His Wooden Heart.
By CowMow.
Inspired by the wonderful song Mijn Houten Hart (My Wooden Heart) from De Poema's.
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For Jess, the amazing Sherlock to my John, and the bravest, cleverest girl I know, a silly piece for Valentine. With love, A.
Unbeta'd.
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Despite scoffing at John's futile attempts at explaining the concepts of dates and attraction and love, despite pretending that he didn't care, Sherlock Holmes knew perfectly well what love was.
To Sherlock, Love was lazy afternoons spent in his dorm, his head cradled in Victor's lap while long, slender fingers caressed his scalp as he was lost in his mind manor, trying to expand it to make room for the bright yellow gold that was Victor.
Love was consuming; fire and cleansing water and reviving air and musky earth. Love was drowning in air and flying through water; Love was carrying him along, downstream, against the current without his consent.
Love was feeling; feeling loved, feeling important and feeling richer than King Salomon himself. Love was feeling that he had a heart, and when he had overheard Victor talking about him to a friend, he felt as if that small heart, just big enough for Victor, was made of the purest gold.
Love was summer nights of unbridled passion between satin sheets, sweaty bodies moving slickly together as two parts of one. Love was cold winter days of cuddles on a worn sofa, of holding hands and going shopping together in the mall.
Love was the wonderful, brilliant, fantastic package that was Victor Trevor; neatly wrapped in soft skin and brown hair and wrinkles near the brown eyes when he smiled. Sherlock loved to trace those small lines, mumbling small endearments at which Victor scoffed. Fondly.
Love was groping and licking and biting and pushing harder and harder because it was never enough. Love was also worshiping, exploring, becoming one in such a gentle way that it hurt, though it was the most natural thing ever, so natural it made Sherlock wonder why they had never done this before.
Love was a void in his chest which shouldn't hurt because voids don't ache but yet it did. It so, so much did, because something that was yours wasn't there anymore to see and touch and listen to, and it hurt so much. Love was afternoons spent alone, on the floor, staring at the tiles in the kitchen they could have shared. Love had become maddening silence and painful numbness instead of fond laugher and soft nicknames whispered through a heated room that cooled their bodies.
Love was irrelevant to his work. It was sentiment, a defect in his otherwise perfect brain. It was something Sherlock Holmes could do without.
Love was something Sherlock Holmes knew he had to do without.
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Until he had met Victor, Sherlock Holmes had been content to live on his own, to live solely for the work, to care about no one but himself. He had his classes to focus on, so many new things to learn, interesting new experiments to conduct, new pranks to think of so he could pester his brother, and a new world, wide opened just for him to explore. On his own, and Sherlock didn't mind.
After Victor had changed all that, after he had made Sherlock a good man, after he made Sherlock need him and turned Sherlock in a man that was willing to give everything up, he left. He just left. It was not his fault, a drunk driver did the job, but Sherlock blamed Victor because it was all he could. There was no place for him to vent his love because it would never be returned, but it wouldn't hurt to send anger into that mocking void.
After the funeral, Sherlock fell back into his cold pattern, now fully unsatisfying but he clung to it because it was all there was left. No warm kisses or reassuring touches. No texts in the middle of the night, no sudden idea he could bounce off to a receptive wall. Nothing.
An empty chest. An empty bed, an empty sofa. An empty fridge.
His golden heart, stolen by a man of pure gold who would have no need of it anymore and yet had taken it into a gaping black hole, was gone, and Sherlock didn't want to replace it.
He had to, though, soon. Every man and woman needs a heart, so he, with some trouble, opened up to a DI from Scotland Yard. A man with grey hair and kind, tired brown eyes. He let Sherlock in, too, and after a few months of working on a case, the void had been filled with a wooden heart.
It was hard wood, heavy from the loss of Victor, but bendable and flexible if needed. Also, the insults from Donovan and Sebastian and Anderson, the occasional sneer of Lestrade, the 'piss off's from witnesses and the disgusted looks from the other officers could not root in wood that had no cracks, no room to get a tight grip and weed around. It's near-impossible to hurt wood; it's too hard to cut with nasty remarks or cold glares or mocking laughter.
His heart was wood, not gold, but that was just fine. Wood wasn't worth stealing, no one wanted a wooden heart that could chip and burst into flames when there was too much heat or fire, or that would turn ugly when there was too much water. Love was fire. Love was water.
John - beautiful, amazing, wonderful John - didn´t care. He cradled the wood in his rough, practised hands, polished it and made it shine. He filled up the void left by Victor with his "fantastic"s and "Amazing!"s and "Brilliant!"s. John was strong and steady; his love was there, lingering comfortably in the back of Sherlock's mind, wafting soothingly around his head when it ached.
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To Sherlock Holmes, Love was tea and jumpers. It was not fire and water and earth, it wasn't pulling him down until he couldn't breathe, it wasn't consuming.
Now, to Sherlock Holmes, Love was having John and being there for John. JohnJohn, because that was what truly mattered. John would be there, would say "piss off" to the people who tried to hurt him, would kill for him and heal him.
Love was 221B, calm and solid, a safe haven for his whirring mind to take a rest, to bask in warm arms and gentle smiles.
Love was white, damp sheets in the small room upstairs, a green duvet, blue eyes and blond hair.
Love was what made Sherlock tick, what made him a better man.
Yes, despite being rude and arrogant and pretending not to care about romance, despite pretending not to be so weak as to fall in love with an ex-army doctor, despite having lost his golden heart, Sherlock Holmes knew perfectly well that John loved him. And just as sure as he knew that, he also knew that he loved John.
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The End.