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Historians will call them anything but.
Sherlock struggles. There is a way the disastrous nature of his intelligence is combined with unresolved trauma, a tantrum of leftover words and mimics he would rather not acknowledge. But things happen in his life, from the little movements that startle him and make him belittle his observance, or actions that are so big and spread he regrets the idea that he forgot to think of that before. But the one he finds most comfort in is that he does not have to worry about attachments, because he has come to the conclusion that only his family members would keep in contact with him. Barely, even, but he does not bother it. He finds it soothing to know that he can keep to himself, remaining unworried to the surrounding terrors of social confrontations and emotional connections, but sometimes he finds himself yearning.
And then there is the time he does find the person he was yearning for. But John is unlike the others who enter his life, already intending to leave it as cold and plain as he pretends to be so that they maintain such a disliking of him. He finds that John stays, and that the little signatures he leaves with his texts are rather as ignored as him to other person’s feelings. John has told him before that the initials are unnecessary, and it scares Sherlock to a way because John is the first to keep his name in a contact. To show a caring towards him unlike the way others treat him.
So when John calls him a machine, he feels lost. Terrified. Afraid.
For once, he finds himself afraid. Afraid of his emotions, the ones he has managed to clarify the most, and to fulfil it as the best and determined as he can be. And Sherlock inquires. He unexpectedly questions his own feelings, for an intuition he greatly admired is now a simple tool he has forgotten about, and it startles him greatly that it still wounds him as he walks up the flight of stairs. Each press of his foot weighs so heavily on the steps, and he finds himself lowered into thought he cannot afford to indulge in.
The rooftop is opened to his view, and he watches how he will fall, a demise so predictably truthful and determined that he knows he cannot escape from it now. Rather, he cannot escape from it ever. To know himself as innocent was enough for him, but he knew it was not going to be the thing that would keep everyone around him safe forever. That one day, he will have to break their hearts again, and perhaps indulge in such a thinking for the rest of his hiding. How long of a remainder, he still finds himself wondering.
Then Moriarty is shooting himself to his own death, bleeding no more as his heart stops working, the vague affirmation that his circulatory system has been shut down registering at the back of Sherlock’s mind. But he cannot find himself to focus, because John is watching him, staring blankly and with panic from where the ground is.
Come closer, he thinks to himself. “Stay where you are,” he finds himself saying.
I love you, he wishes to speak. “Good bye, John.”
And he is meant to die. He wishes, so badly, that he did. Because the moment he finds himself falling, unravelling into a motion of chaotic essence and creative mechanics, he realises that he has fallen before. To the way that John treats him, from tiny actions or words of affirmation he has not heard of directed to him before. The way his heart would react when John leans in too close, or how they can look at each other and share a smile, understanding without a sound.
How damned he feels to only now realise he has fallen before.
It is too late, because he has to move quickly, and he watches the melancholy John has stricken upon his face. Sherlock knows that it is too late to ask if he has fallen too. It is too strange, peculiar, and too faulty for him. Too selfish.
Then he watches him again at the cemetery, and Sherlock wants to respond to John’s demand. Wants to reach out and say that it is an elaborate scheme. But he finds himself falling again, tripping over his thoughts, too long accompanied by a loneliness he has forgotten the feeling of. Sherlock wishes to stop falling.
But the wish does not seem to want to come through.
And now John is staring at him now is the one desire that he has never thought of, the beautiful shade of John’s pupils suddenly broken with rage he has never observed in a person before. But he notices the heartbreak, and he wills himself to remain steady in his wake. Perhaps John has not fallen, yet. Perhaps never. Perhaps, John is not meant to fall. Sherlock hopes deeply in his own that John does not fall.
He wishes that he told him the truth all those stolen moments ago. When he first realised. When he has first felt an emotion that he did not expect himself to feel. No one expected him to feel.
Sherlock Holmes, a man driven extinct of emotion. He was a person struck with gifted observance and belittled manners.
But the truth seems far apart, and he wishes that John could see. Could see that Sherlock Holmes is not as perfect as he seems to be.
But history hates lovers.