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Other people’s feelings are not really Sherlock’s area. But he’s become a fluent speaker of John’s language of love.
Tea, for instance: every cup of tea John has ever made for him, he now understands, was an expression of affection, or occasionally an apology.
The toast is an expression of concern – John doesn’t think Sherlock eats enough – and something for them to share in the morning, fingers brushing as they reach for another toast triangle or for the jam jar.
The blog entries describing Sherlock’s – their – cases: those express John’s pride in him; they are John (proud, fond; sometimes exasperated) showing him off to the world, trying to make other people see Sherlock the way he does. (It will never work, because in order to love Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock has concluded, you have to be John Watson. But it’s touching, and oddly humbling, that he’s so sure it can be done. That he considers it worth doing.)
John expresses his love with his fists, his body, his gun: he gets between Sherlock and danger, over and over, flings himself into the line of fire (sometimes he breaks the law, if it seems necessary) (it’s always and only for Sherlock that it seems necessary to John), and then tries to pretend he’s not done something heartbreakingly brave.
And John’s love shines bright – brilliant, blinding – when he quietly says, “Sherlock,” and stops Sherlock from doing or saying something that’s Not Good. He’s protecting other people from Sherlock, yes, but he’s also protecting Sherlock from other people. Not because he is related by blood and therefore obligated, not because Sherlock is a useful asset whose excesses he tolerates, but because he loves Sherlock (and, perhaps even more surprisingly, likes him) and cares about his feelings. Because John is so fundamentally extraordinary that he recognized almost straight away something Sherlock has been denying and repressing almost as long as he can remember: when people call him freak or psychopath, when they recoil from him as him as though he has personally caused their spouses’ infidelities, their business disasters, their Internet porn habits, rather than simply observing them, there’s still a part of him – buried deep down for a long time now – that flinches, stung. Nobody else sees it – nobody else even looks – but John spotted it almost right off, and Sherlock didn’t know whether to be terrified or thrilled.
If he’s honest with himself, he still doesn’t. He avoids looking too closely at this thing between them, whatever it is: there are so many ways for him to ruin it. What he does know is this: John Watson is a better high than cocaine ever was.