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"The only part of our relationship that ever varies is sex!" John shouted, not bothering to lower his voice even with the sensitivity of the subject. The argument had been going on a week now – Sherlock wasn't even sure what had been the initial starter of it, but he could see now that whatever it was, John was furious about it.
"What do you want by variety?! I don't get what you want me to do!" Sherlock retorted rather annoyed at this slight that Sherlock appeared to be making about his antics in the bedroom.
"You don't talk… you don't ever talk!" John said angrily, flinging his hands up into the air in an exasperated gesture.
“On the contrary, you're normally the person telling me to shut up." Sherlock's face was marred into an expression of complete and utter confusion. It hadn't occurred to him that he would need to "talk" to John about anything other than the stuff he normally spoke to him about, but apparently he had been very wrong with this…
"Not about stuff like this! Not about us!" John insisted. "If we don't talk about us, then eventually we'll just crumble into nothing and one of us will end up resenting the other… and I doubt that would be you!" John had purposely put a distance of about three feet in between Sherlock and himself so as to re-emphasize that what he was saying couldn't just be brushed aside by a sudden display of physical affection. John sighed as the perplexed look on Sherlock's face deepened; it was clear that all the norms of a relationship were still foreign to Sherlock, despite the fact that they had been going out for over a year and a half. John sank into a chair and looked up at Sherlock, who was still standing rather stiffly in the curve of the bay window. "I don't want us to fall apart, I really want us to work… but I need you to communicate with me for this to keep working… I need you to talk to me."
"I don't want us to end, but I thought we were doing fine as it is… I'm not exactly sure what you want me to talk about?" Sherlock replied eventually; John stared in silence at him for a long while and Sherlock shifted his weight uneasily from his left to his right foot.
"Just… Just anything to do with us Sherlock! Whether you think we should take on the next case together, or whether the two of us should go away on a holiday… Or what you think about our future?" John told him, but he trailed off towards the end of the sentence looking down at his feet.
"Our future..? You want to talk about the future?" Sherlock questioned in some surprise. "About… about…" He struggled to come up with something. "Oh god, I'm not good at this sort of thing John!" He ruffled his hands through his curled hair and turned away to look out of the window.
"Do… do you not think we have a future?" John's voice cracked as he asked this question.
"That's not what I mean." Sherlock spun around. "Of course I think we have a future! Of course I want us to do things – I just… if something's not broken, why tamper around with it so it needs more fixing?"
"So, we don't need to talk because so far our relationship has lasted?" John felt like shaking his head, but he knew that Sherlock was actually putting in an ounce of effort here and he didn't want to discourage that. "I need you to talk to me, I want you to tell me what you're thinking and feeling… because I feel out on a limb here! The only time that I ever get a reaction from you is when we're fucking and I… I need more than that if this is going to keep going!"
"I… uh… I… uh…" John had rarely experienced Sherlock speechless before, and this time it shocked him even more than it had ever done before.
"Sherlock, all you need to do is speak, not all the time – just every so often let me know what you think is good, what you think is bad, what you want to do next… I want to know so I can be fully involved in us. I'm not asking because I want to know every single little thing inside your head, I just want enough insight for our relationship to last further. Do you get me?"
"Yes." Sherlock answered, but his voice still hinted at uncertainty. "So like, if it's not broken we can still make it a little better?"
"Yeah, exactly."