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He doesn’t mean to become a gardener.
It starts innocuously enough. Soon after John moves to Sussex, he and Sherlock enclose the garden with a high fence (“if the Mitchells can’t see the bees, perhaps they’ll stop complaining about them. Though complaining about them is ridiculous, and we really ought not respond to that sort of willful igno—” “Yes, Sherlock, all right.”)
John hates fences (they leave him feeling like he’s sitting in a particularly boring room instead of a garden), but he doesn’t mind shrubs. To hide the fence, he plants blackthorn and holly along the boundaries; he even includes a few oak saplings. Done.
Mrs. Hudson, for whom Sherlock buys and steadfastly denies having bought the bungalow next door, commends John’s work. She praises his choice of native plants and asks if he plans to add some flowering climbers. John doesn’t plan to, no; he doesn’t tell Mrs. Hudson, but frankly, he’s not even sure what they are. Mrs. Hudson tsks and tuts. A week later, John finds trays of seedlings on the front porch with a note in Mrs. Hudson’s spiky handwriting: “You’ll be wanting these.”
So John plants some honeysuckle and trains it to grow up the fence. He likes gardening well enough; it keeps his shoulder mobile, it lets him be as thoughtful or as absorbed as he wants, and it rewards him for giving his charges the right balance of attention and space. He has no opinion of honeysuckle, however, nor of any particular plant, until the spring’s first honey harvest.
On that evening, John stands with Sherlock in the kitchen as Sherlock dips a small wooden spoon into one of the glass jars and tastes the pale liquid inside.
He scowls. He licks the spoon again.
John tries to read Sherlock’s expression. “Not good?”
Sherlock hands the spoon to John, who sucks the last of the honey from it and sets it down on the counter. He thinks it tastes fine. “No,” Sherlock says. “Very good. A better flavour than last spring’s. More nuanced.”
“Huh. Maybe the bees like you better, now they’ve got to know you a bit.”
“Doubtful. They must like your honeysuckle, though. This batch tastes of it, and it’s the better for it.”
John wonders, sometimes, how his life might have gone differently if Sherlock had said the honeysuckle. Sherlock doesn’t say the honeysuckle, though. He says your honeysuckle—guilelessly, for once—and something in John blooms.
After that, John no longer sees the hive boxes as a quixotic pet project of Sherlock’s. He no longer sees the plants as a means to a fence-hiding end. Instead, he sees them, the bees and the plants, as though they are his relationship with Sherlock made tangible. Sherlock keeps bees; John keeps them fed; together, they make honey.
Mrs. Hudson turns out to be a veritable encyclopaedia of knowledge about native plants. With her guidance, John schemes and digs and prunes until his palms callous and his joints ache. Mrs. Hudson helps, when her hip lets her. On warm days, she settles in a sun lounger, intermittently dozing and reading and answering John’s many questions.
The work pays off. John loves watching the garden return to life after each winter and nurturing it as it grows. Sherlock is fascinated by the ever-developing array of plants, and by the animals that take shelter in them. Every spring and summer, he and John taste each of the honey’s harvests, trying to identify which of John’s flowers the bees have favoured. They bring jars on their trips to London as gifts for Greg and Molly, for Harry and Clara, for Cynthia and Sally, for Mike, and—over Sherlock’s protests—for Mycroft. John enjoys the feeling of having something to offer, and he enjoys even more that he and Sherlock have created that something together.
It’s this feeling, really, that helps John accept the truth: that he is, and always will be, in love with Sherlock Holmes. If Sherlock were anyone else, John would propose to him; John is too damned old to give a toss that if he were to marry Sherlock, people would assume that they were having sex. People have been assuming that for decades, anyway, and John has stopped feeling compelled to correct them.
Sherlock is Sherlock, though. Sherlock spends days deep in thought without sparing John so much as a glance, never speaks a romantic word, and, though he sleeps in John’s bed sometimes, prefers his own bedroom. He seems unconcerned with anything so pedestrian as marriage. John wants more from Sherlock than some unnamed connexion, but John can wait. Sherlock, who is nothing that John had planned to want, is worth it.
Now, John has just finished pruning the roses. The late summer colours are fierce in the late afternoon sunlight; the sky is a supersaturated blue, and the shrubs are so green that John feels like he’s tasting them just by looking at them. The garden is heavy with the earthy-sweet scent of flowers at the end of their blooming: buttercup and daisy, sweet basil and yarrow, the scarlet blooms of the Braithwaite rosebush.
John watches Sherlock, who is covered by his bee suit and whose trousers are taped shut around his ankles to keep the bees from wandering into them, walk out of the shed with an armful of supers. He’s already extracted the honey, so he leaves the supers out for the hive to clean, then slides out a full hive frame and watches its activity. Every line of his body conveys his rapt attention.
John shears a particularly lush Braithwaite blossom from its bush, leaving a few inches of stem attached and snipping off the thorns. When he goes inside to wash up before making dinner, he places the blossom in a bud vase with some water and sets it on Sherlock’s nightstand.
Sherlock may not be a romantic, but damn it, John is.
After dinner (bacon, poached eggs, and toast, because even after five years of living away from London and the siren call of its takeaways, John’s cooking remains woefully inadequate) and afters (today’s honey, which is dark, over vanilla ice cream), John and Sherlock settle in the living room. Their chairs are arranged in front of the fireplace just as they were at Baker Street; they are, in fact, the same chairs. Much of the debris cluttering the living room made the move with Sherlock, though this house provides a brighter, more modern backdrop for it than 221B ever did. It took John some getting used to, truth be told.
John is puzzling his way through a collection of Randall Jarrell’s poetry (Cynthia told him it’s the sort of thing that a soldier with an interest in writing ought to read) when Sherlock puts down his beekeeping supply catalogue with a soft fwump.
“It bothers you,” Sherlock says.
John sets his own book aside, wondering whether it will ever occur to Sherlock that John cannot, in fact, read his mind. “What bothers me?”
“That we aren’t—that our relationship is not formalised in any way.” Sherlock pulls his feet onto his chair and wraps his arms around his legs.
John shrugs. “I know you’re not going anywhere.”
A dismissive wave. “Evading the issue.”
“Fine. Yeah, it does bother me. So did getting stung last month because someone couldn’t be arsed to put his bee suit in the laundry hamper, and I had to do it for him, and there were four damned bees hiding in it. Doesn’t mean I’m unhappy.” Sherlock stifles a smile, and John adds, “I know there isn’t—we don’t have anything formal, but you did at least tell me that you love me, that once.”
Sherlock leans forward, his feet landing on the floor and his elbows landing on his thighs. He’s changed into a grey tee shirt and flannel pyjama bottoms that have seen better days, but he still looks fierce and distinguished and, John thinks, stunning. “I did no such thing.”
“You were in hospital. Fever. Probably doesn’t count.”
“Of course it doesn’t. Do try to have some sense, John.” John leans back and waits for Sherlock to figure out why that wasn’t good. Sherlock, to his credit, doesn’t take long. “That was—not an optimal reply. What I mean is, you deserve better. Than having to take, my, um, my feelings. On faith.”
John purses his lips. “Hang on, did you just admit that you have feelings?”
“No!” Sherlock makes what John thinks of as his backtracking face.
“Yeah, you did.”
“If you could hold off gloating for a moment,” Sherlock complains, “this seems as good a time as any for me to get your thoughts on a matter of some importance.”
Feelings. Mrs. Hudson is going to have a field day. “Have at it,” John says, grinning.
Sherlock takes a deep breath. “We should—I think that you should marry me. If you want to.”
Of all the times for John’s hearing to go wonky. “Sorry, say that again?”
“You obviously have feelings for me. I am... not wholly indifferent to you, and we intend to spend the rest of our lives together. You would prefer a formalised commitment, and after some consideration, I find that I agree. These are, empirically speaking, the kinds of conditions that precipitate a marriage.”
John blinks. “Did you actually tell me that you’re ‘not wholly indifferent’ to me?”
“Oh, God,” Sherlock mumbles. “I knew I would have to do it the boring way.” Sherlock kneels in front of John’s chair and takes John’s hand. “John Watson, would you do me the honour of becoming my husband?”
John squeezes Sherlock’s fingers. “They taught you that phrase at posh git school, didn’t they?”
“Naturally, and I would be delighted to bore you with the details later, but just now, I would appreciate an answer, if you could.”
Sherlock is starting to look nervous, and as much as John would like to tease him a while longer, he imagines that it’s difficult for Sherlock to be this vulnerable. “Yes. Yes, Sherlock Holmes, I would very much like to be your husband.”
Sherlock exhales and bows his head. John buries his face in Sherlock’s silver curls and rests his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders; he inhales and smells nectar and woodsmoke and Sherlock’s warm skin. It smells like home.
“Could we wait ’til tomorrow to discuss the logistics? That was rather more draining than I anticipated,” Sherlock says, his voice muffled since he’s speaking directly to John’s knee.
Gently, John tilts Sherlock’s head back until Sherlock is looking up at him. He presses his forehead to Sherlock’s. “Yes. Bed?”
“If it’s not too early.”
It’s not too early. It is, John thinks, exactly the right time.