A/N: I...I really don't know where this came from. I know it's sort of choppy and there's probably a bunch of mistakes but I wrote this in like fifteen minutes when the muse struck me. I thought about just making this a passage from an actual chaptered story but I decided to do something different for the story that this came from and now it's just a random one-shot that I wrote when tired and bored and just desperate to not let go of the words that were flowing through my mind.
Because that happens. I have this whole amazing scene written down in my head, but as soon as I try and type it down it all disappears. It's so frustrating.
Also I realize that they're pretty OOC, especially John.
Disclaimer: I don't own BBC Sherlock.
John Watson is afraid.
He was afraid ever since Mary expressed her concerns about Sherlock, but now his fears are multiplied tenfold and are eating up his insides - or doing something, because his heart has stopped and will not start again - because now he has evidence to back up what she claims. He knows Sherlock will do anything for him, no matter how humiliating, how painful, how traumatizing, he'll do it.
He should never have requested - no, manipulated him into - it. Just asked the detective to get rid of a body part or two, not mutilate his own flesh, carve a reminder of what people will always view him as: FREAK.
He didn't think Sherlock would do it, just get angry at John and start sulking, but as he soon as he saw the man pick up the knife with just the little bit of confusion and hesitation and press it into his own arm he knew that he was serious.
And John watched, too horrified for words, tongue dry and glued to the bottom of his mouth, as the man methodically, tenderly, with the sort of gentleness that only an artist or musician or surgeon possessed, cut the F and the R, before he finally managed to get ahold of himself and outright plead for his friend to stop.
In a morbid, terrible sort of way, he misses the old Sherlock. The one who had no problem drugging him for an experiment, who had no problem constantly demeaning him, because this new, dependent Sherlock is horrifying. And he knows, knows that all the signs had been laid out, ever since the man returned from the dead. How the man needed John to forgive him, how the man threw himself into planning his wedding, arranged everything down to the last detail.
How Sherlock shot a man for him in front of armed officers and helicopters, completely willing to die if it meant John and Mary would be safe.
That last one gets him the most, because he should have known by then, figured it out, but no, Mary quite literally spelled it out for him, and even then he couldn't see it.
No matter how irritated he feels when Sherlock chastises him for seeing but not observing, John knows now how he is right.
How could he have missed it?
How could he have missed this...this sentimental mess, who only allowed himself to feel happy if John was, who was willing to deface his own body, his own skin, if his friend only asked him to?
A quiet, dark part of his mind that he tries to ignore wonders what would happen if he asked Sherlock to hold a gun up to his head and shoot himself. He almost wants to see what would happen, but is scared that his friend will do it, and he's not willing to take that chance.
Sherlock Holmes makes John Watson afraid, and he knows that if the detective knew that he would quite literally beat himself up.