In Which Sherlock is Art and Sadness

John:

Christ, he's beautiful sometimes. Like right now, with the light from the setting sun catching him just so, the angles of his face made somehow both sharper and softer with shadow and warm, glowing light.

I don't feel ashamed, admitting that. Not really. (At least not to myself; I think I'd die if he knew it, or it somehow found its way on to my blog. Can you die of embarrassment? I don't want to find out.) But it's easy enough to accept. Maybe because I don't mean it quite the way everyone would assume I did. This isn't the same as my wide-eyed appreciation of Karen Gillan in her kiss-o-gram copper costume. There's something more…profound about it. The feeling I get when Sherlock looks like this is a lot like the feeling I got when I was a boy and went to the Louvre on a school trip. (Not with Mum, because who needs art when you've got gin? And of course, Dad was already gone.) The wait to get in was so long and boring that I was absolutely miserable by the time we finally made it inside…but the art! I don't have much of a critical eye, I guess, but I remember looking around those huge galleries and just feeling…dumbstruck. There's no better word for it. I remember one painting really struck me: Rembrandt's Philosopher in Meditation. I stood there staring at that one for God knows how long; pretty sure old Mr. Peters had to drag me away from it. There was something so sad and so peaceful about that painting. It felt like home, but there was still something untouchable about it. Yeah. The colors make me think of Sherlock, now, his chin pressed to his violin and his fingers just softly plucking, dust motes caught in a sunbeam and swirling around him in lazy circles.

Or maybe: the girl in Afghanistan. On my second combat tour, we swept through a little village that had been on the receiving end of some pretty intense American fire. They were clearing up the roadside for us, or so we were told, and leaving the remaining citizens more docile. Easier to deal with. The civilian casualties were, well…high. You try not to look too hard at their faces. The sunlight helps, makes you squint. But there was this girl. She was wearing a violet-coloured hijab, but I could still see her face. God, she was young- couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen- but I could tell the baby in her arms was her own child, something about the way she was cradling it, I guess. It wasn't crying. It wasn't moving. It was just laying there, limp and bloody in her arms. Of all the men that must have stared at her as our convoy rolled past, she chose to look at me. Her eyes were unbelievable: striking hazel against her dark skin, lined with heavy black lashes and lit with something dark and terrible from the inside. Her cheeks were damp, but her eyes were so clear, so intensely focused on mine. We didn't break eye contact until she was too far away for me to make out her face. I don't know why she stared at me like that, but I know it was beautiful and painful and sad.

Sometimes looking at Sherlock feels like that.

But then he does something- this time, he lifts his bony knees up to his chest and his face shifts out of the sunlight. He scowls at me and demands I tell him where I've hidden his cigarettes, and suddenly he isn't the achingly beautiful creature I've been staring at for a good ten minutes; he's just Sherlock. I smile and tell him to sod off, that I've thrown his cigarettes out and he'd better quit whinging or I'll toss his patches too, and his scowl deepens. I prefer this version of Sherlock, somehow. He's more human, more real. I almost believe I could touch this Sherlock, though I might not come back with all my fingers.

"Oh, take a bloody picture," he pouts, turning his face towards the back of his favorite chair, and I allow myself an almost wistful smile.