I've been dying to write a Sherlock story for the longest time but every time I started it just wouldn't feel right. Now, finally I got this and I actually like it so yeah, I hope you guys do to. This is a slash story by the way so if you don't like that turn back now.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock Holmes or Sherlock.
Love was the most confusingly useless thing in the world.
He didn't understand why it was so coveted and relied upon, used as a measurement of one's life happiness. For him love had brought nothing but pain and suffering.
Love was nothing more than a means of manipulation, a way to get what you wanted when you wanted it.
Love was seen as the purest of emotions but in reality it gave birth to life's wickedest sins. Jealousy, greed, anger, sorrow and lust.
Love seemed to intensify everything. Each day, each joy, each sorrow, it was all magnified when it revolved around love. It became the center of your life, shoving out any other purpose or dream like an invasive plant that rooted itself in a new ecosystem, sucking up the ground's nutrience and hoarding it for itself.
Love was an obsession, a dark, stinging obsession, a delusion of perfection that can never be achieved in reality. It convinces us we're happy when we're really just barely hanging on. It convinces us even the stupidest, most fool hearty endeavors are worth it because love will prevail.
Love creates that false sense of hope. It brings your guard down which is the biggest danger of all. It leaves you vulnerable and open with a target painted on your chest. Love bears your soul to the world and more than that it bears your soul to your partner. And in the end, when that partner is revealed to be an untrustworthy pig they can steal your soul, your heart and everything in between when they walk out and leave you a desolate shell.
Love is pain. Love is ruin. Love is an avoidable hazard.
Or so he thought.
The day that he first found out that love was in truth unavoidable was the day he knew he was ruined forever. He had been backed into a corner without even realizing it. Moriarty had played on the weakness he hadn't realized he had succumbed to.
John.
The threat of loosing Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade was one thing but the idea that John could die because of him was simply unacceptable.
He had thought he faced his demons about love when he encountered Irene Adler. She had intoxicated him in a way that before could only be achieved by the rush of a new case or in darker times by his drugs. She intrigued him like an unsolved puzzle always did. She made him question his sanity in a way that nobody else had, made him notice things that had never intrigued him before. He was sure that that had been love or at the very least infatuation. Though, he had had nothing else to compare his feelings to, he couldn't very well compare his thoughts and emotions to other couples' after all. He was acutely aware of the fact that he operated differently than other people. Comparing his romantic thoughts to those of a normal person would be tantamount to comparing the tartness of an apple and an orange.
But when he stood in the graveyard watching John say his final goodbye he had realized that Irene Adler was not love. She was simply the personification of the crimes that fascinated him so. She had been a living, breathing, walking crime and in that way she attracted his interest as much as any murder did. But that's as far as it went.
At the cemetery however, he realized what real love was and it wasn't the sort of thing you had to wonder about. It was just there, without a shadow of a doubt he knew that this was love. And just as he had predicted love was always capable of, it had destroyed him. In many senses it had killed him. Sure his body was still intact, he breathed and walked and thought but everything he was, his legacy was dead to the world. And dead to John.
Love made him vulnerable. It is what caused him to have to jump off the roof because his own death, faked or not wasn't as high a price to pay as living without John. He wasn't a human crime like Irene Adler, in fact he was probably the most ordinary man he had ever come across. John was however intriguing in his own way. He was a military man, someone who lived on rules, procedure and regulation but he was not only content but seemed to genuinely enjoy running amok with him and getting into all sorts of trouble imaginable.
John was real in a way that he never thought possible. Most people wore mask after mask to hide their true selves. It was to a point that a façade became more real than the man using it. But John was just John, as plain as his name yet as extraordinary as the Van Buuren Supernova.
John could be a dangerous and invisible web, waiting for someone to get caught in it's tendrils. His cool and calm exterior hiding the heart of a fearless soldier. He could look perfectly fine then suddenly unleash an anger no man his height should be capable of containing without combusting. He often times seemed very dull but without warning he'd say some so ingenious that it'd make him wonder who in fact was the leader in their partnership.
And more than that, John accepted him. Sure John would often become so frustrated it'd be impossible for the two to stay in the same room without World War III beginning but in the end John always came back. He was the only one that always came back, openly, without any pretense. He came back because he wanted to, not because he needed the brain or felt responsible for him but just because he wanted to.
Watching John leave his gravesite made him realize something that he held close for the next three years. Whether it was comforting or tortuous he was unsure but it was there never the less, always in the back of his mind. He realized that despite of all of love's dangers and failings that it was also the most powerful thing alive.
Love motivated him to not only defy death but to fight for a new life.
Love gave the strength to carry on throughout the next three years, even when everything seemed hopeless.
Love fueled his quest to rid the world of every last companion of Moriarty, to make things safe for John.
Love is what brought him back to London three years later even after Mycroft gave him the option of going anywhere in the world now that he was alive again. It wasn't Baker's Street but another flat a short cabbie ride away, apparently John hadn't been able, hadn't wanted to stay in the flat after everything that happened.
Love was what he felt when John finally opened the door, when their eyes met for the first time in three years. The feeling was so strong that it almost took his breath away. Nothing could be compared to it, not the thrill of a case or the rush of a stimulant. No, the closest thing that this compared to was something he had only felt once, when he jumped off the roof of the hospital, before his rather ingenious landing and recovery that is. It was that unforgettable feeling of falling, the air rushing out of his lungs, the heart beat steadily increasing and another almost indescribable feeling that almost said this is it, it's all over now.
Love was almost clouded over by guilt when John didn't say anything to him, instead opting to heave his arm back and punch him square in the stomach. Now that really did take his breath away as he feel back onto the sidewalk. He knew he deserved the punch and when he regained his composure he looked back up to see John still looking at him, his expression full of so many emotions it was unreadable. It almost hurt as much as the punch to realize that he made plain, ordinary John so overwhelmed that he too became a puzzle, a labyrinth of emotions. He wanted John's life and heart to be simple and uncomplicated. John turned around and went back inside the flat without another word but he left the door open, inviting him in without needing to say a word.
While they sat together inside, finally began to talk, occasionally yell, share stories of the last three years, explanations, accusations, apologies. It was a jumbled mess that nobody but them could ever comprehend because nobody else had been through what they had. And as the afternoon went on the maze of emotions in John's expression began to loosen. First to go was the fury, then the grief of loss that he had carried with him for so many years and finally the confusion and hurt that he had not confided his plans with him. There was only one emotion left in John's expression, one that he realized with a shock had always been there but he had just been to absorbed in his work to notice.
Sherlock had always thought love was an avoidable hazard, a mistake at best, a death wish at worst. He thought it was useless, shallow, capable of only providing disappointment and destruction. But when John reached across the coffee table separating them and put a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, quietly saying that he had missed him…then Sherlock realized that love wasn't a weapon or a flaw in our chemical make up but in fact it was an ambrosia, dangerous, even fatal to those who were not meant for it. But for others it was more invigorating than the fountain of youth. It was warm, cleansing the soul of even the worst sins.
Love was no longer confusing to him. Even though it could be described in an infinite amount of ways, never the same to any two people, Sherlock could only consider one more definition as he pressed his hand on top of John's knee and leaned forward to close the space in between them.
Love was as simple and honest as the smile on John's face.
Well there it is! I hope you liked it, please Review! Thanks!