john, shy and cautious and doubtful that sherlock wants him to be romantic, unsure if sherlock will think it’s a waste of time, remembering if i wanted poetry i’d read john’s emails to his girlfriends with all its careless derision. being so full up of things he wants to say and do that he can’t stop them spilling over, hesitant but determined to show sherlock anyway, as much as sherlock will let him.
john, feeling out the edges with one little gesture at a time, waiting to see if sherlock will accept them, tiny offerings held gently like trembling birds in the palms of his hands. making sherlock’s favourite pasta for dinner, lighting candles in petri dishes. bringing him a slew of tabloids from the newsagents when he’s bored. curling up with him on the sofa late at night, letting sherlock pick the channel and keeping track of how many right or wrong deductions he can make.
and sherlock, bright brilliant beautiful terribly in love with john sherlock, sees each and every hesitation, and kisses each offering out of john’s hands with an ache in his heart that swells underneath his ribs, though he’s not perfect so sometimes sherlock misses them on the first go-round and has to go back later and kiss john again and again and again so john knows how much sherlock loves him and his romances, and the swell in both their chests dissipates with every exchange of smiles and every bubbling laughter, and the ache heals. bit by bit, the ache heals.
and john flourishes, and sherlock flourishes, and their romance is one for the ages, john says, one for the books, and he sheds his hesitations like a butterfly’s cocoon, emerging into a kind of soft delightedness at being in love that he has never felt.
and yes, he’s romantic. he leaves bits of love poems on post-it notes around the flat, finds spicy chocolates and unusual honeys to feed to sherlock in bed on sleepy saturday mornings, croons love songs and kisses sherlock’s fingertips, trailing down to his wrist while naming all the muscles and the bones. he holds sherlock’s hand in the back of cabs or in the hallways of the yard, calls sherlock names like lovey and sweetheart and bumble, takes him to bed and kisses him softly and threads their fingers together and asks, always asks, are you all right, is this okay, tell me everything you’re thinking, i want to know it all. i love you. i love you. i’m so in love with you.
he wants to take sherlock to all the beautiful places in the world and whisper all the beautiful words he can say, and he wants to protect sherlock and to free sherlock and to watch him soar and fly and laugh and breathe and know everything he could possibly want to know. he wants sherlock to know, unequivocally and without question, that he is loved and that he is wanted and that he is good.
and sherlock looks at john, love lighting up his eyes like the sun filtering through the surface of the ocean, and takes all the love john gives him and pours all the love he can back, kissing the imprints of his love to john’s forehead and temples and collarbones and palms and belly, making john laugh and making john safe and making john understand that he will accept any beautiful thing john could hope to give him but that he doesn’t need them, he doesn’t need a single one, because he already has the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and that is john himself.
and sometimes, it’s sherlock that brings john roses, just to see the beauty that is a happy confident comfortable loved loved loved john watson.
