Probability of Accord
By: TamsinBailey

Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, no infringement intended.

The wanting beat inside. Like a pulse. Rushing in the dark torrent of his veins. Beat, beat, beat. It would win in the end. Because the wanting was endless, and his will was finite.

No, he told it. An experiment. The books said it was a stain inside him. A separate entity. He would command it. There was no response. No silky justifications hissed into his brain. Nothing whined back in wordless animal need. Just the endless endless endless wanting.

Not alive after all. No dark wings or ink blots living inside him. "Rubbish," he said aloud. A mistake. John looked up from his paper.

"What?"

Sherlock rubbed his temple. It was all so fucking tedious. "Nothing."

John accepted that, though he probably wasn't interpreting it the same way.

"I'm bored."

John sighed, and folded his paper in a way that was meant to be huffy. Sherlock put his fingertips in front of his smile.

"Yes, well. What do you expect me to do about it?"

"Entertain me, perhaps?"

"For God sakes, you're an adult. Sort of. Can't you entertain yourself?"

Sherlock flapped it away. Beneath comment.

"Well," John sallied again, "don't you at least have that experiment to run?"

Did he? He slung a leg over his chair and considered. There were the frog eggs, but all hopes for those had been dashed. The thumbs were ages ago. Goldback's conjecture could go for a game of soldiers. Today was not the day for mathematics.

"No," he said.

Behind his stomach the wanting found his own natural resonance. Aeroelastic flutter. He would torsion apart like that bridge in America. He stood. He would go out. Going out was not automatically giving in.

"Sherlock," John said to his reopened paper. "Clothes."

He looked down. Indeed, there were no clothes. No proper clothes. Just sleeping things. It all seemed too much. He sat down. He put his leg back over the chair. He watched his foot bob. John's paper turned.

"Heroin. That old sweet song."

"Mycroft!" Sherlock accused the room at large.

"Oh give me some credit," John snapped, paper crunching into his lap. "It could hardly be cocaine. Your brain would explode."

This was new. This was interesting. Had John, stolid, vaguely stupid John just deduced something?

"The brain can't explode. It's much too wet. Not Mycroft?"

"I'm a doctor, Sherlock. A combat medic. I've even been shot myself, you arse. I know what I'm about and I'm not quite as stupid as you think I am."

"You thought the brain could explode."

John's finger tapped the arm of his chair. Sherlock grinned hard at him.

"You don't need drugs."

"False. Life amongst the gibbons is much improved by drugs."

"Undoubtedly true." John said.

That was a pause. Generally at this point there was a lecture. Instead there would be a question. Questions implied conversation. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a conversation. "No tiresome moralism? No little paper pamphlets?"

"You don't need drugs, you just want them." John gave him some sort of significant look, then he picked up his rumpled paper and shook it loose.

"Mycroft positively delights in lectures," Sherlock said, imagining the flapping and whinging his brother could produce. Also because he wanted to have the last word.

The paper remained upright and silent. Sherlock looked at it. His flatmate was supposed to be equally functional. A high bulk item, made to bring income to the owner and small bits of limp news to the public. Not supposed to intuit, even using such abominable heuristics, any piece of Sherlock's own history. Certainly not a sharp piece of that history.

Behind the dark pulse of the drugs, Sherlock felt another internal sparking. It was acute interest. In John Watson.

FIN

A/N: Hello you beautiful, unknown readers. I enjoyed writing this. I hope you enjoyed reading it. A particularly hello to anyone who gave this fic a chance, even if you'd prefer a Bones or NCIS story.

41° 22' 20"N, 072° 05' 40"W (I've been beached. Three years of land. Cadets? The pain, the pain)