People were generally imbeciles, Sherlock mused, but they could, on occasion, be somewhat accurate as well. Or as near accurate as anyone other than he himself could be, anyway.
This time they were correct in their assumption that he didn't have a heart. What they were wrong about, however – because imbeciles must still be wrong about something; that was just how the universe was balanced – was that he did originally have one to start with. A heart, that is.
What they didn't know, what no one would ever know, was that Sherlock didn't have a heart because he'd long since given it to one John Watson.
Which was why it couldn't possibly hurt if John were with other people.
It didn't even make sense: if his heart were in John's possession, surely it had no right to hurt the way it did when he saw John with his girlfriends. It wasn't his to hurt anymore; it was John's.
Which made even less sense, because since when had anything John ever did hurt as much as what he was now doing to Sherlock?
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Opening his eyes was a mistake: Sherlock was immediately confronted with John – which was generally a good thing – snogging his current girlfriend right on their doorstep.
Ignoring the feeling of an ironclad fist squeezing itself around the heart that wasn't in his possession, Sherlock closed his eyes and methodically recited the Periodic Table backwards.
It took all of three minutes and fifty-seven seconds – Sherlock had not counted – for John to finish his exchange of bacteria with Jeanette – Jeanine – Janet – and come up the stairs.
Sherlock schooled his face into an inscrutable mask and adopted his thinking position on the sofa just before John came through the door.
"I'm back," John said, rather needlessly, Sherlock felt.
"Obviously," he said by way of acknowledgement, then promptly curled in on himself, facing the back of the couch, so John would know he wasn't to be disturbed.
It shouldn't hurt the way it did, but it hurt all the same, and wasn't Sherlock supposed to be above all this – the mundane trivialities of sentiment?
"Are you alright?"
No, John, I'm not. It feels like I'm drowning when you're with your girlfriends and the only way I can stay on the surface is when I know you've just had a break-up.
It feels like I'm suffocating without you by my side and the only oxygen I can breathe is John-Watson-oriented.
You even make breathing not boring, John.
But when you're with anyone that's not me it feels wrong, everything in the world feels wrong when you're not there.
When you're kissing Jeanette it feels like someone's electrocuting me, and I know one day this won't be enough – this promise of crime-solving and danger and adrenaline – and you'll want to settle down, start a family.
And I'll let you because it wouldn't be fundamentally right for you not to be happy, the universe wouldn't be right if John Watson weren't happy.
And if making you happy means not having you by my side, then suffocating in air not John-Watson-orientated would be a small price to pay.
"Of course, John, why wouldn't I be?"
xxx x xxx
"You are not a man who deprives himself of what he wants, Sherlock," Mycroft casually observed, leaning against his ever-present umbrella.
"I could say the same about you," he coolly returned, passing an unimpressed eye over his brother's undoubtedly thickening waistline, "How many conference buffets have you had lately?"
"Don't try to change the topic," his brother chided, "You always get what you want, in the end. Why should John Watson be any different?"
It's different because I don't deserve him, Mycroft.
His mistake was not staying silent, it was staying silent for too long.
"Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock," Mycroft said, then turning to leave the flat before John came home from work, his infuriating umbrella swinging in hand.
xxx x xxx
The day had finally arrived. John would be getting married today – after going through no less than twenty-seven girlfriends in the year and a half he and Sherlock had shared a flat – he had decided to settle down with one Mary Morstan.
"What are you doing?" John asked, wandering into the kitchen on the morning of his dreaded (for Sherlock) marriage.
"Conducting an experiment, obviously," Sherlock murmured, still gazing through his microscope at the soil sample that was seeming less and less interesting by the second.
Nothing ever seemed anything other than irritating or dull when John was in the room, because John Watson commanded his absolute attention and interest. John was the polar opposite of boring, he was without a doubt, the best thing that had ever happened to Sherlock.
His knowledge of astronomy may be inadequate, but he did know his world revolved around John Watson.
Even if John never knew that.
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