Desperately Unspoken: The Ongoing Relationship between Sherlock and John

 (Sherlock Meta by ivyblossom)

Sherlock assumes John is hitting on him shortly after they first meet, as we know. But Sherlock can be a bit hit and miss about people when it comes to how they feel. He was right about Mary’s ex, but wrong (hilariously wrong) about people disliking John. (Is he jealous of John’s other friends, tinging his perception of their interactions?) Sherlock is right Irene, both right and wrong about Molly, and then right again about many of the wedding guests. He seems to be more often right then wrong about people’s inner motivations when he’s more objective and reading people in the context of a case. But after a fairly long and intimate friendship, Sherlock failed to understand how much John loved him. Sherlock is both a master of subtext and a complete failure at interpreting it, depending.

So is he right about John’s latent interest in him when they first meet? I think he probably is. It’s probably Sherlock at his most objective about John, after all. It’s not difficult to argue that Sherlock awakens John in a variety of ways at the very start; John is low, dark, and depressed before he meets Sherlock, and the moment he does it seems as though his libido suddenly fires back up, because he immediately starts flirting with every woman he meets, and steadfastly pointing out that he’s not gay.

That suggestion is mostly coming from the outside as an assumption; the world has assumed that he’s interested in Sherlock (including from Sherlock himself). He denies this very vehemently. Perhaps a little too vehemently. I believe him that he doesn’t identify as gay, which makes absolute perfect sense, but he never entirely dodges the accusation that he’s attracted to Sherlock.

But it doesn’t matter at that point. Sherlock isn’t interested in John, or anyone, and John is an incorrigible flirt and likes the ladies. So everything works. It doesn’t actually matter where the spark in their relationship comes from. They can happily enjoy their sexual tension without either of them having to alter their plans or their identity. Sherlock has sort of let him off the hook by being resolutely disinterested in sexual or romantic relationships. John is safe to feel whatever he likes, essentially. Sherlock will remain unthreatening to John’s self-perception, because if John does feel something for Sherlock, it can be safely channeled into their work and their unorthodox friendship.

As we go along, things get complicated. Sherlock becomes far more attached to John. It becomes obvious that John’s relationships with women are half-hearted at best. The major emotional relationship of his life is with Sherlock. When the innkeeper in The Hounds of Baskerville assumes that John and Sherlock are a couple because they are two men apparently on holiday together who have booked just one room, John considers clarifying, but opts not to. Not because they are necessarily an item at this point, but John has begun to recognize that they are anyway. In an odd sort of way. Just not the way people are imagining.

I feel for John at this point. He sees it happening, and while he’s made a decision, this isn’t really the relationship he was after in his life. It’s a deep friendship, but it is neither romantic nor sexual. But there isn’t room for anyone else, and he’s not seeking anyone else out anymore. Sherlock’s right: John is a romantic, and he appears to make the decision that his love for Sherlock transcends any absences in their relationship. He made his choice. I don’t think he’s actively unhappy with the arrangement. He’s fairly content in series two. But it’s not an entirely ideal situation for him.

I think this is where that unspokenness at it’s most obvious; Sherlock and John adore each other and have placed each other first in their hearts, but neither of them have expressed that in any way. They have never discussed it at all. I think at this point Sherlock had some secrets to share with John (that he’s not quite as immune to emotional entanglements and possibly to sexuality generally) and John has secrets to share with Sherlock that would blow his mind (that he loves him, which John thinks is staggeringly obvious). Irene lays it out for him in series two in a way I suspect he had been wrestling with: they are a couple, just not the kind he imagined he’d be part of.

Then Sherlock dies. Everyone treats John as the widower, and it was entirely apt. The core tragedy of it, I’d say, is that John never actually told Sherlock anything he ought to have said. They kept it utterly unspoken, and while that was reassuring and comfortable at the time, it must leave John with a terrible sense of confusion and regret on some level. His feelings for Sherlock ran incredibly deep and on many levels, and I think John is self-aware enough to recognize that. And Sherlock, well. There were no drugs involved in the fall, as we now know. That means his tears on the roof were real.

When John says he’s moved on, and now he’s seeing Mary, he goes back to being irritated with the suggestion that he had a romantic/sexual relationship with Sherlock and points out, again, that he’s not gay, and Sherlock wasn’t his boyfriend. Because everyone moves on from a close friendship by getting engaged to someone else, right? He’s retracted some of it. I think he had to, really. He had to look at it in the face and call it what it was, not what it felt like while he was in it. Sherlock is gone and isn’t there to tell him that they loved each other. It wasn’t just John.

One of the beautiful things about series three so far is that John repeatedly puts his relationship with Mary and his relationship with Sherlock on the same shelf. I think that’s incredibly significant. So when he denies that Sherlock was his boyfriend in series three, it’s really hard for me not to see it without a tinge of regret on John’s part. Because that’s a lot of love and mutual attraction going unacknowledged. But what else can he do? They never talked about it. He can’t really be sure what was going on with Sherlock. It must be incredibly difficult for him to entirely come to grips with that relationship in retrospect.

Now we have series three Sherlock, who has had to confront John’s feelings for him head on. Finally: something of their relationship has become overt rather than desperately unspoken. While we have Sherlock’s cleaned-up, public-presentation perspective on his mental shut down when John told him he loved him, we don’t have the actual contents of those thoughts to inspect. They must have been big and extremely overwhelming for him.

There were things Sherlock did not know about his relationship with John, and series three seems to be, in part, his coming to terms with what those things are. Sherlock must have assumed he held the greater share of affection. He didn’t know John loved him. He didn’t even know John considered him his best friend.

When the client explains her single date with the Mayfly Man, Sherlock sees his relationship with John in her story. He doesn’t date much either (at all, apparently), and John was so nice, and they just clicked, and he sort of wished it had gone further. But this was special, so he wanted to take it slowly. At this point in the story, Sherlock is nodding. Is he trying to find a way to understand the explosion of things that went through his head when John admitted to loving him? He is intensely sad in that scene. John keeps assuring him that nothing will change, but Sherlock thinks he’s lying. Even if he weren’t, Sherlock is certainly a different man now, with a different outlook on relationships generally (as we see in his discussion with Mycroft about being different and being lonely). Maybe his old relationship with John wouldn’t have been enough anymore.

And Sherlock does essentially marry John in The Sign of the Three. They don’t exactly exchange vows, but Sherlock very clearly makes one. He wouldn’t have done that in series two. He was far too oblivious to his relationship with John.

While it’s always been fun to read the subtext of this show from start to finish, and I’ve always been of the opinion that, prior to the fall, if Sherlock had leaned in and started making out with John, John would have gone with it without a question or a fight. Because while he isn’t gay, I don’t think he would turn down a romantic and sexual relationship with Sherlock. In series three I think John arguably confirms that. But they can’t all three dance together, and it seems that Sherlock lost his chance, just when he might be starting to come to terms with the fact that he had one, or wanted one in the first place.

And so it remains so desperately unspoken, and now, apparently, desperately impossible.

Delicious, isn’t it?