Exploring Sexuality

A/N: So apparently this will be a biweekly update with school… But I haven't forgotten about you, I promise. The reviews and favorites and follows are always warmly received xoxo

Ch. 19

The cab ride was passed in an almost tense silence as Sherlock thought and John watched. It seems like it was months, not mere days since he had found Sherlock alone in that room, and longer still since they shared their first time together. It was about half past eleven when they got back to 221B, and even this morning seemed far away.

Sherlock bounded up the stairs without waiting for John, and was tearing the flat apart when John got to their living room after paying the cabby.

"Sherlock?" he asked curiously, hanging his jacket up.

"I need a cigarette, where are my cigarettes?" Sherlock demanded in response without looking up from the mess he was making by the bookshelf.

John sighed. "You quit, remember? We threw them all out."

"No, there has to be one, I definitely left one…" Sherlock mumbled, shaking his head determinedly.

"And over my dead body will you light it when you find it," John replied easily. But Sherlock went stock still and he frowned. "What is it?"

Sherlock shook his head, looking more like he was trying to clear his head than disagreeing. Nothing," he said firmly, half tidying up the mess he had made before flopping sown on the couch resignedly, not looking at John.

John sighed again, his frown deepening. He sat down beside the other and was faintly surprised when he curled up against John, practically sitting in his lap. "You've been even weirder than usual today," John said softly, wrapping his arms around the other. "Is it the case? Mycroft? Donovan? What happened at the house?"

"E: All of the above," Sherlock mumbled into John's chest.

John nodded and hesitated a second. "How can I help?" he asked, knowing how the detective felt about receiving help.

"You can't do anything, John!" Sherlock half shouted, half groaned. "You can't fix it; you can't fix me."

"That's because you're not broken," John replied after a very short, stunned silence. "I don't have to fix you, I just don't like seeing you so miserable. It's unsettling."

Sherlock didn't respond, only clung to John as if he were all he had left. "Make it stop," he mumbled after a couple of minutes.

"Make what stop?"

"This," Sherlock said, gesturing vaguely. "The burn, the emotions, the weakness. Make it all stop. I can't… it's too much." He still wouldn't look at John.

It took John a minute to process that. "It will pass," he assured, calling up all the medical knowledge he could remember about illicit drugs. "It's just part of the come down. You'll feel pretty bad for a while."

But Sherlock was shaking his head, face pressed against John's chest. "This is different… Worse," he insisted.

And then John didn't know what to say or do, because he was out of his depth, and they didn't know for sure what they were dealing with, no matter what Sherlock's blood test results said. "Can you tell me, so I can try to help? Can you describe it?" he asked coaxingly.

Sherlock curled up in a ball against John, wrapping his arms around the shorter man's waist as he thought. "Bad. I just feel bad. Slow, physically and mentally. My limbs feel heavy. Just… bad."

John nodded and rubbed a soothing hand up and down Sherlock's back. "Sad? Lonely?" he prompted, remembering how bad some come downs were.

"Both," Sherlock whispered. "Low."

Nodding again, John tapped: It's okay, I'm here. I've got you. Aloud, he just repeated what he had said earlier. "It will pass."

"I've been high before, John. This is different," he insisted. Then he went very quiet, as if realizing what he had just said. Admitted. Explicitly. He knew, logically, that John already knew, but it was different having it said so blatantly. He waited, for John to call him out on it, for him to scorn him and think poorly about him. But John didn't. Of course he didn't.

"Do you want to get your blood tested again? I'm sure they'd let you do it yourself so you couldn't miss anything," John said matter-of-factly, having felt how tense Sherlock had become in his arms. Relax, he tapped gently.

Sherlock's head snapped up, and he looked at John like he was a genius. "That's it! They had to have missed something! Stupid. Of course, they would only find what they were looking for." He jumped up, grabbing his coat and shrugging it on before looking back at John. "Coming?"

John smiled a little, snatching his book up from the coffee table to keep him occupied while the other worked. "Of course."

Mike was a bit reluctant at first and grumped good naturedly but let Sherlock use the equipment without any real protests. He had John take his blood, then ran it through the machine, looked at it through a microscope and a multitude of other things. John let him work in peace, and when he got bored waiting for the results, he read over John's shoulder. Then he paced, and read some more, and checked the test, and paced some more. He stared at John silently for a couple minutes, and sighed dramatically when John didn't look up.

"Yes?" John questioned, raising an eyebrow at Sherlock.

"I want to try something when we get home, if you don't mind," he said.

John gave him a look that clearly meant 'that's all you wanted to say?' and 'could you be any less clear?' but shrugged. "Sure," he agreed. "Do I get a hint?" he added, smiling.

Sherlock paused, seriously considering it. "We talked about it in a round-about way the other day," he said vaguely, watching John almost nervously.

Thinking back on the past few days, too much had happened for John to guess at what Sherlock could want. "That wasn't very helpful, but okay," he teased.

Sherlock smiled, relaxing, and leaned down to kiss John. "I'm bored," he said when he pulled away.

John looked at the clock past Sherlock's shoulder. "Do you want lunch? It's half past one." He looked over to the faint humming of Sherlock's test running. "How much longer until the results come back?"

"Eighty seven minutes, twelve seconds," Sherlock replied a bit grumpily. He hated waiting; he wanted answers now. He wasn't hungry, but lunch might distract him. "Can we go to the Indian place off Park?"

John nodded and marked his book, setting it on the desk and taking Sherlock's offered hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. "If you pick the place, you have to eat something."

Sherlock huffed dramatically, holding John's hand tight. "Since when?"

"Since now."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but nodded. "Fine," he said, walking with John back out onto the street. He was restless and fidgeted throughout the cab ride. It took John exactly three minutes to ask. Sherlock wondered if he had counted.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't want to talk about it." He didn't. Didn't want to explain how he felt to John, didn't know what he was even feeling to explain it to himself. And it was maddening. He needed the results back. Needed it all to stop so he could think.

John contemplated pushing the issue, because something was very clearly bothering Sherlock, but decided against it. He just held the other's hand a little tighter. Sherlock continued to fidget tensely the rest of the way there.

At the restaurant, they sat in a booth in the corner. Sherlock sat so close to John their knees touched, and still fidgeted restlessly. He ordered chicken curry and ate half of it. Then he deduced people's life stories quietly to John as he finished the spicy soup he had ordered. Two women and one man were cheating, and all three of them were here with the person they were cheating with. One man had just gotten out of the army and planned to propose to his girlfriend that night. She liked Indian, but he hated it. The owner was in debt due to compulsive gambling, but he hasn't told his wife they might need to close the restaurant because of it.

John listened intently at each new deduction, not having to fake the praise that always came out of his mouth. He set a hand on Sherlock's thigh to stop him from bouncing it. "That was incredible."

Sherlock scoffed and could only stay still for a little while before he started bouncing his leg again. "It's all right in front of you, John. You just-"

"-have to observe. Yeah," John finished for him, kissing his cheek briefly. "So I've been told."

Sherlock smiled a bit, looking down to John's empty bowl. "Ready to go?"

John nodded. "Will your tests be done?" he asked, taking out his wallet to pay.

Sherlock kissed his cheek and gave the waiter his card instead, nodding. "By the time we get back it should be," he said, smiling a little. "My treat."

John rolled his eyes but smiled contently. "Thank you, then." Sherlock only paid if he specifically took John out, or if he knew he was being particularly difficult. It was one of his ways of apologizing without actually having to say 'I'm sorry.'

Sherlock nodded again in way of reply, slipping his card back in his own wallet when the waiter returned He took John's hand as they left, holding it tight in the cab the rest of the way back to Bart's.

"If we can find what it is, Donovan won't have to go in, right?" John asked as he paid the cabby, taking Sherlock's offered hand as they walked back in.

"Theoretically," Sherlock agreed after a small hesitation. He didn't say that they should let her go in anyway 'just to be sure,' because he was fairly sure that was a bit Not Good.

"That'll be good, then," Jon said, truly relieved. He didn't want anyone else to need to put themselves in that position, least of all for this case. If Sherlock could find it with his tests, that would be wonderful.

John stopped on their way to say hello again to Mike as they walked in, Sherlock already heading straight for the computer. John told him briefly about the case, and Mike nodded understandingly and told him to be careful. John promised they would and bid his friend goodbye, going down the hall a bit to where Sherlock was. He almost ran into the man in the doorway, and John instinctually smiled. "Did you find it?"

Sherlock wordlessly pulled John the rest of the way into the room before practically slamming the door and pushing John against the wall. His hands held John's shoulders tightly, and his eyes were squeezed shut. He dropped his forehead so that it rested against John's and took two deep breaths. "Talk to me."

That gave John more of an answer than a simple yes or no would have anyway, and he gently placed his hands on Sherlock's hips. And he stared to talk. The first thing that came to mind was what Sherlock had wanted to do when they got back to Baker Street, so he speculated aloud about that to himself for a while, talking softly. He said that they could do whatever Sherlock wanted to take his mind off things, something he very rarely said, for obvious reasons.

Then he talked about how he would need to do the shopping in the next couple of days and other mundane things like that. Slowly, Sherlock's grip on his shoulders loosened, and he pulled John into a fierce hug. John was surprised to say the least, but he returned the embrace nonetheless. "This case is really difficult for you, isn't it?" he said quietly, rubbing Sherlock's back.

"I can't think, John. It's driving me mad," the detective replied. "And this is the worst I've ever felt after, even if the come down was one of the easiest. And you," he continued, taking John's face in his hands. "You wonderful person, you just keep telling me that it's going to be okay, and that I'll figure it out. You have so much faith in me, and you're brilliant, even if you're two days late and it's out of my system already. And bloody Mycroft won't let me work the case properly and the Yard is going to screw it all up and then I'll never figure it out and-"

"Sherlock," John cut him off softly, looking up at the other. "First, it is going to be alright, and you will figure it out, even if you're only working with what the Met's collected. Second, did you just compliment me? Twice? In less than a minute?"

"It's been known to happen, on occasion," Sherlock replied with the realest smile he could manage. Because John was going to help him through this.

John grinned, kissing Sherlock's cheek briefly. "Are you sure you're alright?" he said only a little more seriously.

Sherlock rolled his eyes in the 'stop being unbearably dim, John' way that he did. "I rather thought the point of that little outburst was saying I wasn't," he said a bit more sharply than he had intended.

"They're emotions, love. It happens," John responded with a tiny smile. "I know you hate them, but they're normal."

"Don't placate me," Sherlock grumbled, resting his chin on the top of John's head momentarily. John was warm, familiar. Friendly. "Can we go home?" he whispered. Again. "I grabbed your book."

"Of course."

A/N: So there really is a place off Park in London, England if you (cared) wanted to try it, though I didn't actually look at the menu. Most of the reviews said it sucked anyway.

This chapter is unbeta-d, so sorry for any typos.