Fic: Acceptance

[csi_sanders1129]

Title: Acceptance
Chapters: 1/1
Author: csi_sanders1129
Genre: Drabble.
Ratings: T
Word Count: 603
Pairings/Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson. Mentions of Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Anderson, Donovan, Mycroft and Moriarty.
Synopsis: In which Sherlock remembers the first time he realized John was something special.
Comments: Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: acceptance. First Sherlock fic, though this is more of a drabble and is probably a little OOC. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.

Sherlock Holmes knows lots of things.

He's forgotten lots of things.

He's forgotten about lots of things he's forgotten he's know.

For example, he always knows that Lestrade's coming because his tires need air and the squeal when he brakes. He doesn't know, as John frequently reminds him, that the Earth goes around the sun because he doesn't care (granted he knows it now, so...). He's forgotten the look on John's and Mrs. Hudson's faces when he came back from the dead because it makes his stomach do weird things and makes the word 'guilty' stick in his mind uncomfortably. One thing he will never, ever forget, though is the exact moment when he realized John was different, something special.

It was in the taxi-cab on the way to the crime scene at Lauresten Gardens where they find the Lady in Pink that first night together. John hadn't even actually agreed to move in with him yet, he'd barely even seen the flat, but Sherlock already knew then, at that moment, second, speck of time that he would, when John said what he said the way he said it.

Sherlock had only just finished picking apart the details of John's fairly average life - his military career, the strained relationship with his family, the psychosomatic limp, all of the details that presently summed up this strange man sitting next to him. But instead of the 'piss off, you arse,' he'd been expecting to hear, as it was the typical reaction to his clinical and brusque view of other people's simplistic, boring, average lives, John had simply said 'That... was amazing,' and stared at him with the awed expression like he was in the presence of something truly great.

And then he keeps doing it. At the crime scene. Back at the flat. At the restaurant. Again and again and again, case after case.

No one else ever reacts that way.

Lestrade takes what Sherlock gives him and goes with it, but there's no awe there, just a small dose of skepticism and inquires as to whether or not he makes this stuff up as he goes along. Anderson and Donovan just think he's some crazy serial killer in the making. Mrs. Hudson doesn't really pay his observations any mind. Mycroft has similar abilities and has no reason to be impressed by his younger brother's.

So, it's just John.

He does manage to eventually annoy John into reacting badly to his deductions, but even then, he still has that unendingly impressed look on his face.

And out of everyone, John has the least reason to be awed by Sherlock's gifts. He's seen them fail more than once (the Bruce Parkington Plans, the whole of the cluster that was Moriarty). He's seen all of Sherlock's habits (nicotine and, well, not so much the drugs anymore) and flaws (sleepless, insomniatic, manic) and supremely annoying quirks (violin at all hours, shooting holes in the walls, disappearing from crime scenes with no warning) and yet he's still awed.

Which makes John's easy acceptance of everything to do with him perhaps the biggest mystery Sherlock's ever found and that thought does something to him, makes him think and feel things he hasn't really considered before. Changes him and makes him try to do better, to be the man John thinks he is instead of the man he knows he is.

And, well, it's that memory, of John - that one and many others that have formed since that night in the taxi - that allows him to keep his distance in the time after he fakes his own death. And it's that memory that makes him come back as quickly as he can.