Disclaimer: I own neither Rent nor Sherlock.
John would never tell Sherlock, but he'd had a soft spot for musicals ever since he'd dated a woman in uni who was obsessed with them. And as his time with Sherlock reached its one-year mark, he couldn't help but fixate on one song in particular.
How do you measure, measure a year?
Sherlock measured everything, usually just by looking at it but sometimes with tape measures or beakers or scales, all of which he managed to have on hand when he needed them without ever looking like his pockets bulged, the smooth infuriating bastard. But a year? Sherlock would be content to call it 525,600 minutes, but John wasn't entirely content with that.
In daylights—
Days when it stung his eyes bleeding in through the curtains, days when it illuminated crime scenes, days when it glinted off of murder weapons—
—in sunsets—
—breathtaking over the London skyline, turning the Shard into a flaming torch and painting Big Ben's tower red—
—in cups of coffee—
—so, so many, all without sugar, to compensate for Sherlock-induced late nights—
—in inches—
—width, breadth, height, length, distance; murder weapons, wounds, footprints, telltale objects, all measured with the same yellow retractable tape measure that Sherlock stuffed into his left breast pocket as if to protect the heart that he, unlike Mycroft, probably actually had—
—in miles—
—radii, always radii, where has it rained in a 50-mile radius, where are all the factories in a five-mile radius, where, where, where—
—of laughter and strife—
—so, so much of both, often at the same time, too often laughing at strife and misery and death like the morbid bastards they were.
Morbid bastards or not, though, John thought Rent might have been right about measuring in love. Mycroft was miles away from the truth when he joked about a "happy announcement," but there were other kinds of love, and John knew that the way he cared about Sherlock merited that label, and he was fine with that. More than fine, actually. Content, as perhaps only a morbid bastard could be, but content nonetheless.