Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock Holmes, but I ship Johnlock freely because I can. The new versions of Sherlock and John Watson M.D. belong to Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, bless them.
Warning: I tried to keep it neutral (with just a splash of British words), but I'm always more inclined towards Americanisms, and English is not even my native tongue, lol.
Rating: PG for now, but will eventually go up to M.
Sherlock finds it hard to express his feelings for John given his past experiences. He keeps a secret online diary where he posts letters in which he describes his feelings. One day John discovers said diary. That's when everything changes.
Sherlock pretended to stay still, as if deep in contemplation, until John left the flat (shopping and/or social appointments being the usual reasons for this), and then he proceeded to update his diary. This had been going on for a month or so -it was all real contemplation and stillnessbefore, before they got romantically involved.
Of course, Sherlock didn't know how to deal with his sudden burst of doubts and needs. He had always regarded such affairs as trivial and unworthy of his attention. "Sentiment is found on the losing side", he'd said to Ms. Adler. How wrong he had been. It wasn't that things with John weren't going well. John was wonderful. They were close to what they'd been like before the Fall. After Sherlock's return, John had limited himself to punching him -hard- once. What happened next wasn't something the detective had been able to predict. He remembered it like a movie, as an outer body experience. John had crouched next to him on the ground, and embraced Sherlock for an entire minute. Then he kissed a startled Sherlock on the lips, with his hands on the back of Sherlock's head, pressing lightly onto the dark curls to keep him from fainting or breaking off the kiss. When they finally separated, he'd whispered into his mouth, "Don't you dare pull something like that on me again, you arse".
But that'd been it. Everything else remained as it was before. They slept in their separate bedrooms, as always. John kept taking care of Sherlock, making sure the detective didn't starve, convincing him to sleep once in a while, and tolerating (and sometimes even participating in) his experiments. Some things were new, though. John had abandoned his habit of partaking in the company of the fairer sex (Good riddance, Sherlock thought). They'd spend their free weekends watching telly, and sometimes John would lean into Sherlock's shoulder and fall asleep. But that was it, and the situation was driving Sherlock mad. He was upset at himself for wanting more out of John after having driven him away on their "first date", during the "Pink" case.
That particular day, the day when everything changed, Sherlock was distracted by Lestrade's call. He closed John's laptop shut in a hurry after miss clicking the "close tab" button, and thus, leaving his diary entry on standby, while he bullied Lestrade into giving him the most relevant details in record time. After getting insufficient data from the DI, Sherlock put on his coat and scarf and left the flat, partly because it had been a while since the last case, partly because he craved the distraction. Little did he know that when he came back home he'd find a very confused John Watson. John, who just five minutes after he'd left the house sat in front of the secret diary of Sherlock Holmes.