Note from the author: This is some thing that stemmed from my other story, but didn't end up fitting where I was going. This contains adult themes, so watch yourself.

Enjoy!

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"This," John's voice wavered like a string that needed tuning. Slack, yet taunt enough to reverberate - rough, Early-morning-John, he hasn't had his tea. That didn't feel right, it was as if the far corner of the floor had been propped up by just a few degrees. Off. Not right. Think.

"What is this, Sherlock?"

No, no. It was hardly past midnight. John had gone out and he had kept talking. Bored. There was pacing 7.4 meters away from the couch that Sherlock was strewn out upon, a scarf draped across his eyes. Wanted the dark to think, couldn't be bothered to turn out the lights – switch is in the kitchen. Obviously. Now he removed it: there was a mystery, a case to be solved. He was missing something; It was just there on the tip of his tongue. John had gone on a date hours ago. Rather pointless. Not compatible in the long run. Judging by her deviated palate she snores. The seventh one, if he could recall, it wasn't quite lucid though. The files of each one (Flowers: carnations, cheap but she's too plain to notice. Flattery, really John? Mazeratti's, had they gone there? No. Yes? He should know this.) didn't blink up to the surface all the way, like they were underwater. Odd.

The detective's head lulled away from the back of the cushions to size John up in a level of slothfulness which certainly wasn't deliberate, but possibly read that way. Likely. Things are blurred, that's abnormal. Better not become the blind detective Mycroft would never relent.. "What…" Sherlock enunciated precisely on the 't' - annoyed. "Are you on about now?"

John's free hand clenched, the muscles and sinew of his arm becoming taunt up to his neck line. Trapezius tensing, causing the clavicle to press inward at the throat. His breath was restricted but came in hard puffs. Diaphragm contracting, rib cage visibly down and in – up and out. "Please," John spat. "I'm really not actually an idiot, you know."

Though Sherlock's vision was muddled around the edges like frost-nipped glass, he was precisely aware of the edge of John's state. It was rare for the man's temper to break, but when it did it was frightening on so many levels, even the detective heard the tell tale thudding of fear in his ears. Fear? No, irrelevant. More likely a form of pulsatile tinnitus. Blood rushing up in the vessels of the ear canal. Elevated pressure due to stress, a cocktail of adrenaline and -

John's voice came out hoarse and virtually feral at the end, breaking just slightly. "This, damn it." He brandished the thing Sherlock had sworn he'd tucked away safely on to the top shelf under the craft bath soap Mrs. Hudson had given him for Christmas (before she new better, scented soap, honestly foul) that no one would ever in their right mind actually use for god's sake it had whole heads of marigolds pressed into it and smelled like the elderly women who've lost their olfactory systems and John certainly couldn't reach without a step stool…

But perhaps not…things had gotten a bit blurred after it all.

He might have imagined it in his head.

Surely he would have noted the sound of it clacking against the floor tile.

AH, obvious.

Blurred vision, encumbered movement, dulled mental state. So clear, so simple.

"It's a syringe, John." He blinked and collected the few wits he could. "Someone with your medical education should be aware of that."

Suddenly John lurched forward and grasped him by his robe, wrenching him up from the couch. The stouter man's face was only inches away, veins in his forehead undulating like snakes just beneath the skin.

"Don't."Teeth ground together; The bachelor closed his eyes for a moment of the clock's tick. Not clock, the pulsing of blood. Trying to keep himself together. His eyes flicked up to meet Sherlock's and they blazed. The red was so close. "Don't you dare act all cheeky right now or so help you…" The voice was ominously encroaching on baritone and unlike any Sherlock had ever attached to John Watson. It was dangerous. It was violent - raging. And more importantly, it was bearing down upon him as his beloved microscope would with a sample of the black plague.

And it continued like poison slipping out between lips and slowly sucking into his ears…a growl from an animal poised to strike for given any reason…the man before him flooded this brain with more of the emotion of fear than he'd had since Baskerville. Stupid. He'd overestimated the parameters of the date. Surely by the seventh he'd stay over? Alone in the flat then, nothing to do. So bored. But he'd been very wrong. Will need to research John's frivolous quests for intimacy more thoroughly.

"What." emphasis on the 't', searing and mocking now, "was in this?" John shifted his clutch on the silk cloth that now became Sherlock's bindings, tightening the grip, weighing any given resistance. Soldier. Dark eyes like he'd never seen in his friend before bored into his own, hardly allowing him to breath without some sort of judgment. It was cavernous and ethereal the way John Watson's vocal cords produced his next words – hushed, venomous - echoing around the small space between them like he was everywhere, wavelengths expanding from the sphere of the source around Sherlock's head - down his spine…nervous system set afire…

"What the fuck did you take?"

Shall I continue?