A/N I have a feeling that someone did something similar to this, which I read, whilst I was in the process of writing this one. I didn't copy it, I guess it was just great minds think alike. Sorry if I am stepping on someone's toes.
This is very not slash. I'm usually a bit ambiguous and leave it open to interpretation but this one isn't, so please don't get to the end and get upset with me.
Enjoy.
Not Quite
No matter how he tried, how much he thought about it, or how something appeared to be in a given split second, John Watson was not quite sure what this was. 'This' being him and Sherlock, of course. In fact 'not quite' seemed to sum the whole thing up.
They were colleagues he'd snapped at Sebastian…but not quite colleagues. You didn't put up with head in the fridge from colleagues…or flatmates either. So not quite colleagues, not quite flatmates.
Companions? Watson shook his head. Not quite. Yes…but no. It made him sound like a dog. The memory of Moriarty calling him that left a bitter residue. It wasn't true anyway.
Friends then. Friends made John pause a moment and turn it over in his head. Sherlock doesn't have any friends, Sally had said. He couldn't imagine Sherlock as having had friends in the past. He would have settled on that definition but…it didn't quite fit. John had acquaintances and he had friends, in the army and before that, and this didn't fit. This was, and he would never say anything about it to Sherlock, much deeper than friendship. Sherlock wouldn't know that but John did.
That feeling that John got somewhere in his chest when Sherlock was in danger. For no other friend did John know panic to shoot through his veins till it hummed even at the tips of his fingers burning white hot. Even stranger that equally as quickly it would go ice cold as John levelled a gun. He was a doctor not a soldier, yet he pulled his weapon out without hesitation to save his detective.
John shut his eyes at the memory of a singsong voice in his ear, gloating as a spot of red appeared between Sherlock's eyes. Even now the frustration, the fear, hit him hard. He would have died for Sherlock…still would.
Comrades worked well. Mycroft had said that when you walk with Sherlock Holmes you see the battlefield. John was born for danger and excitement and he'd left them behind, when he was injured, to come home. He'd found them waiting for him in the man of Sherlock Holmes. The relationship of comrades…yes…it was a deep one. Not quite as deep as this though.
What really made comrades not quite suitable was Sherlock's reaction to John. That's what made all these names unsuitable ultimately. Sherlock would see a comrade as someone he fought with, but would be surprised to care for. Everyone dies.
John still remembered with a small smile the way Sherlock's demeanour had crashed to the floor the second the swimming pool doors slammed shut and he was tearing off the bomb jacket and tossing it haphazardly away. The cool, calm, uncaring Sherlock Holmes, rubbing the back of his head absentmindedly with a loaded gun while he stammered incoherently something like thanks.
Even the title of lovers – and they were definitely not lovers (although he was beginning to see why people though so) – would not encompass precisely what this was.
John placed the cup of tea next to Sherlock's hand, as the great detective examined the latest case reports, and sat down in his chair inhaling the fumes.
Ultimately, he concluded, they were the same as anything that involved Sherlock Holmes – totally unique.