A/N: Written for the Johnlockchallenges prompt for Valentine's Day 2014, for ceilingfanofdoom. The prompt was: "Sherlock and John do Valentine's Day... but very un-traditionally", and I had a lot of fun writing it.
Originally posted on AO3, but I decided to publish it here as well :)
On February 14th, half past three pm, John Watson was trying to come to terms with the fact that he was going to spend yet another Valentine's Day by himself. Originally, this state of affairs had been completely unlikely to happen, and entirely avoidable; but it had only taken one text message too many and an unfortunate accident involving his hastily outstretched hand and a half-full glass of Café Latte that ended in a ghastly brown stain on a white skirt, and suddenly he had found himself with a bright red slap mark on his face, dateless and approximately ten minutes late for an appointment with a certain consulting date destroyer that he had absolutely no recollection of ever making. Which didn't stop Sherlock from scolding him via yet another text message, a fittingly annoying noise to accentuate the awkward silence in the coffee shop that hadn't ended until John made a tactical retreat through the front door.
So in unsurprising conclusion, Sherlock was the reason why John was now without company on the single day of the year when it was the most miserable to be single (of course, there were plenty other days when it sucked bollocks to be single, and John had lived through many of them through the years, but Valentine's Day was always the biggest drag). Yet, when confronted with this fact, his flatmate naturally (and unsurprisingly) had seen no need for an apology, despite John's insistence that there was indeed very much of a bloody need for one. To make matters worse, Sherlock had then calmly stated that John actually had no one but himself to blame for his current position since he'd been so inconsiderate to leave his phone on the table during the third date with "daddy issues" (as Sherlock had instantly dubbed the girl from the one sentence John had made the mistake of telling Sherlock about her). To this veritable statement, John had had no answer and thusly no more hold over Sherlock, who had smugly stalked off to resume his experiments on rattlesnake poison and eye drops – ghastly series of murders involving contact lenses during their last case, dreadful business. Needless to say, it had been a very disappointing conversation for John, who'd hoped for a good row to let off some steam (and yes, maybe some of that anger was directed at himself for always sabotaging his own dates by, for example, checking his phone all the time). He felt very much like a parent who'd lost control over their only child. A single parent, no less. Not a pleasant feeling, especially on Valentine's Day.
No matter whose fault it ultimately was, John had to face his fate. He compiled a mental list of the day's potential activities, an exercise that took embarrassingly little time. There were exactly four options besides staying at home and lamenting the death of his love life:
Option One: Call Lestrade and meet for a late lunch and maybe a pint or two later on. Not going to happen since the D.I. was currently on a well-deserved holiday (Sherlock had been completely baffled by the idea of needing a vacation from what he considered the most undemanding career choice in the world, if one liked doughnuts).
Option Two: Go for a stroll and enjoy the rare February sun. Entirely rejected since the mental image of the masses of couples that were bound to be staring into each others eyes and holding hands and kissing and generally beating their damn hearts in tune with each other in any available public recreation area was enough to make him question every life decision he'd ever made. Not a good place to be if you've just been dumped for the third time in as many months.
Option Three: Go to St. Bart's and look at corpses with Molly. Not even a real option since a) that would probably be Molly's idea of a Valentine date with Sherlock and b) Molly was at this very moment busily distracting herself from such ideas with a very tall, dark-haired med student named Shia.
Option Four: Tea with Mrs Hudson. Usually a perfectly nice opportunity to have a hearty discussion about the flaws of one Sherlock Holmes, it just didn't work on Valentine's Day (besides, the flirty lass was probably having a date. All the world was having a date today, just not John).
...A nice, cosy, completely pathetic day in it was.
The more complicated issues of his pathetic self aside, he'd not had lunch yet and was just about to enter the kitchen with the intent of making the biggest sandwich he could possibly assemble from the scarce supply of edibles in their kitchen when he noticed the eyes. Or maybe the eyes noticed him, John supposed it was a matter of perspective. The facts were these:
The left door of the cupboard was hanging wide open. On the lower shelf, cups and saucers were stacked up neatly. On the top shelf, there was a pair of eyeballs. They were propped up in a way that suggested that they were looking down at John from a superior height. His appetite dissolved in favour of a very strong feeling of annoyance. Of all the possible times, Sherlock had chosen today to "forget" about the newly foil-coated entrails compartment in the fridge door, even though John had gone through an excruciating opening ceremony for said compartment that Sherlock had demanded in exchange for "giving up his way of life". Damn if he couldn't make the git regret that particular data purge.
John couldn't make Sherlock regret a thing. Upon the doctor's accusations, Sherlock had feigned temporary deafness and only reacted to the visible proof of his heinous crime – the eyeballs that John presented to him on a flower-adorned saucer – for all of two seconds before fixing him with a stare that seemed to go on forever, so intense that John somewhat forgot what he'd been mad about (even though the eyeball saucer was still in his hands). Being the center of such scrutiny did that to any man (right?), and John remained frozen to the spot, feeling like something important was going on, something he (as usual) had no idea about.
Finally, Sherlock had sighed, said "You found them, but yet... Never mind, thank you", plucked the saucer from a confused John's hands and disappeared into his bedroom, science mode activated again, if the determined way he pulled his goggles back over his eyes was any indication. John, bereft of his righteous anger, was left standing in the middle of the living room, trying to decipher the cryptic statement. His sympathy for single parents grew ever stronger. Other people forgot their socks on the floor, his flatmate left intestines in varying states of decay lying around. And he did leave his laundry strewn about in the bathroom, too... With a deep sigh of his own, John went to continue his noble quest for lunch.
By the time he had finally ingested his sandwich, an interesting concoction of toast, cucumbers, jam and somewhat fresh cream cheese, John had almost forgotten about the eyeballs and nearly managed to forget what day it was. The exploding noises from Sherlock's room had subsided, and a sense of peace was spreading through 221 B. This wonderful, zen-like atmosphere lasted for almost half an hour until John, who had carelessly dropped his guard, almost sat down on the pair of severed hands that lay on the sofa, right next to the newspaper he'd been reading this morning. He almost dropped his freshly prepared mug of tea during the struggle to keep them from touching his behind, and from a safe distance (one never knew how long they'd been out of their freezer in St. Bart's, and John wasn't too keen to find out via his olfactory senses), John assessed the situation.
The mismatched hands (each one presumably taken from an adult male, judging by their size) were resting atop each other, palms touching and fingers interlaced in a bizarre reenactment of hand-holding. John put his mug on the coffee table to have his own hands free to bury his face in them. Fingers digging deep into the special worry line on his forehead, the one that appeared exclusively during Sherlock-related incidents, he took a few carefully measured breaths to calm himself down. Then, he opened his mouth to shout Sherlock's name, along with "Bloody hell, hands?!"
Like the devil, Sherlock materialized within seconds of being called. An expression of polite interest on his face, Sherlock innocently asked what might be the matter. The expression on John's face was a little less polite when he inquired whether Sherlock might suffer from temporary blindness and offered to remedy that condition by snapping those goggles against his eyes. Sherlock's dignified answer to that proposition was negative, and as if to prove the soundness of his eyesight, he repeated his earlier stare, only even more intense, long and hard, with a hint of sadness showing in his eyes, and then let out another irritated sigh.
With a huff of "I'm not the blind one in the room", Sherlock then cradled the two hands to his chest and haughtily retreated into his chambers. All while managing to make John feel like he had done the detective a terrible wrong for pointing out his discovery.
Despite his indignation at being treated this way (he thought they'd come pretty far in the last months, only bickering occasionally about small things), John couldn't help but think that the hurt in Sherlock's eyes had been genuine, and as always, his worry for Sherlock overruled any exasperation about his flatmate's peculiarities. And so, John took another couple of measured breaths and concentrated. Surely, this was some sort of code to tell John... what, exactly? As was the most useful approach to situations like this, John tried to put himself into Sherlock's notably large shoes. While exceedingly brilliant with all factual matters, Sherlock was quite childlike when it came to dealing with interpersonal issues. For an instant, John actually contemplated putting a frozen ear on Sherlock's doorstep to tell him he'd listen to what he had to say, but immediately abandoned the idea for its unnecessary complexity. No, this scavenger hunt of human scraps definitely shouldn't be encouraged any further. Maybe he'd just knock on Sherlock's door and then they'd have a serious conversation about this? Sure, and then they'd have a pajama party and stay up late to eat ice cream in front of the telly (okay, that actually happened quite frequently since Sherlock, for all his rejection for sustenance, claimed that Chocolate Chip ice cream helped him think). John definitely needed to solve this, but he had no idea where to start.
By the time John gave up, his tea had long gone cold and the streetlights outside were already turning on one by one. Exhausted, he decided to confront Sherlock after all. It was just not fair of the man to leave him lost in wild theories with only a few enigmatic hints as his red yarn guide out of the labyrinth. And even if Sherlock would never learn to just talk to people, he would damn well have to learn to talk to John. He was not going anywhere, and Sherlock better finally acknowledged that fact.
However, just as he returned from the kitchen to throw away the cold tea, John's attention was caught by another part of the human body, carefully laid down on a plate outside of Sherlock's bedroom door. Only this time, it was something a lot more telling than eyes or hands. It was a heart. And suddenly, the earlier conversations with his emotionally stunted flatmate all made sense.
"You found them, but yet..."
"I'm not the blind one in the room."
And just like that, John realized that he hadn't been spending Valentine's Day alone after all.
He stared at the lonely, blue-ish organ on the plate, and pondered the sensations that went through his own at the sight. Surprise, mixed with the fond exasperation he experienced at all of Sherlock's emotional breakthroughs, along with a sizable dash of confusion. But stronger than all of it was delight, sheer and utter delight, and when he felt a silly grin spread over his face, John suddenly saw his next course of action crystal clear.
Carefully, he picked up the plate with the heart and gently knocked on Sherlock's door. Upon a quiet invitation rumbled in Sherlock's distinctive, deep voice, he opened the door, looked at the man standing with his back to the window, facing him, straight into the eyes and said:
"I accept."
The smile that spread over Sherlock's face in answer was worth all the trouble with abandoned body parts John had endured today, and certainly all of which was sure to come in the future. For right now, all that mattered were their own eyes, hands, and hearts.
After all, they had a lot of besotted staring, hand-holding and beating their damn hearts in tune with each other to catch up on.
A/N: Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, drop me a comment if you did? 3