At first, he'd said it all the time. In every other relationship he'd been in, once it'd progressed to the point of dropping the L-bomb he'd both wanted and been expected to say it all the time. When handing over a cup of tea, leaving for work, laying sated in bed, he proclaimed his love. But, like in all things, Sherlock is not content to do things the normal way. He says it very, very rarely, and like all things Sherlock, John decides not to let it bother him. He adjusts, and starts once again making tea, leaving, sleeping without saying it. Sometimes, when Sherlock comes to bed early in the morning and John is still exhausted, he slips up. Usually it's when Sherlock is all long limbs wrapped around him possessively, like he's losing a fight with an octopus, and he feels warm and sleepy and wanted enough to let the words escape into the air between them. He receives the customary smile and kiss, and doesn't think on it in the morning.

John is content.

"What's it like, shagging the Great Sherlock Holmes?" Harry sips at her coffee across from him - she looks like hell but he doesn't see any signs that she's relapsed too recently.

"It's...different," he says, absentmindedly swirling his own coffee in the paper cup.

"Mmm, the fact that he's a man throwing Three Continents Watson off his game?" She laughs and grins at him.

"God, you will absolutely never let that go, will you? And, for your information, I wouldn't say that I'm off my game at all. It's just a different game. But it's nice, Harry. It's really nice." He sips his drink for something to do with his mouth, anything but say 'I love him and he loves me, I am ninety-five percent sure he loves me, but sometimes that other five is just hell.'

"Well, I'm sure he's smitten, Johnny." She pats him on the cheek. "There'll never be another person in the world willing to put up with him like you do."

John makes a non-committal noise and changes the subject.

"You're never," Donovan hisses at him as he watches Sherlock pace around the room.

"Never what?" Donovan is annoying, but he is always hopeful that there's some genuine caring buried beneath the insults, however deeply. He tries to be at least civil to her on most occasions.

"You're sleeping together, aren't you?"

"Mmm, not common knowledge, though, so I'd appreciate it if you'd not bandy it about," he says in a low tone, half still focused on Sherlock, not thinking of the important questions: "How do you know?" "Does anyone else know?" "Why do you think it's your business, anyway?"

"Oh, my God, you are," she hisses. "I thought I was just hallucinating the signs or something."

"Not sleeping well? Worrying about why Anderson still hasn't left his wife?" Her disgusted tone makes him feel like he has to at least remind her that his partner, though not a normal person by any means, is at least faithful. If he is going to be attacked, he is giving as good as he gets.

She glares at him. "I bet it's hell. Giving your life over to a person who you can't even be sure is actually capable of loving you. Waking up to someone every morning, not knowing if he even gives a damn that you're there. What it even like, being with a freak like Sherlock Holmes?"

He clenches his fists. "Sherlock is amazing," he hisses. "He cares for me, he loves me, and I never have a reason to doubt it."

"You poor thing," she says, disingenuously patting him on the shoulder. "You really do believe that. I told you that you should have gotten a hobby."

Donovan walks off, and John decides to let her. He waits a long second before looking up again to check how Sherlock is coming. When he brings his eyes up, though, the pacing has stopped, and Sherlock is looking dead at him, brow furrowed and lips almost white they were pressed so tightly together.

"Lestrade!" Sherlock yells, eyes still boring into John. "It was the man she was having an affair with. It was an accident, bring him in and he'll crack. We're going now."

Sherlock pushes past him and out the door, and suddenly John is left at a crime scene for the first time in a long while.

John resents Sally's knowing gaze as he retreats.

Lestrade sets a pint in front of him, and he realizes he can't remember how many he's had before this.

"Sorry it took me so long to get here," Lestrade says, lifting his own glass. "I wish you hadn't started without me."

"I had to," John says. "It's traditional. When you love someone that doesn't love you, you get drunk."

"So, out with it then. What happened? You guys were fine not six hours ago."

"Yes, well, that was before he decided that I think he doesn't love me."

He couldn't see the bottom of the glass through the dark beer in it, and decided he really did want to see it, and he'd have to get rid of the beer to do so.

"Slow down, mate." Greg reached across and pulled the glass out of his hand. "How many did you have before I got here?"

"Not enough if I can still remember." Maybe if John glared at him enough, he'd be allowed to continue his quest for the bottom of that glass.

"You're going to have to talk me through this one."

"Donovan happened. She said he'd never love me, and I apparently defended him too much. I was...I don't know, grinding my teeth at the wrong frequency or something. So he yelled about how I was doubting him, that he didn't know how to make me happy. Kept it up for quite a while."

"Couldn't just set him straight, then?"

"I...well...I couldn't lie convincingly enough. Nothing ever gets by Sherlock Holmes. But, you know what? He doesn't say he loves me. This whole thing could be one giant experiment for him and I wouldn't ever know until he was done and I was heartbroken." That traitorous five percent of doubt has been busy, courting his certainty, getting it to rethink its vote, and he hates that so much of his heart has gone to the other side without even asking.

"John, don't. You're just upset and saying things you don't mean." Lestrade had apparently decided he was done, because he was holding out his coat - when had Lestrade gotten his coat? "You know what he's like, more than anyone."

"I know," he struggles into his coat. "And he hasn't changed at all. Everyone wants to know what Sherlock is like now that we're shagging. And the answer is that he's exactly the fucking same as he was before."

"No, he isn't." They're out on the street now, and Lestrade is calling him a cab, shoving some money into the driver's hand. "Look, I don't know every little thing about him like you do, but I know that he's been different these last few months, like he's trying to hide something but he's not very good at it."

"What?" He asks, settling himself in the back of the cab, already closing his eyes. "What is he hiding?"

"He's happy," Lestrade smiles at him and closes the door on him.

John knows that Sherlock doesn't come to bed that night.

"I have to be at work soon, I have a hangover like you wouldn't believe, and I think your brother's finally decided to chuck me, so let me just say that today is not the fucking day for kidnapping," John snaps. He's not even sure how Mycroft found this gloomy a place on what was, by all accounts but his, a gorgeous morning.

"Finally?" Mycroft asks mildly.

"Really, that's what you took from that?" He wants so badly to sit in the chair that Anthea keeps scooting closer to him, but it's about the principle of the thing now.

"Word choices are important, John, you know this." Mycroft peers at him, scrutinizing him, and he juts his chin out.

"Yeah, well, we all knew it. I was just the last one in on the little secret. Dull, idiotic John Watson was stupid enough to think he was special." He had known that morning, when he didn't see any of the tell-tale signs that Sherlock had at least been to bed and already woken up - disturbed sheets on the other side, door open just a crack, cup of possibly cold tea sitting on the night stand. Sherlock had been reliably doing these things since they had taken up together, and he knew enough to see the signs.

"That's very interesting, considering Sherlock came to me for advice on how to get you to continue this...thing that the two of you are doing. It wasn't even three hours ago that he was in my office."

"He'd never."

"I assure you, he did," Mycroft says. "Don't you think that this perhaps shows the extent of his desperation?"

"God. Actually, you know what? It does." He finally sat in the chair, running his hands over his face. "What did you say to him?"

"What is it like, living with my brother?" He hates that Mycroft does this, takes the roundabout route. That, instead of just saying 'I insulted his intelligence and told him to pay more attention,' or something, he goes somewhere else.

"It's...it's difficult sometimes. It's the easiest thing I've ever done. He complains for hours on end. I love it when he plays his violin, actually plays, and fills up the whole flat with the sound of him existing. I want to strangle him sometimes, and I love him so very much."

"Do you ever tell him that?"

"He never tells me."

Mycroft looks him in the eye, and as if he was explaining something to a small child, he says, "are you quite sure?"

John begins reassessing the facts of his relationship.

"Hey, Molly," John says in a rush. "Is Sherlock still here?"

"Er, yes, I believe so. I left him in the mortuary," she looks up from her microscope. "I can...take you down there?"

"Would you please?" He asks, and hurries behind her. She seems to have picked up on his urgency and he absolutely adores her in that moment.

Sherlock stands on the other side of the glass, inspecting bodies, talking to himself about hours since death and lividity and bruising patterns. John knows he doesn't have a case, and he can tell when he's just experimenting to experiment, not because anything really depends on it. He looks pale and drawn, and John mentally kicks himself for the thousandth time in the last half hour alone.

"Sherlock? John's here to see you," Molly says in that polite/starstruck/lonely way she had that made John want to give her a hug.

But Sherlock didn't seem to have heard them, was still pacing back and forth. "He must have turned the intercom off from his end," she says to him. "It's okay, he'll look up eventually if you just wait."

He wants to ask how she knows that with such certainty, but he thinks of how often Molly might have stood in place, just waiting for a bit of Sherlock's mind to be free. "Yeah, okay," he says. "I'm sure it won't take him long."

"John, can I...well, can I ask you something?" She doesn't look at him, keeps her eyes fixed on Sherlock.

"Yeah, absolutely," he agrees readily, already guilty of focusing more on Sherlock than her.

"What's he like?" He looks over at her, and she's gone red. "I mean, well, Sergeant Donovan was here for a case this morning, and she...well, she said you two were together."

"Er, yes. That's right." He is supremely awkward, still nursing the slightest headache, and not sure he really wants to do this.

"I'm just curious, is all. I've thought about what he might be like in a relationship. I mean...well, I guess you of all people know what I mean."

"Morbid curiosity?" John jokes, not wanting to acknowledge that he's afraid he knows how much she may have thought about it.

"John. I work in a morgue and I live alone with my cat. Everything about me is morbid."

He laughs, and she cracks a smile, still looking at Sherlock while he examined the third body. "I just want to know. Is he perfect? Absolutely horrid?"

He wants to tell her that Sherlock is awful, so maybe she will feel like she dodged a bullet. He wants to tell her that Sherlock is amazing and wonderful, so maybe she will get to keep what he supposes her fantasies to be (Sherlock turned perfect boyfriend, never an unkind word muttered again, eyes only for her). But mostly, he wants to tell her the truth so that she will understand. "It's actually very much the same as it was before. Cases at all hours, irrational sulking, terrifying experiments. But...he labels the experiments in the fridge now. I opened the fridge last week and my new jar of jam said "John, don't eat," on it. Before, he would have just figured I'd notice, or been interested in how long it might take me to get sick. And he actually comes to bed. He doesn't sleep much, of course, but he makes a point of sleeping at least an hour or two. And he always makes sure I know he's been there. He still expects me to make tea all the time, but he makes me exactly one cup, every morning when he wakes up, which means it's mostly undrinkable by the time normal people wake up, but it's there. He plays Mozart at night, when he knows I'm not able to get to sleep, specifically because he knows I like it, even though he never says anything about it the next morning. It's...well, it's an awful lot of Sherlock being Sherlock, really, and it's amazing." He finishes lamely, and she has actually turned to look at him.

John looks up at Sherlock, who is looking right back.

"So, I guess you had the sound on, then?" John asks awkwardly in the cab, because he absolutely cannot take it anymore and he has no idea where they stand.

"Yes," Sherlock replies, looking out the window. "I heard Molly address me, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to say to you at the time, so I let her believe that I couldn't hear her."

"Are you sure now? What you want to say?"

"Yes. I'd much rather do it at home, though."

"Oh. Yes, alright." John wonders if Mycroft had been wrong, if the John from three days ago who only doubted five percent had been wrong, if Harry had been wrong all those weeks ago.

The rest of the cab ride seems awfully short (which was funny, because the first part had seemed to drag on forever), and they're in the living room, seated in opposite chairs with cups of tea, and still nothing has been said.

"Sherlock...if you want me to look for a new flat just say it. Don't draw it out like this," he finally says, miserable, because surely if Sherlock wasn't done with him he would have said something by then. Or at least looked at him. Or done anything, really.

"Do you want to go?" Sherlock asked, still infuriatingly looking at the wall.

"Do I want to? Sherlock, you've just heard me tell Molly how stupidly in love with you I am. Why would I want to go?"

Finally, Sherlock looks at him, but he almost wishes it hadn't happened, because the man looks somehow both angry and depressed. "Nearly six months ago, I realized I was in love with you. You returned the sentiment. Over the next several weeks, you expressed your feelings regularly. I used other devices to show you that they were returned in kind - you spoke to Molly about these things. But you didn't tell her that you stopped telling me you love me, that you only do it when you're too tired to remember not to. You didn't tell her that it wasn't enough, that the stupid tea and labels and Mozart didn't mean enough. What you, in fact, told Molly was that you recognize these things, but that they don't matter."

"Sherlock. What I told Molly was that these things are how I know."

"How you know what?" Sherlock asked scathingly, back to not looking at him.

"It's how I know you love me."

"You don't know. You wouldn't have been so defensive with Donovan, wouldn't have said with the tone of your voice that you were lying when you said I was amazing, that there was no reason to doubt."

"I know now. I didn't know then, or rather I wasn't entirely sure, but I am now. Even if I hadn't been sure, I'd know because of how upset you are at just the idea that I wouldn't know. Just like you apparently didn't know that I only stopped saying it because I thought it made you uncomfortable."

"You...what?"

He laughs, then. How stupid they'd been, both so in love and convinced that they couldn't have anything good. He reaches out and grabs Sherlock's hands over the table. "I didn't know you wanted me to say it."

Sherlock looked at him as if he was quite possibly the slowest person on Earth. "You're John Watson. When you are in love with someone, you say it repeatedly."

"Well, then. I love you, Sherlock. I love you, I love you, I love you. We're idiots."

"We?" Sherlock is scandalized, but John is already coaxing him out of his seat and into an embrace.

"We. You should have told me about these things."

"John," Sherlock let out a long-suffering sigh. "When I roll my eyes, when I call you an idiot, when I hold up the tape for you at a crime scene, when I don't insult someone who deserves it - every single one of these things and more is my way of telling you I love you. In fact, you should just assume I am telling you all the time, with my every action."

"That's much better," John says into Sherlock's shirt. "Now we're on the same page. Now we'll both say how much we love each other all the time."

Sherlock leans over, kisses his neck, and murmurs "Can I start showing you right now?"

John takes the stairs to their bedroom two at a time.