experiments over to the fridge, all of them, even the heated ones. Heat. Lots of heat. Sherlock mentally slapped himself. He was here to make himself a cup of tea, and wander around London for an indeterminate amount of time until his thoughts could be controlled.

Sherlock set the kettle to boiling, making sure to watch it carefully so it wouldn't whistle. He got out his favorite kind of tea, mint, and the sugar, which he sprinkled liberally in the cup before taking the hot water off the stove and pouring it and the tea in as well. John always made better tea than him, probably because Sherlock calculated his drinks, while John was perfectly imperfect about the whole endeavor. He drained the entire cup, even though it scalded his tongue and throat, hoping for the unpleasant sensation to drown out his thoughts.

As soon as he put the cup in the sink, rinsing it out, as he was sure someone would appreciate, Sherlock walked slowly to the thankfully vacated couch and sat down, rearranging the sheet around himself. His and John's relationship was surely never going back to the way it used to be. Now that this had happened, an entirely unmeant, accidental thing, John was either going to make him leave, since Sherlock had promised they were just pretending to date, pretending to be in love, which turned into a complete lie for the detective, or... Or...

Sherlock's brow furrowed. There seemed to be only one option. Sherlock had broken his promise to John and however much John did, Sherlock was still at fault. John was always the good, kind, sensible one that never hurt anyone, and Sherlock had a recurring habit of running through the streets of London destroying things in his path to the cases' ends. It was obvious what was going to happen, if he thought back to the beginning.

Sherlock made a decision: he was going to leave before John had a chance to leave him. He was going to save everyone involved a great deal of pain, except himself, but that didn't matter at all. As he searched through his mind palace to make sure there weren't any other options, John walked into the sitting room.

He was fully dressed, in a shirt Sherlock had seen many times, but the combination of the jeans and shirt was the same as...some other night. Well, day. John didn't look at Sherlock awkwardly, like he thought he would, but with a sort of laughter in his eyes. Childlike. Sherlock blandly noticed he'd left a pile of his clothing on the coffee table, a black . He grinned slightly, looked Sherlock over, down and up, and down again, where the grin widened slightly.

Sitting next to him, John said, "Are you wearing any pants?"

"No," Sherlock answered cautiously.

And, somehow, John began to laugh. It sounded very nice, better than music Sherlock could create, but he had no idea why John was laughing. Wasn't this situation serious at all?

"Ah, in Buckingham Palace, okay." John laughed a bit more, and then said, "I'm seriously resisting the urge to steal an ashtray."

Wait.

"Are you wearing any pants?" John had obviously been plucked straight from the hiker case and the windblown quality of his hair suggested in a helicopter.

"No," Sherlock answered.

A moment passed, and the two men burst out laughing uncontrollably. "In Buckingham Palace, okay," John said, breathing heavier. "I'm seriously resisting the urge to steal an ashtray."

John was remembering.

"John?" Sherlock asked. This was purely for data collection purposes, he told himself. "Do you know who Irene Adler is?"

The doctor looked like he was wracking his brain. "The name sounds familiar, but I don't know it. Why?"

Sherlock leaned over John and wrapped his arms around the shorter man. "Is something wrong, Sherlock?" John asked worriedly.

"No. It'll be gone soon." The detective held John close to him, knowing that he wouldn't remember for long. There were things that needed to be said to this John before the other John that he undoubtedly screwed everything up with came back. "You know, I love you. It may seem like I don't every time I hurt someone, but I do. Don't ever forget that."

John pulled him back. "What is this all about? Are you drunk? I've never seen you drunk, but have you drank anything strange? Maybe the guards slipped you some sort of sedative."

Sherlock sighed. "Of course, you see but do not observe. No smell of alcohol on me, and I just told you something I've never said to a single other person. Please believe me."

Ever the medical officer, John began to examine Sherlock, making him stick out his tongue and running a flashlight back and forth in front of his eyes. "John, this is unnecessary."

"No, it's not. This isn't like you at all, and it's worrisome."

"John," Sherlock said, putting as much feeling into it as he could.

John stopped analyzing his supposed symptoms, but was in the position to go back to it. "What, Sherlock?"

Sherlock quickly sealed his lips over John's, softly, trying not to scare him. "I'm sorry for everything I'm going to do to us." He stood up, taking his sheet with him, and escaping into his room. He prayed John wouldn't follow him, and slid down to the ground in front of his door, knees to his chest.

Huzzah, now John wondered what on Earth was wrong with him. "That's why I apologized, John," he whispered, with a single, hysterical laugh that came with a single tear. He suddenly felt so exhausted. Sherlock really needed to sleep, especially since it was better than any other options at that point. The cigarettes were gone anyway.

Harry heard noises from below soon after she went to bed. She grinned inwardly; her brother, although a bit uptight, was quite the fox. His boyfriend had fallen prey to the traditional John Watson seduction. She fell asleep after the noises stopped.

When she woke up again, in the middle of the night, she knew something was up. Harry didn't know how she knew, but she needed to go down the stairs. Peeking through one of the little holes in the door, mostly from acid explosions, Sherlock had told her, she could barely make out the detective guy in just a sheet while her brother sat next to him. "In Buckingham Palace, okay. I'm seriously resisting the urge to steal an ashtray."

Sherlock looked cautious and hopeful, but he choked the hopeful to ask Johnny, "Do you know who Irene Adler is?"

Harry did, nearly melted at the name, but John shook his head. "The name sounds familiar, but I don't know it. Why?" Harry was in far too much of a daze to hear what happened next, something about Johnny wondering if Sherlock had gone nuts, but she did hear the last part.

Sherlock kissed John like he wasn't supposed to, like there were warning signs all over him. "I'm sorry for everything I'm about to do to us." He stood up and went off, John in total shock. Harry used the spare key to open the door and let herself in. So this wasn't about Irene Adler, dammit.

"Johnny?"

John looked over, surprised, and not really happy to see her. "What are you doing here? I thought you were getting a new flat. Did I even tell you where I lived?"

Harry shook her head. "Doesn't matter. What matters is that man really does love you, whether your thick head chooses to accept that or not. And if you've done anything to hurt him, you're hurting yourself more." She stalked out of the flat, slammed the door, and went back upstairs. That'll show him, she thought, crawling under her covers again.

John woke up on the couch, fully clothed, with a terrible feeling in his chest. This wasn't where he fell asleep.

I tried my best to keep it a T-rating. Read + review!