Apologies for the delay, this drabble turned into an absolute monster with a length and plot line that can more accurately be called a oneshot. I meant to continue the letter-writing format, but I couldn’t get away from this story idea. I have planned for the next prompts to be epistolaries.
This is based on this prompt list. Check out @topsyturvy-turtely ‘s posts for June prompts here (turtle is actually up to #6 —she’s actually doing a wonderful job keeping up with the prompts daily unlike some people *cough* me *cough*), from whom I had discovered the list.
Without further ado, I present to you, Prompt #2
Summary: Sherlock doesn’t like pet names, and John doesn’t understand why. A fatal injury brings the truth to light, and changes their relationship forever—as well as Sherlock’s opinion on verbal endearments.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Tea-time at Baker Street is a very chaotic affair.
“Pet names are lurid, manipulative devices used to assert dominance in a relationship by using it to coerce one’s partner with affection. To paint them in a romantic light is demeaning, not to mention utterly tedious! The inability to comprehend how to address the people around oneself is a testament to how lacking an individual is in maturity of the mind!” Sherlock passionately exclaims.
Today’s rant is about pet names, apparently. He is seething at a different level from his usual outbursts, even surpassing his rant about the idiocy of the name “football” in American sports after a case with some tourists (They throw the ball with their hands, John!). That one, at least, John could concede solidarity on.
No, there is something emotionally involved here — a disastrous notion when it comes to his self-proclaimed sociopath— and John has a flitting suspicion as to what.
“You seem…” He trails off with an amused smirk. Is it worth it to prod at the sleeping bear?
“What?” His tone is murderous, and if John were a lesser man, he would have retreated both conversationally and literally.
“I don’t know, jealous?” John suspects that his attentions to his generously affectionate date had something to do with this, for the moment she had stepped through the door that afternoon, the strop began. The very audible breakup that shook the foundations of Sherlock’s chemistry set in the kitchen had done nothing to reduce its intensity. He had always seemed bitterly envious of John’s girlfriends….
Sherlock’s cold gaze sharpens at his remark, and in one lithe movement, the overgrown child throws himself onto the abused sofa and curls up towards its back. He doesn’t speak for the rest of the afternoon.
After a couple of hours without moving into his “thinking” position, John reckons the nights with no sleep and irrational anger was enough to tire him out for a long nap. Regardless, he didn’t move to protest when John threw a blanket over him.
Two shots. Directly in the chest. Every anatomical chart he had ever seen in his life barraged through his head in that moment, and blaring red, pulsing with danger danger danger like an alarm in each of them is the heart and all of the possible complications of its injury.
John is a doctor. He is rational, and he knows that blood cells cannot literally morph into fear, but terror is the only thing he could feel running through his veins as he pushes his idiotic self-sacrificing flatmate off of himself.
John’s heart leapt into his throat as a body slammed into his side — shit shit shit did their killer have an accomplice? — propelling the both of them toward the ground. Two deafening gunshots found a destination in some unlucky dud, and with the adrenaline coursing through him, he had to check that it wasn’t himself.
Painfully slow, John registered exactly what had just transpired, beginning with the cloying, familiar scent of aftershave filling his nostrils, followed by the mop of unruly black hair he has fantasized running his fingers through many an afternoon. His self-proclaimed sociopath had thrown himself in front of two bullets to save his life. Had gotten himself shot is John’s stead.
“Sherlock- Sherlock stay with me!” Two times. Sherlock was shot two times because John, with all of his military-trained reflexes, had not noticed their accomplice reaching for the hidden gun at the crook of his neck.
“In-ink stains, John. It was the ink stains! Mr. Montgomery…”
Oh good lord, the genius is bleeding out onto the fucking street and he’s still showing off! He laughs wetly.
“I’m sure you were brilliant, love, you always are. You need to stay awake, you hear me?” John absently runs his hand through the man’s curls. Sherlock’s eyes shoot open, pupils blown wide —danger danger danger
Damn it, where the hell is the ambulance? The cardigan he’s been pressing to the wound is already soaked through with blood. Sherlock’s lips are turning blue — danger danger danger
“I’m-I’m going into shock…I can’t stop it, John, I can’t…” John looks at him, and finds that he cannot recognize the man lying before him. Pure panic laced in his green irises like a poison, face taking upon a foreign expression- though to John it is familiar. The terrified countenance of a dying patient. There is no way John can emotionally distance himself from this. Sherlock is not another patient. Another patient’s blood would not make him feel like crawling out of his skin at the sight of its sheer amount.
Sherlock is not even just a friend, despite how often he insists it to his prying colleagues. John could live without him, but only in the barest sense of what it means to survive. People tend to forget there are fates worse than death.
“Did-did you get the accomplice? Richard Montgomery—I think he got away. You should-you should go after him before he-“
It can’t help but occur to him that his flatmate’s vice-like grip on his shirt betrays his true feelings. Stay, it is imploring.
I can’t stop it, he’d said.
He cannot die like this- he cannot die isolating himself, thinking that he is alone, that he has to push John away to preserve some stilted notion of dignity impressed upon him by years of reclusivity. I’m his bloody doctor, damn it!
He shifts Sherlock’s legs onto his lap to do what little he can to send blood back to his heart.
“Sherlock look at me.” His words fall upon deaf ears- Sherlock’s eyes are unfocused, flitting with hyperactivity. Faintly, he registers the presence of half of Scotland Yard coming up behind him.
“Where’s the bloody ambulance?”
“On its way. Jesus, John is he-“ Whatever Lestrade said after was irrelevant to saving the life in his arms, so he blocked it out.
I need to calm him down. He can’t be expected to do it himself. He needs you, Watson, no matter what he says.
“Tell me how you solved the case.” No response.
Desperation claws at the inside of his chest with its sharp talons, begging him to do something, anything, or it will tear him open and he will lay there bleeding out alongside-
“Sherlock, please, say something!” His voice is frantic now. “Tell me about the ink stains! Tell me how boring my last girlfriend was!”
John places a shaking hand on his cheek, his thumb leaving a scarlet imprint behind with each stroke like bloody footsteps in the snow.
“Sherlock, darling, please. I can’t lose you!”
They never talked about their feelings. They never bared their souls out to each other, as two Englishmen are wont to reject intimacy, which feels monumentally stupid in the light of their current situation. Sherlock could be dying thinking that colleagues encompassed the entirety of John’s regard towards him.
“I’ll stop nagging you about the toes in the fridge! I’ll help you with that bloody experiment you’ve been haranguing me about for weeks! Please,” his voice breaks, “darling, just come back to me.”
To this, Sherlock seems to resurface. His breathing catches, then evens out a bit.
“C’mon love you’re doing great.” John chuckles tearfully.
Sherlock’s eyes come to focus like a gear had been turned. He parts his lips as though to speak, and apparently has enough energy to muster a small smirk.
“…love?…You’re…in love with me too?…” He mumbles a bit deliriously.
He hadn’t even realized he’d been doing it, replacing his friend’s name with endearments he did not even reserve for his amorous relations……
Before John’s nerves could fire and comprehend the monumental discovery he had just made, the sirens that he’d heard in the distance emerged, loud, behind him. The EMT’s, spouting what sounded like gibberish to John’s ears, rush past him and snatch his flatmate away from view.
Right. Ambulance. He stands up so fast dots swim in front of his eyes, then sprints the short distance to the vehicle.
“No one’s called me ‘darling’ since Victor.”
John jumps at the sudden noise from his post-op friend who’d been asleep for an eternity. Sherlock is staring at the ceiling, lost in thought, as though they were simply back at the flat, lounging in the sitting room. Look away for one moment and suddenly he regains consciousness.
They pointedly ignore their clasped hands, as though the action of noticing would be enough to dissipate its existence.
He clears his throat. “Er- so what were you saying about…Victor? Was he the murderer?”
Sherlock heaves a weak, long-suffering sigh, which in one fell swoop erases any doubts of his recovery. He’s himself again, John is happy to take note of.
“You’d asked if I’d ever been in a relationship— Victor was my first and my last. He was aggressive, and I had come to hate the endearment, and all others, in his company.” He pauses to take a steadying breath.
“Rugby was not enough to bear the brunt of his hostility, so I..did. And because I was young and stupid, I stayed no matter how many times he hit me. I was convinced he loved me— his apologies were riddled with tender monikers.” He spoke as detachedly as he could, but John could hear the notes of pain seeping from below the intellectuality of his tone.
“It was as if replacing my name with ‘darling’ or ‘my sweet’ erased the evidence of his transgressions. A manipulation disguised as affection. Since then I had sworn off any and all—ouch! John, my hand is not a grip trainer.”
“Sorry.” He loosens the fist he had curled quite tightly around the hand they weren’t supposed to be acknowledging. He doesn’t let go, just keeps rubbing circles with his thumb and hoping his anger wouldn’t spiral out of control again. Sherlock sighs in relief and moves on.
“You called me ‘darling.’ And ‘love.’ Twice.”
“Ah, so you remember that,” John remarks awkwardly.
Sherlock taps at his temple with his index finger. “Eidetic memory, remember, John? Pet names occupy a certain place in my mind palace that I’d rather forget but cannot bring myself to delete,” he says. “But with you…”
“It’s different. I promise you, it’s different.” He strokes Sherlock’s knuckles with his thumb.
There is a silence broken only by the steady beeping of the heart monitor as they mull over the influx of soul-baring information.
The niggling thought that had been prodding at John throughout the entirety of Sherlock’s operation and his consequent slumber finally breaks through to the forefront of his thoughts. Comically, like a little zip of lightning.
“You mentioned something—you were a bit loopy actually, probably from the pain and the shock. I might’ve misheard, but it got me thinking-“
“Oh for god’s sake just spit it out-“
“Right, um, are you sure you’re not still feeling feverish? They literally opened up your chest-“
“Too, you said too.” John takes a steadying breath. “You said ‘you’re in love with me too.’”
Speechless is a rare expression to befall a genius with little regard for social niceties, so there must have been some sense in his obsessive rumination, that a mere tail end of a sentence is able to elicit the panic of an exposed secret.
He clears his throat again. “Now I don’t have your deduction skills, but that seems to imply that either multiple people are in love with you or that you…love me.”
A pregnant quietude follows, time that John could have used to stammer an awkward retraction or for Sherlock to utter a poignant denial — John is rendered in disbelief that silence is what confirms a truth he’d longed to hear since he’d met the madman. “So you…” He trails off, not quite able to bring himself to say it out loud for fear that the universe might implode, an astonished grin spreading across his face.
Sherlock does not reflect his ecstasy. He seems to draw into himself, pulling his hand from John’s and angling his body slightly away. “Too late to convince you that you are part of a large group of people who are infatuated with me?” He asks dejectedly.
“You love me too,“ John says breathlessly.
“You weren’t supposed to know. I promise you, I had gone to great lengths to keep it hidden for the sake of our friendship. If we could simply ignore it and pretend this never happe— wait, too?!”
Sherlock turns his entire body to face John and sits up, then immediately regrets it because he is still a patient recovering from a gunshot wound.
“Owww,” he complains, half-laughing, which sets them both off. Giggles overtake the two idiots like a drug, and they wonder, amidst the laughter, how much longer they might have gone searching for each other without knowing what lay beneath their noses.
John leans forward to take in the picture of a happy Sherlock, warm and blushing and in love, gorgeous despite having just come out of a surgery and a near-death experience. He decides that he will do anything to keep him this buoyant forever. To permanently erase the hardened lines from his face and replace it with the goofy grin he is currently sporting.
Before he can properly entertain the internal conflict that comes with important decisions, he moves closer and kisses him on the forehead. And oh, the effect is pure euphoria; the drug itself could not widen his smile further. John would kiss him forever if he liked. He moves a hand into the mop of dark curls and places feather kisses on Sherlock’s nose and then to the corner of his mouth. A tape-covered hand comes to rest at John’s cheek.
“Is this real?” Sherlock whispers, as though someone was going to burst through the door at any moment and announce that they were, in fact, dreaming. “We’re in love with each other at the same time?,” he asks, not unlike a child finding mutual fancy in primary school.
“Yes, darling, we’re in love with each other at the same time,” John laughs then kisses him on the lips to assuage him of any doubt, and Sherlock responds with matching enthusiasm. John marvels at the amount of warmth that lay under the man’s cold exterior, at how right all of this feels, at how two days ago he wouldn’t even be able to fathom that his fantasies of capturing his flatmate’s pliant lips in his own could possibly come to reality, or that it would be this gratifying.
“Don’t stop,” Sherlock says after breaking the kiss.
“You were the one who pulled away-“
“No, I mean with the pet names. I’ve decided that… I rather like them when it’s you.”
The significance of this is not lost on John, who wonders if he should be concerned about spontaneous combustion from happiness.
“…to conclude, Mr. and Mrs. Gertrude died of asphyxiation before the stabbing ever took place. Seriously, Lestrade, how do you call yourselves detectives?” It is a locked room mystery, one that Sherlock is overjoyed to have been given, and it is apparent to all who are present. Sally Donovan rolls her eyes.
“Please, enlighten us,” she deadpans.
“There are traces of hydrogen cyanide in the air. Didn’t you lot notice that when you walked in? Should have been much stronger than it is now when you first declared this a crime scene. The killer was clever enough to get rid of the source before they made their timely escape. Two well-loved, generally happy victims murdered by a toxic chemical and made to look like a suicide. Absolutely riveting!” His happy tirade is interrupted by John unsubtly clearing his throat.
“Uh, darling, a bit not good.” John grabs his hand and gestures to the young Ms. Gertrude sobbing quietly in the corner.
“Ah…apologies,” he amends quietly. Sherlock sweeps a drop of liquid off the floor with a cotton swab. “Here. Have this run for tests, then interview anyone close to them who wears loafers.”
But his orders are unheard as the entirety of Scotland Yard is standing frozen, shell-shocked with their jaws barely a centimeter off the ground. It is unforgettable how a single word could render an entire elite polite force incompetent of maintaining even a small level of restraint, and Sherlock would surely be filing that in a very prominent place in his mind palace.
Lestrade opens his mouth to speak, then eventually regains the ability to articulate words.
“So you two are like a thing now?” He remarks quite eloquently on behalf of his dumbfounded companions.
“Yeah.” John says abashedly, lifting their intertwined hands for emphasis.
A pause follows, the silence becoming almost eerie before everything erupts into chaos. It seems that just about every member present is emotionally invested in whatever the hell is going on — disappointed groans and cheerful cries of victory and the sound of money being passed over fill the room, and the case is forgotten for the moment (poor Elizabeth Gertrude is just sitting in the corner, overwhelmed).
“YOU ALL OWE ME 50 QUID!” Lestrade bellows over the din.
Fun fact: true to my blog name, it was indeed 2am when I finished this.
Tagging: @topsyturvy-turtely @kettykika78 @musingsofmyown
Lmk if you wanna be added to the tag list!
