Disclaimer: I do not own anything relating to the BBC or Sherlock series.
This story is loosely based on a song called "Goodbye, England (Covered In Snow)" by Laura Marling.
I remember seeing him, wrapped up on a chilly day in that stupid coat of his. He had his collar turned up, as he was warrant, and my scarf twisted around his neck. It was odd seeing it there, my red scarf where his blue ought to be. "Too soaked in blood to salvage after the jump, John," he'd said. "A little, insignificant detail," he'd said, but it wasn't. That red scarf changed everything for me.
He had tried to give it back when I set it next to him on the sofa. "There's no need. I can purchase a replacement of the last one."
"Just for now, then. It's frigid and I know Lestrade is burning to have you there no matter how 'low on the scale' you feel this case to be. Go take a look for him," I said. Sherlock rolled his eyes and stood, his shirt and trousers baring not a single wrinkle after his morning lounging on the sofa in them, a testament to their quality.
I think back now, watching him knot that scarf I never wore at his throat, and wonder what I was thinking going with him that day. I had no business following after him. It was an "open and shut," he'd said. "Won't take a moment." I had work early the next day, he knew. He asked anyway, as he pulled on his jacket and buttoned a single button at his abdomen. "Would you care to tag along?" He wasn't even looking at me, which I should have realized was a sign right then. Sherlock, unless utterly uninvested in the answer of a question, always watched the responder, usually answering the question for himself before any words were spoken. That is, unless he knew the answer before asking the question in the first place.
In any case, as he pulled his coat on over his jacket, I nodded and waited for him to move away from the coat stand before collecting my own and following him out the door.
I had had to ask him, during the cab ride home after things had been settled with Lestrade, weather or not he believed what the wife had said. Weather or not he believed, really not that someone's feelings could be strong enough to kill—I'd known that was true for a long while—, but weather or not he believed in love. True love, like the woman had said. "I believe psychological responses in the human brain can be evoked that cause people to think they are in love. I believe that, in certain cases, like with that woman, love can be scared out of a person. She was so beyond submissive to her husband, frightened as she was by his always present temper, that, when she found out he was engaging in sexual relations with another woman, her emotional response was kicked into overdrive and she killed him out of, of all things, love." He looked me right in the face as he said all of this and I know he noticed how my gaze kept falling to that red scarf he was wearing. My red scarf.
As he finished, I looked him right in the eyes and said the words that I always worried would start a row between us. "I disagree."
"Oh?" was his reply.
"I think that, at that point, when you love someone enough that you could right out die, something in you breaks if they hurt you. I think that love is delicate and frail, but I also think that it's real and tangible and more than just a 'psychological response.'" He nodded and turned away from me to look out the window.
When the cab stopped at 221 Baker St, he got out and left me with the fare. I paid and got out myself. I was on the verge of following him in when something clicked in me and I turned to walk down the pavement instead. I walked in the brisk afternoon until I thought I may not be able to find my way back directly, and then I sat on a sticky looking sidewalk bench and watched my breath fog out in front of my face. I sat for several minutes before he settled beside me. It was times like these that I think many would use as proof that he'd installed a tracking chip in my phone or something equally as ridiculous. I could guess that he'd seen me start to walk from the window of the flat and simply followed me.
We sat silently for a long time, our hands shoved deep into our pockets and our noses and cheeks gone red with the cold. This was the most awkward silence I'd ever experienced in our friendship. I would venture to say it was the most awkward anyone had had with him, in his life. Eventually, he spoke, "I read that…letter you wrote." My eyes snapped to him immediately and then, just as quickly, darted back down to staring at the toes of my boots.
"What letter?" I knew which letter. I deleted it the day after he came back. It was silly to think he wouldn't've read it. Of course he had.
"It was quite…comprehensive. John," he turned bodily toward me. "I had no idea that that kind of caring could exist within anyone in regard to me. I wasn't exactly raised to expect that sort of thing and…" I looked up at him. This apprehensive speech was abnormal, being usually so sure in everything he said. What I saw in his eyes floored me. I read a heavy compassion there that I never before would have associated with Sherlock. That just wasn't his "area." It required too much empathy. An understanding of others that even he was sure he did not posses. I felt like running. I was scared. What was he about to admit? Could I handle this? Was our friendship strong enough? Were he and I strong enough? Was now the right time, with him just barely three months back into our old life? And that answered it. Our life. It would be that for as long as I could make it, in whatever form. I would always be there to protect him, from himself and others, and others from him. That was why I knew him. But that wasn't the only reason.
"It does exist, Sherlock. From me to you it does. When I wrote that, I thought that I'd never see you again. I had clutched your bloody face in my hands, I'd buried you. I thought it was over then, this chapter in my life, and I wrote that letter in an effort to let you go. Not that it worked," I said, my voice quaking at parts. He looked me in the face the entire time I spoke. My eyes kept straying to my red scarf.
"John." My eyes snapped to his. He leaned close and I let him. When our icy noses were nearly touching, I tilted toward him and brushed our lips together. It was barely a kiss, chapped and chilled, but it was a miracle to me because, until that moment, I could never name my real, tangible feelings of caring protectiveness for Sherlock. Not until that moment. Right then, I could call it love. Not a fiery, lust-filled love, but a warm, blanketing, forever kind of love. And I knew then too that he felt the same way. That he wanted whatever we had, in whatever form it took, for as long as he could have it. And that was strong enough, we were strong enough.