Dance with Us: An Invitation from Moffat, Gatiss, and Thompson

 (Sherlock meta by drinkingcocoa)

I watched “The Sign of Three” and this is what I saw.  It may not be the show you saw.  I think that is because of the way the writers wrote it.  This show is about the undefined word, the unfinished sentence, the space they leave open for interpretation, the space the audience rushes to fill in with our responses.  Sherlock fandom, do you see what they’re doing?  They’re working like mad to make us happy.  They’re trying to give us what we’ve said we want, even while they stay true to their muses, as artists must.  They’ve asked us to be their audience, because genius requires an audience, and in return, they will color-code all the bridesmaids’ dresses and speed-fold every last serviette for us in their earnest endeavor to live up to our trust and our love.

They leave this space open so there’s room for all of us, or as many of us as possible, to the maximum extent of their limited abilities as mortal writers.

You know all the undefined words they’ve given us.  For example:  What is John Watson to Sherlock Holmes?  Friend, colleague, hostage…?  What is the Final Problem?  What is the last thing that Moriarty needs?

They’re doing it again here.  Wonderfully, brilliantly, Janine acknowledges that Sherlock is “whatever you are.”  And that whatever he is, he is brilliant and desirable and thoroughly fun.  So what is he?  To me, personally, he reads as bisexual, because that’s an important story to me.  I know people who are convinced he reads as straight in this episode, and loads of people who are convinced he is gay, and a thoughtful minority who argue (fairly convincingly, IMO) that this episode is confirmation of his asexuality, and… it goes on.

What we do know is that he was gutted by his two-year ordeal and terrified that John would never forgive him, and gutted in a different way when John proposed to him by informing him that Sherlock is John’s best friend, and nervous but determined when he announced his public acceptance of John’s proposal as his first and last vow.  This is a constant.  All the rest is variable.  All the rest is what Moffat, Gatiss, and Thompson leave open, reserving space in the dance hold for us to join them and dance however we want, with undefinable beautiful Sherlock writing for us the music and the tempo.  The writers, the canon character of Sherlock Holmes, and the audience:  one of the many beautifully dynamic trios celebrated in this episode.

I know there are people who are passionately hopeful that there will be actual sexual romantic contact between John and Sherlock in “His Last Vow.”  That is not the show that I see.  I believe that the writers are trying to respect the diversity of their audiences by committing to keeping all possibilities open and not closing off whatever meaning anyone can find in their own personal interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, which is surely a tricky act, surely a walk between live rails.

To quote my favorite actor, Rupert Graves, on the topic of sexual identity:  “As soon as you state one thing, you deny everything else.”  It’s not always limiting to claim a label if you’re doing it personally; I find it empowering.  But if you’re writing, writing a character beloved by such a diverse audience — better to deny nothing, if you can possibly maintain that.

I believe the writers will forever explore the growing intimacy between these two men, an intimacy that joyously includes their appreciation of each other as sexually attractive as well as all other kinds of attractive, but one that expresses this intimacy in the countless ways possible without kissing or sexual contact.  This energy will keep the show alive.  And I think it will keep the two men happy, this Sherlock and this John.  I think this episode showed us two men who are happy with what they have with each other, showed us that they are continuing to grow and explore more things they can ask for and receive from each other, and they have enough to handle just realizing that one is a best friend for the first time in his life and the other has found his place between his two passionate loves, one of whom is the gender he fancies and the other of whom is his sexy best friend whom he sometimes likes to touch.

Do I ship Johnlock?  Oh hell yes, I do, within fanwork.  But as for the show, no, that is not the show I see.  I didn’t see this episode in full until four days after it aired and I had read the interpretations that Sherlock removed his arm from around John, during Tessa’s visit, because he was self-conscious about his one-sided desire.  That’s what I expected to see in that scene, but I didn’t.  What I saw was two men who were too drunk to put on their work faces, so drunk they were still in their private comfort where they touch each other, and Sherlock jerking awake and making a doomed attempt to appear attentive and not quite so rude.

I expected to see repressed desire, definitely from Sherlock and possibly from John, in John’s wonderful, electric knee-touch.  Oh, that is a lovely moment, deservedly slowed down and immortalized in countless tumblr posts.  But when I watched that moment in context, I didn’t see the repressed desire.  I saw…all the desire on the surface, with no conflict.  I saw that these two men do find each other attractive — of course — and they do want to touch each other, so they do.  I saw that this does not make them uncomfortable; they don’t mind; it’s all fine.  Sherlock has made it clear that “big squishy cuddles” just make him miserable.  John has said repeatedly that he’s not gay and Sherlock, for one, believes him.  They are attracted to each other, of course; it is the attraction people sometimes feel for someone outside their hardwired sexual orientation, or at least that’s my experience of life.  In my experience, this kind of attraction does not really find satisfaction in acts of sexual intercourse.  Yes, of course Sherlock pines for John and is terribly distressed to think that he has lost exclusive claim on John’s attention, leaving a vacancy in his inner life that (oh, horrors) Mycroft is all ready to reoccupy — Mycroft practically has his suitcases packed — now if that isn’t an incentive to grow up and adjust to the new, tripod-based dynamic, I don’t know what is!  But I don’t think the pining is sexual. 

In other words, I think the amount of sexual contact these two men want from each other is exactly what the episode showed us.  I think they like touching each other, they find each other stunningly beautiful, they touched each other without shame or internal conflict, and they will do it again whenever they want, in whatever way they want, as their relationship continues to change.

On the day this episode aired, my livestream cut out and returned just in time for me to see Sherlock’s tormented face as he and John told Mary there are limits, and the three of them will not be dancing.  I saw Sherlock looking for Janine, seeing there was no place for him, and leaving without dancing.  Well, that did a fine job of ripping my heart out.  And I found on my full watch that what I saw was not the truth.

I had been afraid that Sherlock loved to dance and didn’t get to dance at the wedding, and this anguished me because I think of dancing as a metaphor for living with joy.  I even used this metaphor in a Recreational Meta piece about Molly Hooper desiring Sherlock.  But when I watched the episode, I saw that Sherlock did get to dance at the wedding.  He danced with Janine as best man and maid of honor, although we saw only their rehearsal.  He danced as he loves best to dance, in solving a case, in hurdling over the head table — dancing the way he danced for Adler when solving her puzzle or with Moriarty in “The Great Game.”  He even says explicitly to Janine that he loves to dance but he lives in hope of finding the right case for it.  I had been crying for no reason over Sherlock allegedly not getting to dance at John’s wedding.  This is a man who could have danced at any point, if he had wanted.  Mary was perfectly willing to indulge in an unbearably hokey three-way “big squishy cuddle” before John mercifully quashed that notion with his “limits” and Sherlock gratefully (in my read) seconded him.  He could have joined Molly and Mrs. Hudson.  He could have harangued Lestrade to speed up the arrest so he could provide Sherlock with his barely tolerable company.  He had plenty of fulfillment at this wedding:  he succeeded in giving John what a best man is supposed to provide (and will probably need a good six weeks to recover from the effort), he got to show off his dancing, he got to show off his violin playing, and he got to make a witnessed vow.

Yes, there was a lot of hurt and loneliness in Sherlock’s face as he pushed Mary and John to dance and then left alone.  I don’t think it was entirely because he’s losing John, although that was certainly part of it; the whole episode was about him barely able to keep up with how much more of John he has gained with this formalization of their relationship, which has added the splendid answer “Best Man” to the eternally open question of who they are to each other.  In the show I saw, this was just the pain that comes with being different, not like all these ordinary people who are paired off and messy and happy in a way that Sherlock can’t be but doesn’t even really want.  But weddings, which come mercifully infrequently, are times when the keenness of being different can hurt most piercingly, and with his new maturity, Sherlock has vowed to make himself feel things rather than run away, so this hurts.  Rather a lot.  But it will pass.  He doesn’t really want to be anyone but himself.

And fortunately, John and Mary will go off on their Sex Holiday so he can hole up and be as anti-social as he wants until he has recovered from being a Best Man at a wedding, hopefully never to have to make another such effort as long as he lives.