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"This is preposterous!"
John raised an eyebrow, used to Sherlock's antics by now.
"Absolutely preposterous!", Sherlock repeated, clearly agitated.
John turned around to find Sherlock clutching a piece of paper, fuming at the mouth.
"What have you got there?", he tried.
"Your list", Sherlock hissed, his voice positively venomous.
That explained it. John would almost feel bad for his friend, but the list was nothing if not true.
"Sherlock Holmes - His Limits", Sherlock narrated demeaningly.
"Look, I didn't mean to offend you, I just wanted to document-"
"Firstly, Knowledge of Literature - Nil. Nil, John? Nil!"
"Well, yes-"
"Just because I didn't know your Jay Awstin-"
"Jane Austen! Which you should probably look up. I think Pride and Prejudice might teach you one thing or another."
"And now you're insulting me to my face! Whatever have I done to deserve such... such..."
"Insults? I'm not insulting you, it's true! You are rather proud. As you presently demonstrate."
Sherlock bit his tongue.
"I may be proud-"
"May", John mouthed.
"-but with reason! I am well-educated on all important matters and I don't appreciate being ridiculed."
"Sherlock, I only wanted to list the things you don't think are important. Generally, most of the things you deem irrelevant, most people find pretty relevant."
"Most people are boring! And I request you to take back the claim about literature."
"Sherlock-"
"Well, then I shall just have to prove you wrong."
Before John could respond, Sherlock had already taken his leave, wrapping his coat around himself and stomping down the stairs.
"Funny how he didn't complain about Philosophy and Astronomy being on the list", John muttered to himself.
John had not moved an inch when Sherlock returned a little over an hour later, flinging his scarf across the room, which landed across the detective's armchair and practically slamming his coat onto the coat hanger on the door.
Sherlock flopped down in his chair and flipped open a used and perused library copy of ‘Pride and Prejudice’. John had to repress a chuckle.
It took Sherlock the rest of the day to finish the book. In all honesty, John was fairly impressed by Sherlock's willpower, combing through a book he must find exhaustive for over five hours out of sheer spite.
But John was surprised to find that instead of the annoyed grunts he had been expecting, Sherlock let out the occasional huff of air and even a quiet laugh or two. He was nearly smiling by the end.
“What did you think?”, John asked Sherlock once he looked up, book snapped shut between his hands. The tea John had made him in hour four still stood untouched, growing cold.
“Surprisingly okay. I now comprehend the reference. I suppose I can see the comparison, though he and I are next to nothing alike.”
John raised an eyebrow.
“Apart from the ‘taciturn disposition’, do you honestly see a similarity? The man's a landowner. I couldn't bear to do nothing my whole life. And I seriously doubt that this Mr Wickham could have fooled me so easily.”
“Right”, John laughed. “And there's the romance aspect, I suppose.”
Sherlock gave him a curt nod.
As John diverted his attention back to the laptop balanced on his knees, Sherlock's frown deepened.
If there was one parallel he could draw between Pride and Prejudice and his own life, it would be that both Elizabeth Bennett and John Watson seemed to misunderstand the Darcys and Holmeses from their world. It wasn't that Sherlock didn't, or couldn't have romantic feelings.
It was that he simply did not have the talent of conveying them to the object of his affections in a comprehensible manner. Talking about any of his feelings had never come easily to Sherlock. Hell, John apparently still believed him heterosexual. But, if John apparently valued literature so, perhaps this could become a means of communication for them.
Retiring for the night, Sherlock pondered some of the literature of his youth, wondering which books might be suitable to hint -at the very least- his proclivities to John; since telling him that women weren't his area that first night clearly hadn't worked.
The next morning, Sherlock and John were called to a crime scene by Lestrade. The victim was in his late fourties, died very suddenly of an anaphylactic shock, clearly poisoned with an allergen. But it was his position, sunken in a chair, that opened the first opportunity to Sherlock. After rattling off his deductions to Lestrade and setting off on a mission to Barts with a few DNA samples, Sherlock began his soliloquy:
“Once again he stopped to look. And suddenly, as if under a memory, an impulse, he looked over his shoulder to the bank.”
John nodded along as if he was following.
“Okay..”
“The beholder sat there as he had once sat when, sent back from that threshold, this twilight-gray gaze had first met his own. His head slowly followed the movement of the person walking outside; Now it rose, as it were, to meet the gaze, and sank on his chest, so that his eyes looked from below, while his face showed the slack, deeply absorbed expression of deep slumber.”
John didn't answer that. He only looked at the pavement with a puzzled expression.
“But it seemed to him as if the pale and lovely psychagogue out there was smiling at him, waving to him; as if he were releasing his hand from his hip. Point out, float forward into the promising and monstrous. And, as so often, he set out to follow him.”
John's confused eyes met Sherlock's.
“Minutes passed before someone rushed to help the man who had fallen to the side of the chair. He was taken to his room. And that same day a respectfully shocked world received the news of his death.”
“Right. He sunk into the chair. Sorry, no. What?”
“Death in Venice”, Sherlock graciously explained. At John’s lack of reaction, he added: “Thomas Mann?”
“So this is you proving you know literature?”
“Yes”, Sherlock said. What he didn't say is that the case of the Armchair-Anaphylactic reminded him of the closing scene to one of the most prominent queer novels of the early 20th century.
As John still showed no sign if recognition, Sherlock wondered if maybe Mann was simply too german.
“Sherlock”, John began, “you don't have to quote obscure literature at me. I'm sorry if I injured your pride-”
“You didn't injure anything. I just think this is a language you might finally understand.”
John raised his eyebrows.
“Metaphors! Literary references. You reference things all the time and I have no idea what you're trying to tell me. Since you're not always capable of understanding my regular means of communication, yet claim yourself an expert in literature, I thought I might speak in metaphors too. Assimilation and all that.”
John gave him a soft smile.
“That's actually very kind. Maybe pick something more common next time?”
Sherlock nodded, smiling back. The next one, John couldn't possibly misunderstand.
He tried his luck again at home, after a short trip to his bedroom to pull out his trusty copy of Moby-Dick. This chapter, he had memorised entirely and while he trusted his memory, he liked rereading the passage tremendously, as it reminded himself of his own excitement as a boy, reading it and understanding the implications for the first time.
“Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm forever!”, Sherlock announced as he re-entered the living room.
“Sorry, what?” John asked, turning to look at him.
Sherlock persisted: "For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences I have perceived that in all cases, man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity, not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy, but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country-”
His eyes never left John's during this quote.
“Now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally”, Sherlock finished, quite satisfied with himself.
“What do you you mean, squeeze?”, John asked.
“It's obviously a metaphor. Don't be so insipid, John.”
At John's blank stare, Sherlock tried to jog John's memory.
“Ishmael squeezes the lumps out the spermaceti-”
“Like a whale's-”
"Precisely!”, Sherlock answered, giving back a toothy smile before picking up Pride and Prejudice again and marching over into his room. Now that John knew he was a homosexual, Sherlock needed some advice with the wooing bit. And if John trusted this Jane Austen so much, even likening Sherlock to Darcy, maybe she had some ideas.
About half an hour later, a soft thud was heard from the confines of Sherlock's room as the library book fell to the ground, slapping shut.
His and Darcy's situations weren't in the least comparable.
While his family wasn't exactly poor, Sherlock didn't have the fortune required to save John from his family's poverty and regardless of that factor, John's sister was nowhere near being married to an untrustworthy suitor he could pay off - which again raised the question of wealth- nor was she previously slighted by Sherlock in such a way he could easily repair in an effort to win John's heart.
Perhaps Regency was simply the wrong era.
Pondering this issue, Sherlock re-emerged from his bedroom to continue his current experiment on bone density. He had abandoned the experiment the morning before in favour of reading the list of his limits, which had sent him down this spiral in the first place.
He was tinkering around with various acidic fluids when John came back with Thai takeout, setting it down on the floor.
“Are those human?”
“You're the doctor, John”.
“Sherlock, please. I thought we had established the No-Human-Remains-On-The-Kitchen-Table-At-Dinnertime Rule.”
Sherlock checked his wristwatch.
“Lost track of time. Help me?”
John murmured something but assisted Sherlock in packing away the leg bones.
Sherlock grinned as an idea came to him.
“Never bury my bones apart from yours”, he said, the look in his eyes so intense John found it difficult to look at him.
“Illiad”, Sherlock offered as an explanation after a prolonged silence.
"Yes well. That's nice, I think. Bit morbid. Could we possibly return to the bones on hand?"
"Course."
John, still a bit fazed, stood up a bit too fast, accidentally knocking over a bottle of acid with one of the bones. Sherlock yelped as his biceps was hit with a few drops. The bones cluttered to the ground as John kneeled again, the look on his face terribly concerned.
“You okay?”, he asked and Sherlock got that fluttery feeling again, nodding but also wincing from the pain.
John gently pulled at the fabric, trying to get the soaked part away from Sherlock's skin as not to incite any further damage.
"I'd not mind if you cut my sleeve", Sherlock tried.
"Sherlock, that shirt must've cost 2 hundred pounds, I'm not cutting that!"
"Fine," Sherlock grumbled. "Have it your way."
“Fuck it, it's ruined anyway”, John said, pulling out the scissors.
Sherlock smiled through the pain and even let John wash and disinfect the area.
Sitting shirtless on the toilet as John perused the medical cabinet, searching for gel plasters for the burn and a proper wrap, Sherlock explained:
"That one wasn't technically literature, but I thought I'd prove my historical knowledge too.”
John nodded absentmindedly, still searching for the wrap.
“Emperor Ai of Han. 7 to 1 BCE.”
“Yes great, I'll add it to your lists of strengths. Unfortunately I might have to add safe experimental environments to your lists of limits.”
That soured the high of John touching his naked chest tremendously.
Fifteen minutes later they were eating the takeout John had brought on the couch, steering away from the kitchen for a bit. John said he might have to replace a few floorboards later on, shrugging off Sherlock's offer to help with a simple tap on the shoulder of the injured arm.
“And only this torments my wretched soul,
That whether I will or no thou must depart,
Here take my picture, and let me whear thine,
O might I keep thee here as i do this,
Happie were I, but now most miserable."
"Sure, eh, mate. Was that Shakespeare?"
"Marlowe", Sherlock grumbled out.
“And no need to thank me, Sherlock. After all, I spilled the acid.”
Sherlock nodded wordlessly, drowning his rice in the red curry.
Why wasn't it working?
He retired early in the night, retreating into his cave of a room to do more research.
Pulling out John's laptop and opening a private tab, Sherlock set out to find his luck on the Internet. Eventually he collapsed on his bed staring up at the ceiling, until he - disgusted that his behaviour reminded him of an Austen heroine - ruffled himself up and shut the laptop properly.
He would try his luck with these “Love Languages” and attempt to show John how much he meant to him, rather than saying it outright.
Over the next few days, Sherlock discovered just how unsusceptible John was to traditional flirting tips. Pulling out his chair for John and insisting on opening each door for John only got him strange looks. John even told him to stop when they were walking down a hallway and Sherlock sprinted to overtake John and get the door open before John reached it.
John didn't even notice him pay for their dinner the next night, as it was too close to their usual routine. When Sherlock insisted on going grocery shopping however, John got suspicious and insisted on accompanying him to ensure all the food he bought wasn't expired as he wasn't exactly keen on a repeat of the Just-Slightly-Gone-Bad-Food experiment from a few months ago that had landed him with a particulary nasty case of food poisoning he wasn't likely to forget anytime soon.
As it turned out, any Acts of Service apart from their usual crimesolving shenanigans were difficult to execute properly.
So, Sherlock went back to Plan A, combing through all of Shakespeare's sonnets to the fair youth for some poetry John might appreciate.
When John returned from the surgery, Sherlock was squatting on his chair and jumped up, reciting Sonnet 20:
“A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all “hues” in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.”
John, who had begun to chuckle two or three verses in, gave him a small applause.
“I can only do To be or not to be, so I guess you've got me beat here”, he commented, slowly finishing his applause.
"So, was that Shakespeare?"
"Yes John. I thought he might be more your speed."
"Hey! How could I have known that other guy wasn't Shakespeare? They're from the same time, aren't they?"
Sherlock stared at him like he had just said something incredibly stupid.
"I'll take that as a yes?"
"Obviously!"
"So, uh, you read much of his or-"
"All of it"
"As preparation for this test you keep wanting me to perform or-"
"At 13. I had a phase."
John nodded slowly.
"We read him in school. Romeo and Juliet."
Sherlock grimaced.
"You prefer the tragedies, I take it?"
"I prefer anything with fewer logical fallacies."
Before Sherlock could throw himself into a tirade on why Romeo and Juliet were apparently illogical, John asked: "Ever seen a play live?"
Sherlock shook his head.
"We could uh... yknow."
Sherlock raised a brow.
John looked away.
Was it working? Was John trying to ask him out?
"Sure", Sherlock croaked out, mouth suddenly terribly dry.
John nodded, still not looking at him for some reason. Sherlock had no idea what was going on in his head.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
But before Sherlock could resolve this, Lestrade called. A body found near the Thames.
Sherlock gave John the adequate time of 10 seconds to finish his visit to the lavatory before dragging him by the arm of his jacket. No complaints this time.
Perhaps proximity would help him?
So Sherlock tried to sit closer to John in the cab, leaning uncomfortably over the unoccupied seat between them and even daringly placing his hand a few inches away from John's thigh.
His efforts, however, went unappreciated, as John was texting Lestrade about the details of the case and narrating everything back to Sherlock.
And as the details grew more interesting, Sherlock’s hands found the better use of snapping together and sinking to his usual pose beneath his chin as he wondered just how the victim's intestines had gotten tangled in that steel railing on the bridge.
The crime scene distracted him from the whole John situation.
The way they worked together was natural, effortless. John would voice an idea and Sherlock would think it through. His insight was inspiring and his company delightful. As they made their way down the beach to get back to the main road, Sherlock felt tempted to take John's hand in his.
Instead, he looked to the sky and said: “But still your hum the years among deceives the butterfly. Still in your eye the violets lie, mouldered this many may."
John frowned as Sherlock took a deep breath.
"What are you on about?"
"I spilt the dew, but took the morn, I chose this single star... from out the wide night's numbers…”
He couldn't quite bring himself to say that last part.
"Thought you didn't go in for stars. With the solar system being a waste of brain capacity and all that."
"I don't. Usually at least."
“Astronomy being a limit of yours wasn't so far off, then”, John said as he walked ahead.
“John, forevermore”, Sherlock breathed out.
It was ridiculous. Pathetic, even.
How was he to confess these feelings of his when he was simply using the literary references as a shield?
Thackeray was right - Love makes fools of us all, big and little.
“Uh, Sherlock?”
John stopped in his tracks.
“Has that man been following us for long?”
Sherlock turned to look as the man disappeared behind a wall.
Immediately, they began to chase him.
The world narrowed down to this alley, just the cement below them, the stars above them and the wind in their ears. Sherlock only needed to motion at John for him to understand that they were to split apart and try to reach the suspect from both sides.
Sherlock caught up to him soon and cornered him. Unfortunately, the man had a knife. And even less fortunately, he was far better at hand-to-hand combat than Sherlock was, which led to him gaining a knife in the side and losing the suspect entirely.
“John”, he groaned when he finally approached from the other side of the building.
“Sherlock!”
John ran over and dropped to his knees.
“Hospital.”
“No, please. You do it.”
“You were stabbed. No argument. Come on, now. Can you walk?”
Sherlock let himself be pulled up. He felt like passing out but tried to focus on John's warmth by his side and the hand pressing on the wound around the knife.
“Don't go near the light”, John said.
“Ha ha.”
The answer brought a small smile to John's face. The groan Sherlock made at the next step made it disappear again.
When they got to the main road again, a taxi appeared at Sherlock's weakly raised hand. The cab driver argued but John used what Sherlock liked to call his Captain Voice and they were off to the hospital. At some point Sherlock passed out.
He woke up in a bed with bright lights above him. He looked to his side to see John, flicking through a magazine.
“Was I in a coma?”
“Calm down, you passed out from shock and blood loss. It's been-”, he paused to look at his watch, “-four hours.”
Sherlock pulled up the fabric of the hospital gown.
“Barely four centimetres deep, no vital organs damaged, no bone hit. As far as stabbings go, you were pretty lucky.”
Sherlock was tired still, hand grappling around to reach John's sleeve.
John raised an eyebrow but lifted his arm, which gave Sherlock the opportunity to grasp at his hand.
Sherlock closed his eyes immediately, feigning sleep, so he didn't see John's reaction. He did hear John's “Please be more careful next time. Almost had me worried there.”
He fell asleep again soon after and did therefore not hear the whispered “I couldn't bear to lose you.”
They went home the next morning, which was truthfully only a few hours later.
For the next few days, John took time off the surgery to take care of Sherlock. And while Sherlock quoted some Lovecraft and Poe here and there, he was really too tired and weak to properly woo John.
Once he regained some of his strength however, Sherlock's boredom set in. He could hardly move without being in pain and itched for a distraction, lying on the couch all day, wanting nothing more than so scratch his eyes out.
The mere existence of his feelings for John, alongside his inability to do anything about it, frustrated Sherlock to no end.
“Resist it”, he called out, “and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”
John nodded vaguely, clearly not really listening.
“It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.”
“So… you want to commit a crime? Get revenge on the stabber?”
Sherlock groaned so loud it was honestly half a scream and he stood up, wincing, and hobbled over to his bedroom.
John came to check on him later that evening, bringing a tray with dinner from Mrs Hudson and two cups of tea.
“Look, I'm sorry, Sherlock. You'll be out of it for a while, I get you're frustrated. I can't make it any better, so please, for my sake, don't make this worse for the both of us.”
Sherlock patted next to him on the bed.
“Sit.”
John sat down and pulled Sherlock gently upright, balancing the tray between Sherlock's good hip and his own hip.
Over the next twenty minutes, Sherlock slowly finished his plate as John finished his tea.
John told him about the interesting cases at ghe surgery that day and Sherlock told him about the stupid garbage he had seen on the telly.
When he was finished with his meal, John set Sherlock's tea on the bedside table and set the tray on the floor, returning to sit on the bed, now unsure what to do with himself.
Sherlock took pity on him.
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed
and the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring"
"This again..."
"Ever returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring
lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west."
Sherlock was giving him that look again.
"And I thought of him I love"
"Wait, what?"
"I thought of you, John"
"Is this what all this was about?"
"Yes, of course. I was seriously starting to doubt your cognitive skills. Or I had thought you in denial."
"Sherlock, did you try to tell me you loved me all this time?"
"Yes obviously! Must I repeat myself?”
His hands sunk to clutch at his forehead. “I had thought you less dull too…"
"Sherlock!!!!", John called out, half angry, half euphoric.
Sherlock removed his hands from his face to look at John's.
It was hovering around fifty centimetres above his. That distance was rapidly closing.
Just ten minutes after their first, second, third and eighth kiss, John was lying next to Sherlock, snugly pressed against the uninjured side.
"Why did it take you so long to understand what I was trying to convey?"
"Sherlock, love, you were speaking in riddles."
“But you do it all the time. You say things you don't mean and claim they were metaphors. If anything, I was being more obvious by using known ones."
"Known metaphors?"
"From romantic stories! Love literature. I was trying to be romantic! Poetry is the food of love, is it not?"
“Sherlock, you don't need to borrow words. You can if you want to, of course, I'm not trying to stop you from being romantic, but I promise I'll find your own words romantic too, because then I'll actually understand what you mean."
Sherlock's eyes twinkled.
"You're better than a triple murder, John."
"Oh, uh-"
"You're as exquisite as a bag of fresh ears, preserved on ice."
"Mmh"
"You're a locked-room triple murder with so many ears. and vengeful messages. Lots of them. Out of blood and organs."
"Thank you. I think."
"You're cocaine. Morphine. A full pack of cigarettes at three in the morning. As many nicotine patches as I can fit on my arm.”
John gave him a crooked smile.
“You're running through the London streets at nighttime, the moment when I catch up to a murderer, you're the epiphany when all the deductions clock into place."
John's smile turned into a grin.
Sherlock was spurting out metaphors like a waterfall.
"You're morning tea, you're gingernuts. You’re Chicken Chili Masala from the place on Bond street."
"I-"
"You're the bees i want to keep, the cottage I'll buy. You're my coat, you're my gloves, my equipment. You're my assistant, my blogger. My conductor of light."
"Oh, Sher-"
"You're the periodic table. All of the elements, the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars. You're my world, my London, my Bakerstreet. You're my chair. And your chair. The fireplace. You're home and you're my home and you're mine. if you'll have me."
"Yes."
"Good. That's good.”
John pressed a kiss to the side of Sherlock's chin.
“I love you too, Sherlock.”
Sherlock grinned so wide it nearly split his face into two.
“I'm curious, though. I didn't know half the things you quoted at me.”
John tried to think back at the odder quotations.
“Like that monstrous one this afternoon.”
“Picture of Dorian Gray.”
John laughed at that.
“And the sperm one?”
Sherlock pointed at his nightstand. Carefully, John crawled halfway over him to pick up the book, pointedly ignoring how Sherlock's breathing picked up when he knelt above him and furthermore ignoring the heat rising in his own cheeks.
The book he held in hand was Sherlock's trusty copy of Moby-Dick. It was well-used and had Sherlock’s full name inscribed, as well as a date likely originating from his later school years.
"I've never actually read it", John confessed.
"Suit yourself. It can be a bit exhaustive in the middle and I take no responsibility for Chapter 94."
"What's Chapter 94?"
"It's called 'A Squeeze of the Hand'."
John nodded slowly.
Sherlock then slumped slightly, fast asleep.
John settled in next to him and ran his hand through Sherlock's hair.
Curious to see what would inspire the colourful annotations the book seemed to be filled with, he opened it and started reading. The language was convoluted and weird, but the first few chapters were engaging enough for John to carry on reading.
With the introduction of Queequeg, John slowly understood the queer allegations.
Protagonist Ishmael and Queequeg were forced to share a bed in an Inn and very soon "married" each other during a social smoke in bed.
Bemused, John looked over at Sherlock, lightly snoring under the relaxing motion of John's hand.
“And those same things that would have repelled most others were the very magnets that thus drew me”, John whispered as he bent down, citing directly from Moby-Dick.
His mouth then met Sherlock's forehead, placing a soft kiss on it.
John carefully crawled under the counter-pane and held Sherlock.
Sherlock, who so ineptly and yet so so sweetly communicated his emotions, who claims to despise romanticism and sentiment yet remembered passages from queer poems and cited them freely at the object of his affections.
John still blushed at the thought that that was him.
Sherlock, who likely got this book as a teenager, identified with it and treasured it eversince. Who now entrusted this annotated copy to John. John carefully set aside the book, laid back down to nestle his face into Sherlock's curls and held him closer.