Author's Note: This story, at some points, will contain depictions of violence and gore, along with mentions of sexual abuse and drug usage. These scenes will be marked at the top, and are done in a way as to depict them as tastefully as possible. I apologize if this is offensive to anyone, but I promise that the story as a whole will not dwell upon these points.

John had just returned from his job at the clinic, to find his flat seemingly empty.

"Sherlock, I'm back," the doctor called, and was surprised to receive no answer. He checked his phone, again gaining no clue to his mysterious flat-mate's whereabouts.

That was unusual.

Sherlock rarely left the flat at all, and when he did he almost always told John or Mrs Hudson, if anything to drag them along.

"Sherlock?" John listened carefully this time.

There.

A faint tapping noise from outside the window. Outside the window? John rushed over to the sound to see Sherlock, in his dressing gown, sitting precariously on the edge of the fire escape.

The doctor shook his head and opened the window.

"Sherlock, what are you doing out here?"

The detective turned towards his blogger, his nose and cheeks red from the cold. "It was an experiment, obviously. Why else would I be sitting out here in the blasted cold in my dressing gown?"

The doctor looked around him and smirked. "Get locked out?"

The detective glared at him firmly, but said nothing.

"Come on then, in you get. I'll make some tea."

Sherlock crawled forward in the fire escape, pulling himself through the window. He stumbled slightly, his limbs numb from the cold.

John caught him, his hands resting gently around Sherlock's middle as he steadied the taller man.

There was a pause, the two of them frozen by the touch, before Sherlock pulled back and smoothed the wrinkles in his clothes.

"Tea?" John asked.

Sherlock nodded.

The doctor walked to the kitchen, trying to clear his head.

He and Sherlock had touched like that dozens of times before, so why would he react like this now? He set to work, filling the kettle and setting it to boil.

Sherlock watched John puttering around the kitchen curiously.

He had experienced a physical reaction to the blogger's touch, one that he couldn't place. His pulse had quickened, his breathing had become shallow. He was sure his pupils had dilated, and he had even felt a small reaction in his groin.

The signs were undeniable, yet the genius did not want to heed them. A physical relationship was something that he had never engaged in, never really considered engaging in. He knew the mechanics, sure, how the whole process worked in a varying number of scenarios. But all of his knowledge was theoretical.

Feelings, emotions, they were something that he had even less experience with. Yet there was something, a soft warmth in the pit of his stomach, when he thought of the doctor that he couldn't place.

The whistling of the kettle shook the detective from his thoughts abruptly, and he quickly flopped himself into his favourite chair.

John tried to remember his mother's word on how to make tea. 'A pinch per person and an extra to steep.'

He pulled the tin of tea leaves from the cupboard and groaned when he saw the severed fingers nestled in the tin.

Sighing, the doctor got out instead two tea bags from their container and tossed them into the mugs. He loathed the things, but any tea was better than no tea.

He heard the kettle whistle, followed by a thump from the living room. The doctor glanced over to see Sherlock sprawled over his chair, legs over one side and head over the other. He swallowed hard and set back to work, pouring the water into the cups and carrying the tray to the living room.

"Here you are then."

Sherlock glanced up at the doctor, and for a brief second, John swore that he saw Sherlock's mouth twitch at the corner. As quickly as it might have been there, it was gone.

"Thank you." Sherlock took his mug and sipped it, letting the warmth from the bitter drink spread through him.

"So, care to tell me how you managed to get yourself trapped on the fire escape?"

The detective glared at the doctor once more, but John could see the faintest of pink tingeing his cheeks. "A miscalculation. I assumed that our fire escape was actually functional. I did not anticipate its poor design."

John smirked again. "Care to share this grievous flaw?"

Sherlock could tell that John was teasing him, but he felt no anger towards the doctor. In fact, that warmth from before seemed to be spreading. Sherlock dismissed it to the tea.

"The latch in the ladder was rusted closed. I'll talk to Mrs. Hudson about it later."

John nodded. "That still doesn't explain why you couldn't just crawl back in through the window."

Sherlock swallowed another mouthful of tea, and looked at the doctor's hands. "It fell shut."

John chuckled and shook his head. "You forgot to prop it open."

Sherlock nodded and kept his gaze down.

John saw that Sherlock was obviously embarrassed. He nudged the detective's foot with his hand.

"Sherlock, it was an honest mistake."

The detective glanced up, his breath hitching slightly at the contact of John's hand.

"It was a careless oversight, one that I should not have made."

John nodded, knowing that Sherlock did not want his comfort. Against his better judgment, the doctor decided that the best thing to do was to change the subject.

"Why were you out there anyway?"

Sherlock sat up in the chair, swinging his legs around and knocking John's mug onto his lap. The doctor hissed as the hot liquid seeped through his trousers, and he leapt up, peeling off his trousers without a second thought. He used them to dab the liquid from his pants, not noticing how Sherlock had frozen in place, nor how the normally composed detective was gazing at him with glazed eyes.

"Geez, Sherlock, these were new."

The complaint drew Sherlock around, and he quickly set his own mug down on the table. "It's hardly my fault you couldn't keep your mug from dumping into your lap. Maybe if you sat normally."

John bristled, and folded his arms defensively across his chest.

"Me sit normally? I wasn't the one who was draped over his chair like a blanket."

The detective rolled his eyes. "You were slouching. If you would have been sitting in your chair properly, then my feet would not have knocked into your mug."

John scoffed and shook his head. "You are utterly incredible."

The doctor stomped off to his room, leaving an exasperated Sherlock in his wake.

The detective stood, still staring after the doctor, his head clouded by a flurry of thoughts. He stomped over to the mantle, pulling his box of nicotine patches and pulling five from the box. This was definitely a five patch problem.

John sat on the edge of his bed, flopping back and sighing. His flat mate was astounding.

One moment he made the doctor's heart flip in his chest, and the next he had his blood boiling. He glanced at the clock. 7:30. It was nearly dinner time. John knew that he should probably eat, and order some food for Sherlock as well, but he wasn't in the mood for food, and he really didn't want to face Sherlock either.

Sherlock. What was going on there? The doctor knew that he was developing feelings for the genius, but what kind? Could he honestly be falling for the man?

John rolled over and stuffed his face into his pillow. It was moments like this that make him miss the ones where he was getting shot at.

Sherlock's phone rang on the table. Lestrade. He ignored it.

The last thing that the detective wanted right now was a case. He needed to get to the bottom of his reactions to John, and figure out how to get rid of them.