Tension

 (Sherlock Meta by onthelosingside)

I’m so emotional about all the times Sherlock and John are alone together in s3 because every single frame is wrought with this tension, this intense elephant-in-the-room feeling, there’s so much to say, that they both want to say, that they’re both thinking, you can see it on their faces, Ben and Martin do this amazing job of conveying the tension in their bodies of Sherlock and John forcing themselves to keep quiet, it’s ridiculous. It seeps out of their bodies into fidgeting or clenched fists, or tapping fingers and no where do I feel it more than in the Private Bainbridge flashback in The Sign Of Three when they’re sitting on the bench.

Sherlock’s hands are clenched tight together, and they’re making this stupid small talk about the guards scratching themselves, and Sherlock can’t hold it in any more, he brings up one of the thousands of things he wants to talk to John about - Sholto - and it just … it bombs, the conversation does not go well and Sherlock says “Won’t be trying that again,” and he really, really means it. He won’t be trying that again, won’t try to talk to John again about his feelings, or the myriad of thoughts and questions about what’s going on between the two of them because he tried and he failed and he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know how.

And then John. John, who finds this sort of thing difficult, he tries too, tries a little, tries to say something about how much Sherlock means to him, but he leads by mentioning Mary, but listing how important she is to him, and Sherlock can’t stand it, can’t take it, can’t hear it so he runs. And he misses it and John think it’s because he’s not interested to hear it, it’s not important to him so … John won’t be trying that again either.