From cypress-tree, for my writing commentary meme:
From Dress Sense:
John liked their relationship. It wasn’t traditional. It wasn’t soppy. It was, on occasion, somewhat disturbing, which he counted largely as a plus. He never had to question whether Sherlock valued him; the man showed it on a regular basis in a thousand unconventional ways, from making tea to, well, this. But no effort could redress the fundamental imbalance between them. Namely, Sherlock was Sherlock. John’s sense of self-worth never flinched from a challenge, but there was no avoiding the fact that Sherlock was out of pretty much everybody’s league. Though John tried, every time they touched, talked, kissed, texted, or tumbled into bed, there was no silencing the little voice in the back of his head that wondered, Why me?
Sometimes it welled up in John’s voice or eyes or body, and they couldn’t stop from feeling it crackling in the gaps between them. Sherlock hated it, if possible, even more than John did, but he had no better answers for it.
This was actually the moment at which this whole story clicked into place for me. ^_^ I knew I was writing a porny story about the guys and hot clothes, and I recognized vaguely that John was on some sort of path of thought, but it was the moment this came out that I realized I was writing thinky porn again. I don’t even remember, now, if I’d realized that Sherlock had ulterior motives or if I had just assumed he was sick of the jumpers and wanted to put John in something more to his tastes.
Well, no, the way Sherlock’s mind works I always knew that for him it was, in a way, about showing John off. I guess it’s a step up in the world for him, though, because it was never, ‘You’re mine and I want everyone to see how fantastic I am for having you,’ but always, ‘You’re fantastic and it’s DRIVING ME INSANE that nobody can see it but me, so we’re going to take care of that right now. Also rawr.’
The other thing here, though, is that I get tired of all the fan characterizations that give one or the other or both of these two some kind of self-esteem problem. Neither of them have one. They’re both tremendously comfortable in their own skins. It takes a man who’s very secure in himself and his own worth to stand up and cock off to Mycroft the way John makes a habit of doing, and Sherlock…if anything he’s a narcissist. It comes up over and over again: “You’re too modest.”/”I’m really not.” “I’m a showoff, John, it’s what we do.” That is not a front the man is putting on; he thinks he’s the best fucking thing since humanity discovered that milk could turn into cheese.
And yet, here John is, so amazed and adoring of Sherlock that he’s subordinated his entire life to the guy and he follows him around like an (adorable killer) puppy. So I had to sit down and have a think about what the two of them actually see in each other, what they give to each other, and how they see themselves fitting into that dynamic. And…as you can see, I still don’t know. But really, do we ever fully understand why it is that a specific other person completes us? Or, more accurately, can we ever understand it in a way we can express in language? What matters is that they do, and that we show them we value that.