The flat is empty, and Sherlock is sulking.

Not an unusual happenstance, but this sulking is rather more than sulking, really. He slams cabinets, throws his lanky body viciously into furniture, viciously jabs at the remote's buttons, curls aggressively (Can one curl aggressively? Apparently so, since Sherlock is making a spectacular show of it.) into the back of the couch.

He can't get it out.

Them out, to be precise. Them, them, those hateful little words, four words, two sentences, two one-letter singular first-person pronouns as subject, two four-letter singular verbs as predicate.

I want.

I need.

He's not offended by the "I"s; it's a common occurrence for him to think of himself. In the same way all of humanity thinks of themselves first, so does he. And while it pains him to think that he is like the mean of humanity in any way, in this he must concede defeat. No, it's the verbs, those damned, despicable, disastrous, delusionary verbs that are the trouble, the root cause of this really spectacular sulk.

I want.

I need.

He's learned to master his body, he knows. It's merely transport now. He does not want food or sleep on a case; his need for such things is drastically decreased by his ignoring his body's wants. His body does what he wants it to, when he wants it to, and that is that. The words "want" and "need" have been filed in the hardest-to-reach corner of his mind, labeled in a folder marked "Other People". Other people want. Other people need. Wanting and needing is beyond Sherlock Holmes. Of course. Other people accept this. They may not understand it; how could they? They, understanding simple logic? Bah! But at least they accept it. He takes pride in not wanting, not needing. In short, Sherlock Holmes does not, will not, and cannot want or need. He has thrown this out of himself.

So, then, why is he in such a spectacular sulk?

He groans, grabs the Union Jack pillow and pulls it over his face. The words pull up to the front of his brain, taunt him, mock him with their crudeness, their inelegance, their infantile wallowing, screaming, grasping greed for more. His body has been mastered, his mind whirrs on, and still. Still he wants. Still he needs.

John.

It's all his fault, he concludes, logic hot and angry and cold and infallible, burning and freezing and choking in his throat. John with the army background and the M.D. and the alcoholic Harry and the bright smile and the willingness to do anything he says, follow him down any road he leads. John who would shoot for him, kill for him, die for him. John who is bright and warm and lovely, so lovely. John who causes this inexplicable turning of worlds inside, who causes him to change, who causes him to –

He can't say it, even in his head, though the words are still there, mocking him. So he writes it out:

I want John. I need John.

He thought the writing might get it out of his head, onto paper, where he might be able to detach from the horror inside himself at wanting, at needing, at needing and wanting another person, to be able to study the situation as if from afar, to find, possibly, a cure. Instead the words stare back at him, now, from two places instead of one. His brain brings the letters to the forefront, rearranges them, "JI han wt. JIe de hn.", but always switch back to the original, "I want John. I need John." In front of his eyes, the paper flutters a little in the breeze from the open window, but the letters lie motionless, black, inky, dead. "I want John. I need John." He groans, puts his head in his hands.

John, John, John.

Why?

The door slams, and he looks up. John stands there, John, John, John, John of the brightness and the smiling and the wanting and the needing, John, always John, why John? He can't answer. He doesn't know.

o.O.o

"Hey, I was thinking we could go out tonight, there's a Thai restaurant, newly opened –" John hangs his coat and turns around, sees Sherlock seated on the couch, looking, for the first time since he's known him, morose.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock slowly looks up at him. His eyes are controlled, but there's a faint hint of despair at the very back that scares John more than anything he's experienced, even in Afghanistan. He's kneeling in front of Sherlock in an instant, searching his eyes, reaching his hand out to touch him. "Sherlock, what's wrong?" A hand gently lands on Sherlock's wrist.

o.O.o

Sherlock's heart is beating very fast.

Sherlock scorns usage the word "very", even in his head. It's a useless word, so imprecise, so illogical, so unquantifiable. What, exactly, is "very"? And then, as John leans in again, brushes his hair away from his forehead, Sherlock thinks that John is very- very soft, very caring, very colorful, very bright and wonderful and lovely, very worried, and as John's hand moves down to brush his jawline, very, very, very close.

"Sherlock?"

He wants to pull away, to run, to hide within his typical self, to deride and complain and insult. He wants to lean further into the touch of hand against cheek, soft, very, very soft, slow, gentle, kind. He wants, and it scares him. Even worse (and what manner of word is "worse"? How is "worse" quantified? What does "worse" mean? His vocabulary is devolving by the moment, it appears.), on the very day, in the very hour he falls from his pedestal and admits to wanting, he finds himself caught between wants, pulled two very opposite directions. He looks up at John, helpless. John stares right back, gaze steady and strong and unquantifiably very in tone. They stay like that for a moment— Sherlock, mouth hanging open a little, eyes wide and wanting and irrevocably locked on John's; John's hand on Sherlock's knee, gaze not questioning, not asking, simply giving and open and altogether very very.

Sherlock blinks. John blinks.

Sherlock cannot decide what his course of action should be, and since "cannot" is another word stashed in his hardest-to-reach "Other People" file, and he has almost never suffered the indignity of using any words from this file on himself, he rushes to a conclusion in order to spare himself the humiliation of yet another word being taken out of the file and used to describe him today. Before he finishes this thought, before John can back away, before Sherlock takes another breath, Sherlock decides – decides what? Decides something, anything – and launches himself at John's chest.

They sway a bit; John was unprepared for such an event, but Sherlock plants his feet (knees, really; John was already kneeling, if he wasn't, they'd have fallen over) and steadies them, head still pillowed firmly on the other man's chest. He feels John's arms wrap around him. Sherlock breathes deeply as John's hands begin to rub in wide, comforting circles on his back, and indistinct rumbly murmurs vibrate through John's chest and sound very close to Sherlock's ear. Sherlock thinks that his hasty decision is acceptable, and must be logical if it produces such agreeable results. He realizes that the words, the blasted words that have haunted his head all day, are gone, and revises his previous statement: the results are not merely agreeable, they are in fact wonderful. As he closes his eyes and nuzzles farther into John's shirtfront, Sherlock adds another very to the list of John's very characteristics:

John is very warm.

o.O.o

A/N: Hey, guys! I own nothing except a bottle of Tabasco. Definitely not BBC Sherlock, nor the characters found therein. So... yeah. I wasn't sure how to get around the small bit from John's point of view. I'm always slightly nervous when writing Sherlock's head, because it's SUCH a head. This is just another of Sherlock's eventual acceptance of John into his life as more than a convenience. It's going to take a bit for him to admit, even to himself, how important John is to him, but he's getting there. And once he does- well, Sherlock doesn't really like to wait, does he? He decides, he does- one of the things I like about him.