A/N: I actually think about the overuse of "meaningful" words a lot. So that's basically why I wrote this. Yep. Anyhoo enjoy!
Word Count: 890+
Pairing(s): Sherlock/John, mentions of Sherlock/anonymous, Sherlock/Mycroft brotherly fluffiness, John/ladies, and hardcore Sherlock/Lestrade bromance, the latter of which is beginning to be a major problem.
Warning(s): Crap family lives, over analysis of novelties, cheesy poetry clichés via John Watson, unforgivable amount of fluff, and consulting goofballs in love. Mentions of cocaine problems, alcoholism, and meaningless sex. Also, mentions of Sherlock being infatuated with a woman, which I guess some people find unbelievable for whatever reason.
Of Love and Bad Poetry
I love you. Three words, eight letters, a million different interpretations. There was meant to be something profound attached to those words, a certain sacred, glorious hue reserved for heart-ache soul mates and the tender truth between one's true family. I love you. The words were meant to have so much meaning to them. But, of course, they usually didn't.
John Watson had said "I love you" many times, countless times. He said it to his mother, because it was the only thing left to say to the dull husk of the woman who'd birthed him. He said it to his father or, rather, his gravestone, who he might've loved had he ever really known him. He said it to his sister, not because he really did love her but because she was drunk and broken and it was what she needed to hear. He said it to random aunts and uncles that he met twice a year, at best. He said it in the throes of passion with faceless women, when what he'd meant was "I love sex." He said it to pretty, nice girls who he almost believed himself with, more or less because they'd said it first and there were obligations if you wanted to keep dating a girl. He said it countless times to countless people to the point where the words are strung so thin off his lips the meaning is lost. Stunted. Typical. Hollow.
So what to say, then, to the man he truly loves? Sherlock Holmes despises typical and stereotypical, and he'd only scoff at meaningless. John lays there in Sherlock's arms, nose pressed into his neck, and he wishes he could take them all back. Delete every false "I love you" he ever released. Sherlock deserves them all, and more. He deserves some new, virgin avowal to express just what John feels for Sherlock. Just Sherlock and no one else, not before and not after – there will not be an after, if John can help it. But John can't do that. He can't give Sherlock anything for he's been careless with his affection and given all of the novelties away.
Sherlock looks down at John and smiles. "You're thinking quite loudly. What about, I wonder?"
John closes his eyes. Ghosts his teeth over Sherlock's neck. "Nothing I say will be enough," he says. "It's all been said before."
"Say nothing, then," Sherlock says. "I already know."
"Do you?"
Sherlock pulls John closer, hands clutching against his skin. "Yes," he says, matter-of-fact. "I've deduced it and, as you know, I am quite clever."
John nuzzles his face into Sherlock's throat. Breathes him in. "I hope so," he says.
Sherlock can count on one hand the number of times he's said those words, and he meant it every one. He isn't a sentimental person and it takes quite a lot of Meaning to elicit something like that out of a Holmes boy, after all.
He meant it when he was seven and Mummy started up again – screaming, crashing, crying, breaking. Mycroft had stolen him away into the neighborhood and Sherlock, significantly thunderstruck by the escapade and the feel of his big brother's arms around him, spoke it carefully. ("I love you, Myc.") He meant it when that beautiful girl at school somehow charmed him, pulled him into some sort of infatuation. Laced with lies, hormones, and cocaine, sure, but real enough in Sherlock's young naivety and it had burst out of him ("I'm pretty sure I love you. That's okay, right?") a few nights before the girl dumped him without explanation; Sherlock had long sense deleted the girl's name, but he could not delete her completely and still stiffened a bit around girls with hazel eyes. He meant it when Lestrade tucked him into bed after being jacked up on morphine after a bad trip to the hospital, even if it had come blurting drunkenly out of him ("I love you, man.") and Lestrade had lit up like an especially embarrassed Christmas tree. A different kind of love for each circumstance, but all there, and all important. None of them, however, had been like with John. This was something different. Something better. Something worse.
Sherlock smiles when John leans up to kiss him. "I wish I were a poet or something," says John, voice tinkling with amusement. "Maybe then I could say it."
"I've read your poetry, John." Sherlock rolled his eyes, fought a grin. "Please, spare me."
John gasped in mock horror. "But what about your ebony locks? Your fathomless, ever changing eyes that cast allusions to your beautiful soul? The sweet, porcelain cascade of your cheekbones? I could go on for stanzas!"
Sherlock fought a tide of laughter fighting its way up his throat; can't encourage him. "Stop it!" he hisses. John is egged on anyway, grinning like a maniac.
"My aching scarlet heart beats only for you! I am but an ordinary speck under your divine, brilliant light!""
"John!"
"You weave through the city like a raven sweeps the elegant night!
"Ravens aren't nocturnal."
"My love for you is deep and fathomless as the Universe you fail to understand!"
Sherlock kneed him in the stomach just hard enough to make John lose his breath before he swooped in to kiss him. It was firm but not rough and Sherlock grinned against John's lips. Suffocation aside, John's heart soared.
He could work on being novel later.
I need some. Get me some.