Leviticus 20:13

What's A God To John Watson?

For a moment it was only them. Sherlock could see John so clearly, and even though his inner mind was reminding him that this was just a dream, well, it seemed so real. Every detail stuck out vividly in John's face, every miniscule wrinkle in his skin, every divot and freckle and hair was so accurately imprinted into Sherlock's mind that when he looked at John in the dream world it was exactly as if he was looking at him in reality. He was here. Sherlock watched him curiously, standing on the altar and looking down, down where John was kneeling on the marble floors. He looked so submissive, crouched down on his knees as if pledging himself not to God but to Sherlock, who stood before him radiating the power of Heaven through a pure white light. It was a fire around his head, a flame of angelic luminescence that surrounded his being and made him pure. John bowed to it yet it terrified him, he wasn't daring to take a step closer, and Sherlock knew that if they were to be together he had to be the one to move. John had the fear of God struck deep into his heart; Sherlock had to be the one to betray. He had to step out of the light and into the shadows where John so passively waited, fallen weakly to the floor and waiting to be picked back up again. Sherlock could hear voices, swimming in his ear and talking in different tongues, some sounding ancient, some sounding more gruff and recent. Some of the voices he recognized and others he didn't, the voice of Father Turner, the voice of his own father, the voice of his mother, dry and raspy and desperate, urging him to remain where he was. It was the voices of logic ringing through his ears, the voices of everyone who had ever backed him up, who had ever mentored him, who had ever insisted that priesthood was the single road that he had to take. None of them had ever considered the other road, the separate road that tempted not his head but his heart. They had never whispered about how wonderful loving the right person might be. Sherlock watched John for a moment longer, his eyes starting to strain with the white light that was beginning to engulf him, and once more he was reminded of the severity of this situation. His window was closing, soon he wouldn't be able to pass through the light, soon John wouldn't be there. He couldn't sit and wait for Sherlock to make his decision; he had to get on with his life. A lonely man sought refuge in another, and it wasn't like Sherlock was the only shoulder to cry on. If he didn't act quickly John would have forgotten about him, Sherlock's very existence would slip from John's mind as quickly as it had entered, and Sherlock's only hope of escape would have left his life for good. He was waiting there, and yet Sherlock couldn't bring himself to move. John was expecting him and yet the lure of Heaven was beginning to weigh down on Sherlock's shoulders, turning his legs to lead as his conscience began to remind him of all he would be sacrificing if he stepped from this envelope of whiteness. His career. His education. His life's ambitions. His family's trust, his friend's companionship, his God's love! Could he really abandon his livelihood for a single man? Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them John had raised his head, staring at Sherlock with piercing brown eyes and beckoning him, begging him, to follow. And suddenly, Sherlock felt as if he was as light as a feather. John's eyes reminded him that not only would he be giving up things but he would be gaining things as well. He would gain a purpose in life, a lover who would never stray from his side, he could have a family...he could live the dream that he had imagined since he was a little boy. Companionship, that was all he craved. Love from a man who wasn't nestled up in the clouds. Maybe Sherlock could move after all... 

Sherlock woke before he could figure out what his dream self-had done. Maybe if he had been able to figure out what his subconscious had done then it would be easier for himself to follow suit, and yet here he lay, in a cold sweat with the blankets in heaps around his kicking feet, his bare chest shivering against the chilly winter air. It was silent, disturbingly silent, except for the constant drumming of his heart, throbbing so powerfully that he could feel it in his neck and in his wrists, his veins struggling to keep up with his paranoia. Sherlock grumbled to himself and sat up in his bed, running his fingers through his sweaty curls and shaking his head miserably. There was no hope sleeping, there was only one thing on his mind and he couldn't concentrate when he was unconscious. Sherlock sat up against the headboard and pulled his knees to his chest, feeling around in the darkness until his fingers grasped along the beaded comfort that lay on his dresser. He grabbed the rosary and wrapped it securely over his fist, letting the crucifix hang gently off of his thumb as it glittered with every flash of light. It was quiet once more. For some reason the rosary didn't offer the comfort it once did, for the first time in his life Sherlock almost felt as if his hands were trapped in the tight strain of the cord, as if he was immobilized with the crushing weight of guilt as he tried to clutch onto the only thing that grounded him to God. But did he want God in a time like this? Did he want to be reminded of the higher power, the man watching over him from above, the man that had loved him since the day he was born? Could he really betray the trust of his God for a man he had hardly known for two months? Could he turn his back on his Father and follow in the footsteps of a man that would be so bold as to tempt him away from Heaven? Was John truly a demon, sent as the Devil's temptations to a pure man, to a holy man? Or was he just a reminder that all of these fantasies in Sherlock's head were just that, fantasies, stories? Was John appearing in Sherlock's life to remind him of the reality of the world? Sherlock shook his head fearfully, untangling his fingers from the rosary and stuffing it into the pocket of his pajama pants, rubbing his face once more and feeling the need to submerge himself in cold water. He simply couldn't concentrate, he simply couldn't think! He needed advice, he needed a pardon...someone had to tell him what to do when he certainly couldn't trust himself. And so Sherlock jumped out of his bed with catlike dexterity, landing silently on the old wooden floors and sliding his feet into his slippers. He grabbed his robe from the bedside table and pulled it over his shoulders before rooting around on his dresser for the key to the church. No one heard him leave, or at least he could only assume they hadn't because no one came to stop him. Sherlock closed the door silently behind him and slipped off into the night. Sherlock was no expert; however he knew that it must be late. When the city sleeps you know it's late, and there was not a single motion or a single noise for miles around. The streets were empty, the sidewalks barren, the horizon only shone with street lights for as far as the eye could see and yet the buildings looked vacant, their windows shining ghost like in the darkness. Sherlock shivered with the winter stillness, the cold air sinking into his skin as he tried his best to pull his robe tighter around his bare, skinny arms. He knew he shouldn't be out this late at night; he should be in bed, tucked away under the warmth of his multiple blankets, soothed by the sound of his own slow breathing and dreaming of God and angels and what Heaven might look like. And yet here he was, pushing the key into the lock and pulling open the door to the long emptied church. Sherlock locked the door behind him, feeling around the walls for a light switch before finally flipping on only a couple of the overhead lights before him. There was an eerie yet somehow soothing silence radiating from these walls, there was a calmness that settled over him as soon as he passed onto the holy ground. the walls were imprinted with song, the floors trodden by believers in their best heels, the ghost of the holy spirit infused in every little statuette or picture on the wall. He was surrounded by religion and yet, even as a priest, he still uneasy. Almost like he was intruding, like he didn't truly belong here. It was true that Sherlock was exposed, without the white color he felt almost like a commoner, sneaking about in his robe and pajama pants, and yet there was something different, mentally exposing, that made him feel almost as if every statue of Jesus was watching him with judgmental eyes. Mother Mary loomed from the shadowy corner, her stone mouth turning into a sort of disappointed frown as Sherlock walked through the empty entrance hall and into the main part of the church. The pews were unoccupied, stretching along the wall and waiting until tomorrow morning to seat their first crowd. The books and Bibles were tucked nicely away and the altar sat untouched, the flowers all sitting in their individual pools of water and the 'infinite' candles all blown out for the night. It was ever so obvious that Sherlock was alone, and yet the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he was plagued with the feeling of being constantly observed, as though a pair of unseen eyes crouched in the shadows, waiting for him to do something interesting. And yet he didn't do anything just yet, he simply walked to the end of the aisle and sunk to his knees in the exact same spot John had in his dream. And he looked up to the statue of Jesus, pinned to his cross with his neck hanging askew, his face contorted into an expression of pitiful pain, the crown of thorns stuck painfully around his head. Sherlock could never understand the pain that Jesus had to endure, he could never fully contemplate the horrendous strain of his muscles as he carried the cross, he could never envision what it might feel like to have nails driven into his hands, he could never even imagine what it must be like to hang by your hands, your skin giving way and your bones grinding against the rusty iron... this was the only night that Sherlock began to empathize with Jesus, yet not in the physical way. He almost felt as though he was carrying his own cross and yet his muscles bared no burden, it was psychological, he could feel the weight and yet it wasn't there. It was the weight of his decision; it was the weight of the outcomes and the consequences he would have to endure should he follow John away from God. And it hurt. Oh did it hurt, the simultaneous attacks on his body and soul, on his heart and his mind, his conscience and his fiery love, Sherlock almost couldn't take the pain of it all. He had to choose, and yet he couldn't do it alone. Sherlock grabbed at the rosary in his pocket, wrapping it around his hands and folding them in prayer, looking up towards the ceiling as if expecting someone to be looking back down.
"Father I'm sorry, I'm stuck at a crossroads and I don't know which path to take." Sherlock began, his voice echoing through the sloped ceiling and repeating his words down at him. It almost gave him the sense that God wasn't around to hear any of it, almost as if he was only talking to himself.
"I know that your love is the strongest of all, and yet I have never been in love, I have never been able to return that love myself. I pray to you, my Father, and I love you much as a devoted son ever could and yet I still feel lonely. I still feel that there is love in my heart that is going unused, that is being wasted in my refusal to submit myself to a relationship. Is it wrong to hope? Is it wrong to imagine what it might be like to be loved, and to love in return?" Sherlock's voice tapered off, and for a moment he thought of what he might want to say. It was hard to have a one way conversation, and yet he could only hope that God was up there somewhere, listening.
"He's in love with me, and he's lonely... and it's not wrong, please Father believe me it's not wrong to love another man, I know it can't be because if it was wrong I wouldn't be in love right now. I'm not messed up, I'm not mutated in any way I'm just adapting to the changing world around me and I'm realizing that maybe love is a more abstract thing than we had taken it to be. It's not so straightforward, it's not male or female it's souls, it's words, and it's touches, and lips, and hearts, and everything about him, Father I'm just...I'm mesmerized. And I don't know what I'm supposed to do, I know that I'm forbidden to have a relationship with anyone, male or female alike I know...I know his gender isn't an issue but it's the fact that I've found myself slowly devoting myself, distracting myself, with other things. Things that shouldn't be as important as you and yet they're slowly taking over my life and my thoughts and my heart. I don't want to admit it to myself, but I find it more and more difficult to deny that I've fallen hopelessly in love, I let my barriers down for a mere moment and he was able to slip through the cracks, I wasn't prepared for this, Father, I wasn't prepared for this decision." Sherlock let his voice trail off and he rearranged himself on his knees, sinking even lower to the floor so that he could feel the cold air radiating off of the untouched marble.
"I know that you care about me, except I can't figure out how far your love extends. I can't decide whether or not you're being selfish or not, if you're keeping all of my love to yourself because you want your followers to worship you, to dedicate themselves to you. But Father, Father I hate to ask this, but what use have you been to me since I've become a priest? My life hasn't changed, it hasn't gotten any better people still die. They still leave. I feel as though I wasn't granted the holy gifts a priest is expected to have, my touch doesn't heal and my words don't comfort, I'm looked upon more as a joke than as a mentor, and sometimes I wonder if you're not even here, if you're not even listening. Do you love me, Father, do you truly love me? Do you want the best for me, do you want my happiness or do you want my submissiveness? Do you bask in my praise and then do nothing in return, do you listen to my prayers and then let them slip your mind? I have been your servant for years, and what have I gotten in return? A life of solitude, a life of an outcast, living as if I wasn't one of them, as if I wasn't part of society! Do you wish to alienate me from my own kind, to make me your own, to make me your slave? Would you grant me miracles, my lord, or do you wish me to sit idly and wait for my supposed promise land? What good is my heart if it only beats for a God who is only waiting to collect my soul when it ceases? What good is my love if it's directed to a man who won't do anything to love me in return? If you truly love me then why must you submit me to this TORTURE?" Sherlock had risen to his feet by now and yet he hadn't noticed until he screamed, until his words ricocheted so harshly off of the ceilings that they hit him with full force and knocked him out of whatever angry trance he had fallen into. But that wasn't the end, that was only the beginning, the crack in the ice that would eventually lead to the landslide.
"AND HE'S WILLING TO LOVE ME! TO CARE FOR ME!" Sherlock screamed, hitting himself in the heart with his fist as if trying to start it up manually, to start it beating on his own. He couldn't rely on God's help anymore, he needed to trust himself, his body and his soul, he needed to work as a human and not as a puppet.
"AND WHAT'S A MAN LIKE YOU AGAINST A MAN LIKE HIM, WHAT'S AN ALL POWERFUL GOD TO A CARING MORTAL, WHAT'S A GOD TO JOHN WATSON?" Sherlock shrieked. "He is loving, and gentle, and careful, and romantic, and EVERYTHING YOU COULD NEVER BE! You claim to love me but WITH WHAT HEART? My heart beats for John Watson, my heart aches for John Watson, every breath I take is in his honor, every step I take is one step closer to his open arms and one step farther away from your abandonment. My collar is a shackle around my neck; my rosary is a noose from which you intend to hang me! Oh these ACCURSED BEADS!" Sherlock screamed, grabbing the rosary from his fingers and tearing angrily at the cord. It didn't take much tension until the old leather necklace snapped, letting the beads fall in unison around the marble floors and bounce here and there, falling through his fingers and lifting an unseen weight from his back. The crucifix dropped to the floor and left a horrible, metallic clicking in Sherlock's ears, and suddenly his legs gave out, sending him falling as well. Sherlock dropped his knees once more, almost as if an unseen force had pushed him, demanded him in that position, and he stared at that crucifix that lay so powerfully on the marble, Jesus's tiny metallic face staring up at him in disappointment. In betrayal.
"What do you want from me, Father? What do you want me to do?" Sherlock whispered fearfully, staring at the ground and getting no response. However the silence was deafening, the silence was a sure sign that everything he was supposed to do had been revealed not in God's response but his own mindless shrieking. It wasn't alienation he needed, but love, but life! It wasn't God's love he craved but John's touch; it wasn't God's lies but John's miracles! What had he done with his life while wearing this crucifix around his neck, what promises had God been able to keep, what miracles had he been able to grant? If John was sent from the Devil so be it, at least the Devil understood what Sherlock solely needed, what he was missing in his poor excuse of an existence. A soul was only complete when it had found its other half, and now that John Watson was so willing to fuse, well, Sherlock could do nothing except grasp onto his new reality and hold it tight, hoping that God wouldn't pull him away into the never ending abyss of single minded worship once more.