Meteor

A/N: The word "meteor" comes from the Greek, originally meaning "a thing in the air" or "lofty."

Spoilers for 2.3; you have been warned.


John still writes of Sherlock, words he never intends to cast before the fickle masses who all too readily believed the lies. But he still writes.

Since no one's likely ever going to read this, I might as well say things that would make people talk—though people are stupid and petty, and they talk anyway.

I miss him. I miss running, now that my limp is returning. I miss hearing him playing some mournful melody at three in the morning when I had to be up for work at five—I miss yelling at him, I miss him pretending not to hear. I miss his smiles, the fake ones as well as the real. I miss his sodding cheekbones, and the way he'd turn up his collar when he was trying to look cool. I miss the way he would nearly burst with glee over murders. I miss the way he liked to climb up high, like a child playing "king of the hill," perhaps because he liked feeling closer to the sky. I miss the way he would say, "all my cuffs have buttons" when he really meant "thank you."

I even miss everyone assuming we were gay. I'd let the whole world think we were gay—I wouldn't care one bit about it—if only he were here. If the worst accusations they could conjure was that he was "involved" with his "live-in PA."

I miss the times I desperately wanted to punch him in the face. Because he was so much better than me, so high and "lofty," so very, very brilliant, like a falling star, an human meteor.

Dictionary dot com tells me a "meteor" is "any person or object that moves, progresses, becomes famous, etc., with spectacular speed." Sherlock Holmes was nothing if not spectacular—he caught me up with him, and I forgot fear and pain, unwilling to miss out on his brilliance. I suppose it's easy to condemn him as a "fraud" when you never really knew him—but like a meteor, streaking across the night sky in startling incandescence, his brilliance was unmistakable.

And like a meteor, Sherlock was a terrifyingly bright and ultimately self-destructive thing, forever taking the path of most resistance. Dictionary dot com also tells me that, "most meteors burn up before reaching the Earth's surface." But maybe this one didn't have far enough to fall. On the side of the angels, but never quite one of them.

Something that hard isn't supposed to cry, or to bleed. In the end, he did both. The falling star that left a crater in my life.