This fic was born in the middle of the night about a month ago, with my iPod on shuffle as I drew fluffy Johnlock fanart. "Sarah Smiles" by Panic! At the Disco started playing, and when I paused to listen to the lyrics, I realized that 'Sherlock' can be substituted for 'Sarah' perfectly. Then I knew that I just had to write this. I haven't really put that much work into this, so not very quality. Just fluff. Enjoy!
When John brought home a used guitar from the music store and began to strum a few chords, Sherlock looked up from his experiment (which involved pinky toes, pig intestines, and some other ingredients best left unmentioned) and frowned. "What's that for?"
"A song. I'm going to play a song for Sarah." John said with a small smile Sherlock didn't return.
"You're still seeing her?" Sherlock rolled his eyes. Sarah was so boring. She didn't deserve someone like John.
"Yes, I am," John retorted in annoyance, "And we're quite serious about it. I'm learning a little guitar to sing her a song I heard the other day I think she'll like."
"Oh?" Sherlock asks, and surprisingly, he does not immediately shoot down John's idea with a comment about how moronic and sentimental and boring serenades were. "What song?"
"Would you like to hear a bit of it?" John asked. Sherlock nodded. He hadn't heard John sing before; this could be interesting.
John cleared his throat and looked at the music before starting to strum the guitar. "I was fine, just a guy living on my own, waiting for the sky to fall, then you called and changed it all, doll," John's voice wasn't very melodic or singsong, but he wasn't too bad. "Velvet lips and eyes to pull me in, but we knew you'd already win, mmm, you're original sin,"
Sherlock closed his eyes and let the happy tune wash over him. It was simple and light, and in any other case he would have declared it boring, but John was singing. Sherlock was enjoying it, to his own surprise.
"Fooled me once with your eyes, now honey, fooled me twice with your lies, and I say-" He stopped there, glancing at Sherlock, whose eyes were still closed. "Sherlock?"
"Hmm. Yes, very good. A bit boring, but she's ordinary, no doubt she'll like it." Sherlock waved his hand like he was swatting at an imaginary fly. John glared at him.
"You know, she isn't that bad. If you would just get to know her, then maybe you'd-"
"I'd what? 'Learn to love her?'"
John stood up suddenly, sick of Sherlock's attitude. "Forget this, I'm going upstairs to practice."
Sherlock didn't reply, nor did he say anything about the jealousy clawing through his stomach. For a minute he wondered why he felt so annoyed. It was just a song for one of John's stupid girlfriends. But then Sherlock realized what bothered him so much. He wanted John to sing to him, not some silly girlfriend who distracted John from cases and the flat. The detective said nothing about this as John stormed up to his bedroom. He turned back to his microscope and tried to put the song out of his mind.
"How did it go?"
"It didn't." John's voice was curt as he slammed the door a few days later, and Sherlock could tell by the way he stomped up the stairs that he was angry.
"Hmm." Sherlock said, nodding to himself, trying to hide his satisfaction. "Why not?"
"She said it was too much for her after that Chinese gang, and the fucking psychos that attacked her today looking for you." So Sherlock's bribe had worked. He smirked a little at the thought of the woman cornered and terrified. He had told the men not to seriously hurt her, but she might have gotten just a bit bruised and battered before the police arrived.
"She wasn't worth it anyway," Sherlock told John as the guitar case thudded on the floor. "Boring. Ordinary. Just another idiot."
"Could you stop insulting her?" John yelled, and Sherlock looked up in astonishment. John's face was hardened as he glared down at the detective.
"Why do you care?" Sherlock frowned, thoroughly confused. "She ended your relationship; she hurt you, so why do you still defend her?"
John took a deep breath and rubbed his face in his hands before responding. When he did, it was in a softer tone of voice. "Because I care about her. Even though we aren't 'together', I still like her and don't want people to call her names." John stopped, then laughed ruefully. "Not that caring about people is something you'd understand."
Clearing his throat and setting the newspaper in his hands down, Sherlock responded. "I think I do know what you mean. Caring and compassion…those are some of the things I feel for you."
There was also a more passionate emotion that Sherlock refused to acknowledge, because it might scare John, so unbendingly straight. (And because to acknowledge that would mean that it was real, and an emotion like that was nothing more than a weakness.)
John looked at Sherlock, and the sentence hung in the air. The words were fragile glass in the silence. Unexpectedly, John's expression softened and he picked up the guitar case again. He opened it and took out the instrument, and grinned at Sherlock's perplexed face when he started playing.
He sang the whole song, and Sherlock's heart swelled at each chorus.
"Sherlock smiles like Sherlock doesn't care, he lives in his world, so unaware, does he know that my destiny lies with him..."
And there, in the middle of the living room of 221B Baker Street, with a love song being strummed on an acoustic guitar, the world's only consulting detective watched the man who made him feel emotions like this.
Sherlock smiled.
And Sherlock cared.