Obligatory disclaimer here about how I don't own Sherlock or it's respective characters.
"I can't seem to understand it,
And I would give all this and heaven too,
I would give it all if only for a moment,
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see"
He was telling the truth; love used to confuse him. The common misconception that was love went beyond physicality into the realms of fate and other useless areas of the human conscience. But love, like every other emotion, was pure science. What people thought, felt, believed, trusted, and did all in the name of love could all be attributed to a few endorphins and could all be revealed by the simplest tells in a person's countenance. Love was a science.
It was not, however, rational in any form. With all his knowledge of human actions, he could not deduce just why he could fluster him; how he could disturb his outer shell so viciously that his very core could break. How had he, with his normality and humanity, made him lose his control and feel things and want to give him his devotion and himself and the world that surrounded him?
It was illogical, what he felt. It didn't make any sense.
So why, then, did he not seem to care? He was no longer in control of himself; he was willing to relinquish everything for the mundane feeling that was love. Shouldn't that bother him?
He couldn't describe it; not with endless explanations or dictionary definitions or even words in their simplest forms. And this anomaly, in all its strangeness, did not faze him. It was terrifying, and it was glorious, but he could not help but dedicate himself to finding out why.
"And the heart is hard to translate,
It has a language of its own,
It talks and tongues and quiet sighs and prayers and proclamations,
In the grand days of great men and the smallest of gestures,
In short shallow gasps."
He was taken, heart and soul. At first, he stayed for the thrill, for the feeling that his life has a purpose that went beyond immediate command. Then he stayed for the guidance they gave each other. He was broken, and he was lost, and they healed each other. Then, he stayed because of his own devotion. In the end, he realized that he stayed purely for him. All those things combined, the complexity and the harrowing journey of their relationship, all dumbed down into one reason; him.
Two fractured souls seeking solace.
He was by no means a poetic man, so his explanations lacked the merit he thought they deserved. His stumbling phrases did not convey the true perfection that was his feelings and him; the one person in his life who offered him a way out of the abyss that had seemed endless for so long and direction that for so long had eluded him.
It was pure irony, though, how the one person who had saved him was so lost himself.
And it has changed him, this love of his. He had never felt so dependant before. Why was he so willing to become so ensconced, heart and soul, by one person? What had happened to the autonomous being that he used to be?
"But with all my education,
I can't seem to commend it,
And the words are all escaping me,
And coming back all damaged,
And I would put them back in poetry,
If I only knew how."
Why had such perfection in the most scarred of men affected him so? Why had his barriers—the very ones he put up to keep out such tedious feelings as love—been destroyed so quickly and so violently? How had he done that?
How? Why? For what purpose? When? How? Why? Why? Why?
Facts became opinions and mere musings were suddenly of great importance. And the most frightening of all this was that he returned his feelings. That in itself was problematic. For the first time in his existence he felt love, showed love, believed in love, and that grouping of one verb invoked such panic and pleasure as he had never known before.
Was it weakness to show such passion and to feel such passion for such a previously meaningless purpose? His pride would not let him believe that his scrutinized sentiments could be so indebted and so dependant. His heart could not be taken so fiercely and so wholly.
It didn't make any sense.
"I've been scrawling it forever,
But it never makes sense to me at all.
No, words are a language,
It doesn't deserve such treatment"
He was steadfast. He walked a path that did not stray from the narrow one before him. True north was his guiding star. But the war had done things to him; things that no one could fix. He had deemed himself broken and incurable for the rest of his meaningless existence.
So what had he seen in him that no one else had apparently seen before? He wasn't clever, or special, or any adjective he characterized him in any sense. He was ordinary, plain, boring.
But he was not blind. He did not choose what he wanted to see. He saw facts, categorized them, and stored them away for further use. He saw the truth in everything. So why had he never seen those things in himself? What had caused him to see these hidden qualities, and what had caused him to follow him into his world of orderly chaos and hectic methods?
"And all my stumbling phrases,
Never amounted to anything worth this feeling,
All this heaven,
Never could describe such a feeling"
"John?"
"Hm?"
"Do I love you?"
"I think you've got the wording wrong there, Sherlock."
"I meant it like that. I know the conventional phrasing refers to one person asking the other if they love them or not, and receiving an answer that fulfills their expectations. People only ask others if they love them if they know for certain that they do and they like hearing the affirmative, or they know the answer is negative and they just want to make sure. The act itself is tedious and it not the answer I am looking for. I want to know whether you think I love you or not"
"It's a bit more complicated than that"
"Why?"
"It just is, Sherlock."
"Try, John. For future reference and for clarity, try."
"And for science?"
"Maybe."
"I can't answer that, then."
"Then no, it's not for science."
"Not because of that."
"Why, then?"
"Because I'm not entirely sure myself."
"…"
"I don't know why you find me, of all the people in the world, remotely interesting or of any object of your enduring fascination."
"So you assume that because you don't know the reasoning behind the question, whether I love you or not doesn't make any difference?"
"That's not what I-"
"Which would then lead me to think that you don't really believe I love you at all."
"I don't think that."
"Then, by that line of thinking, you know that I love you."
"I take it back. Now it's more complicated."
"Do you require some sort of proof of my love, John? Are you so insecure in your trust in me that you choose to ignore the obvious signs and continue to doubt my feelings, however complicated and obvious they are? Fine. Here is my declaration for you, John Watson. I adore you. You induce feelings in me that I have never before been known to have. You make me want to give you the universe and everything in it, an impossible and bizarre task. You are fantastic and brilliant and even though none of this makes any sense to me yet and even though I do not deserve you, you are all of those things and I love you."
"…"
"…"
"…"
"Do you believe me now?"
"You were wrong."
"What?"
"You said you didn't deserve me. It's the other way around."
"John, I am an impossible man to deal with, as the opinion goes. My pride and my mannerisms are insufferable. You have to put up with me."
"Only because I want to."
"…"
"And you of all people should know that. You of all people cannot have missed the evident signs that whatever you feel for me I feel as well. I could go on, try to explain why I feel these things, but the facts are that you know it already."
"I've come to a conclusion, John."
"And your hypothesis is?"
"Love is hard to decipher. It can be seen as an ideal, or be made clear by a person's expressions and countenance, but love, overall, cannot be explained. How I love you, or how you love me, will never be important, and neither will why. All that matters is that love is given between us, regardless of reasoning."
"I've never known you to be so maudlin."
"I'm merely theorizing, John. I can't put it into scientific terms for fear of losing your rapt attention."
"Shut up, idiot."
"…"
"…"
"…"
"I love you."
"I am compelled to reciprocate the sentiment."
"Words were never so useful,
So I was screaming out a language that I never knew existed before."