Thirty-Six Questions to Fall in Love

The Bigger Question

John couldn't sleep all night. He kept twisting and turning in his sheets, thinking about what just happened. He was going to go wake up Sherlock for a late night stroll, but he thought he had better sort out his emotions before he did anything. John got up and poured himself a cup of warm tea and cozied up in his chair. He quickly scrolled through the questions so he knew what he was in for tomorrow, but the anticipation made him dizzy... or maybe he was excited. It was hard to tell. A million thoughts were swirling around his head all at once, and it was getting difficult to concentrate.

He went into the kitchen to pour himself some more tea and knocked over a few beakers in the cabinet. He cleaned them up quickly and went back to his room with a fresh cup of tea and the rest of the questions.

♡

Sherlock awoke to the sound of clattering plates and a screaming kettle at four in the morning. He peeked through the crack of his door and saw John was in the kitchen making tea. In the middle of the night. He could he see John was completely sleep deprived. He was stumbling around the kitchen mumbling something about tea with the Queen and then he fell into a cabinet filled with Sherlock's lab equipment. But John cleaned them up and went on with his night. Sherlock smiled and went back into his bed, snuggling against his penguin stuffed animal that John won him at the fair last week. He got up again to check if John had gone upstairs and then pulled out a photo album Mrs. Hudson had made them. It was sitting in the bookshelf but Sherlock didn't bother to look at it until now.

Mrs. Hudson had been experimenting with scrapbooking and pulled together a nice little one for John and Sherlock. A few photos from newspapers, magazines, and Molly's private collection. The first photo was of John and Sherlock standing outside their flat. The door read "221B" and Sherlock and John stood right and left of it. It was a nice memory, Sherlock remembered, reminiscing of the day they moved in. He knew everything about John the moment they met, but he would have never expected things to turn out like this.

"You don't really believe it, John? Do you?"

John kept replaying what Sherlock said, looping over and over in his head. That had been the first thing Sherlock had ever told him regarding the experiment. As if, it was foolish to even think anything would happen from this. But now, John was thinking that maybe Sherlock Holmes had finally gotten something wrong.

I don't really believe it, do I?

But he couldn't convince himself that he didn't. Taking a deep breath and trying to convince himself to go back to sleep, John came upon a realization so abrupt that it made him dizzy.

Oh, my God.

Pulling out his phone, he looked at a selfie he took with Sherlock during one of their first cases at Buckingham Palace. They were in one of the most honourable buildings in all the world, and Sherlock was wearing a white sheet for clothes. John chuckled out loud. Sherlock was undoubtedly John's best friend, there's no way he could be anything else. Unless...

I do believe it, John thought to himself, shocked as he admitted it. The thing bloody worked.