Rainy Days : A TeenLock Fanfiction

John Watson ; No Longer A Stranger

Time is such a whimsical idea. It swims past you far too slowly when you need it to go fast, and far too quickly when you don't. Sherlock had never experienced this dilemma before John Watson, his first ever friend.

After that storm, they had become a pair.

When John wasn't at school, he was with Sherlock. They usually loitered around at the Rainy Days bookstore or at Sherlock's flat on Baker Street. Never at John's home. Never. Sherlock knew why, he had seen the bruises, smelled the alcohol he knew John hadn't drank, and heard John's voice crack whenever he had to mention his father. John never brought it up, so Sherlock left it alone.

While they were together, they learned things about each other, trivia that didn't exactly matter but was fun to know none the less. Things like how John was a Netflix junkie and how his favorite snack was a nice can of Pringles, or how Sherlock hated cough medicine and would rather be sick than touch the stuff, and only drank vanilla coffee. They made quiet inside jokes and would burst out into immature laughter whenever someone mentioned soda or lollipops.

Sherlock loved every moment. Again, he'd never actually had friends before John. He didn't realize that thinking your best male friend was attractive wasn't normal, or that having urges to hold their hand wasn't good. He just assumed it was part of the whole "friendship" package.

He knew he loved John. Just not romantically or sexually. He loved John in place of his mother, father, brother, aunt, uncle, and anyone else he could have possibly had affections towards. He loved John, and no one else. Love, he found, was a universal concept, a force like gravity that was simply there and accepted, not given a second thought.

John, on the other hand, thought nothing of the friendship. He had had many friends in the past, so another wasn't a big deal. One thing was sure, however, and that was that Sherlock was the best friend John ever had. Sherlock never asked about his personal life, why he still hadn't moved out of his parents' house at nineteen, why he always had new wounds when they met up, why he only ever wore long sleeves. Things like these never seemed to bother Sherlock, and John was grateful for that.