The Yearly Revolution (Winter)
Title: The Yearly Revolution (1/4)
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~920
Summary: Sherlock walked smoothly through the seasons, without noticing them, without endorsing them. Busy Sherlock, unseasonal Sherlock. Until John Watson arrived in his life. To revolutionise it.
A/N: This is the first of four parts. It's the first long fic I write and I it wouldn't have been possible without Sophie, my amazing, brilliant beta, my catalyst. Thank you so much.
The awesome waalkchan has perfectly capturated John in winter with this lovely piece of art. Thank you!!! <3
“Seasons result from the yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth’s axis relative to the plane of revolution. In the temperate and polar regions, the seasons are marked by changes in the intensity of sunlight that reaches the Earth’s surface, which generate four seasons: winter, spring, summer and autumn.”
Sherlock had written those lines when he was a little boy, in one of his school notebooks, with his neat handwriting. He had learnt it instantly, and deleted it even faster. The division of the year in seasons was, anyway, irrelevant; partial, Northern-Hemisphere centered, methodologically poor and absolutely inaccurate, taking into account how alarmingly fast the climatic change was developing. And, if seasons were irrelevant to his life as a child, they held even less importance when Sherlock became an adult. Because the world’s only consulting detective doesn’t need holiday, nor calendar, and just as a year can seem a week, three months can last forever. So Sherlock walked smoothly through the seasons, without noticing them, without endorsing them - busy Sherlock, unseasonal Sherlock.
Until John Watson arrived in his life. To revolutionise it.
Winter
Winter brings the frosty cold, and brings John into Sherlock’s life. Winter can be harsh, but can also give sometimes, if you know how to observe it, unexpected beauty. Fortunately, Sherlock is one of the most observant men on the Earth. Unfortunately, Sherlock doesn’t know that about the winter. Sherlock doesn’t even know the winter has already started. He only knows about how cold it is, and about how good it feels wearing his coat like a shield against the frozen air of London.
And that’s why he frowns a little at how inadequately wrapped that army doctor is; that uprooted warrior that has just come through the door. He thinks that, while he puts his coat and scarf in one swift motion. John Watson isn’t even wearing a scarf. Had the soldier forgotten about this London cold? Obviously not. Maybe he loves to feel the cold. Maybe, in fact, he missed the London cold, and he wants to feel it; he wants to feel he is at home, finally back at home.
Sherlock is then assaulted by a wave of excitement, as he realizes that he has met John Watson in the middle of his re-acclimatisation to London, to civilian life, to life. Sherlock hums happily to himself: the best data for an investigation is that which is collected in the midst of metamorphosis.
So Sherlock can’t restrain himself; he wants to be more than John’s observer, he wants to be John’s catalyst, speeding up the change, increasing the rate of reaction without being consumed in the process. And that’s how, in just one day, instead of two months, John leaves the cane, the shell, the fear, the loneliness of a green apple in a hotel room, the sand and the wince; he leaves all that behind, and he goes from limping to running, without even having walked. And that’s how, without Sherlock noticing, the catalyst is, for once, consumed in the process.
And then, during that winter, when they run across the city and through the cold, Sherlock feels that, although John runs behind him, he’s actually the one following John; following his open laugh, his intoxicanting energy, his sincere admiration. Sherlock’s feet don’t touch the floor, his long coat waves behind him, and in his wake, John acclimates, John loosens up, John is more John, a better John than he has ever been. And Sherlock is more Sherlock, a better Sherlock than he has ever been; but Sherlock cannot know that yet. It’s too early.
When John completely acclimates, so that he doesn’t need to feel the cold anymore to remember he is back at home, jumpers and cardigans basically become the uniform of John being John. To Sherlock, for whom everything which is not a suit or a pair of pyjamas is a piece of disguise, those jumpers and cardigans are nothing more than John’s persistence in concealing the dormant warrior beneath a civilised, anodyne skin. If John let him, Sherlock would dress John showing his true colours, to make John positively flame in the battlefield, so nobody could ever underestimate him. Because Sherlock cannot abide underestimation - it’s basically the worst, most flagrant mistake in any observation procedure, because measuring the potential of things is the key to understanding their truth, and sometimes Sherlock feels as though he’s the only one who knows how to read it.
And with that, suddenly, Sherlock realises how much he has to thank to those jumpers and cardigans for; how much he has to appreciate them. They mean that he alone can read under John’s surface. Measure John’s potential. Only Sherlock can see the stone beneath the wool. Only him.
Sadly, Sherlock won’t discover his love for John’s jumpers until the last days of winter. Ah, Sherlock, unseasonal Sherlock. You, who wrote in your child’s notebook, with your child’s handwriting, and your child’s innocence, about the movement of the planets; you, who know about the evils that inhabit the hearts of men, and know about the good that inhabits the injured heart of John; you, who know about the hard core in the apple. What you don’t know, however, is that the spring is just around the corner. Sherlock, you who know that under the snow lies green grass, cannot know that the spring will reveal to you so much more about John than you could have predicted.
[Spring is here].