Rating/Warnings: Squint, PG Angst, quite a lot of book canon references.
Word Count: 221 (My very first 221B, aw)
Disclaimer: Not my world or characters.
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The Wellspring
by Caffienekitty
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John gives him so much, but doesn't understand. Any concession, any allowance only increases Sherlock's need; the more he's given, the more he takes. He's drained people that way, a vampiric gluttony for attention and kindness. He walled that need off after Victor. Mycroft knows not to try.
But John doesn't know. Even with his acerbic comments about Sherlock's experiments or callousness, John's attention is an artesian well. Sherlock will drink him dry, he knows he will. One day, John's patient amazement will shrivel and Sherlock will be left dying of thirst in the dessicated pit that was John Watson's benevolence.
-.-
Time leads them inevitably to a cottage with a sloping garden, and bees. John has lost his Mary, and they live together again. In the vast back lawn, straw hat shading his eyes, John examines the map where the hydrogeologist points out the aquifer's breadth.
Sherlock reflects that while the current of John's attention has ebbed and flowed over the decades, it never stopped. Even when John thought Sherlock was dead, he visited the graveyard to sit against Sherlock's false headstone, speaking nonsense to the sky.
Decades later, Sherlock hasn't exhausted John's amused tolerance; even after everything.
John looks up from the map now, beckoning. Sherlock smiles and stands, slowly descending to observe where John thinks the well-driller should set their new well's bore.
- . - . -
(that's it)