Greg was carrying a large tray in his hands, breakfast, presumably, and looked very tired.
"Well aren't you two just little rays of blushing sunshine?" Greg asked as he climbed the stairs, examining Sherlock and John's glowing cheeks and awkward little smiles.
"Honestly we have a wedding planned in three days, who it's for though, that could be debated." He muttered, setting the tray on the deck in front of John with a bit of an angry bang.
"What on earth are you getting at?" John wondered, poking around at his breakfast with a shiny metal fork and examining Greg's sleep deprived face.
"Oh, I don't know, it's not really my place. Maybe I should lock you two in a room together and get things settled out, or maybe we could lock Sherlock and Mary together and have a little duel to the death. Winner gets our little prince's heart." Greg suggested, but there was no smile on his face. He looked about as tired of Sherlock and John's tiptoeing around each other as he was in real life, having missed a large chunk of his sleeping time to go mop up Sherlock's messes.
"Now would be an excellent time for you to shut up." Sherlock suggested with the best innocent smile he could manage, all while wanting to rip Greg's stupid little head off.
"Ya well, times like these make me wish I had another servant, trainee even, to go wrestle with the horses and the armor and his favorite demonic donkey." Greg muttered.
"Greg you're talking in riddles, go sleep more, I have no use of you when you're delirious." John decided.
"No use of me. What am I, a slave?" Greg muttered, dropping down a fresh plate of fish for Sherlock's breakfast and wiping his hair off of his face.
"Go sleep Greg, that's an order." John decided. Greg just nodded, closing his eyes for a moment as if he was very keen to follow John's orders the moment they were given, and for a moment Sherlock thought that he might collapse on the spot. But then his eyes opened and he dropped into a low bow, which was very unGReg-like, but then again, he was probably so tired he couldn't express his thanks in words, and just slouched off down the stairs and out the hall.
"Who do you think would win, you or Mary?" John wondered, spearing a potato on his fork and examining it, looking up at Sherlock with a mysterious sort of glare.
"In a duel for your heart?" Sherlock asked with a laugh. "She's already won, hasn't she?"
"No, no, generically speaking. Like if you two really were locked in a room, could you take her down?" John wondered.
"I have a tail, if you hadn't noticed. All she had to do was casually walk around me and I could never get a decent attack in." Sherlock pointed out. John just laughed, eating the potato and nodding in agreement.
"Ya, I guess. Greg's just being an idiot, as usual, but more idiotic than normal. Sleep deprived Greg makes no sense." John decided. "Besides, there's no battle for my heart, never has been, I've only got one bride, one candidate, she's perfect, is she not?" John asked, as if wanting Sherlock to assure him that he was doing the right thing by marrying Mary.
"Of course, perfect in every way." Sherlock agreed forcefully. Except there was one little detail that she was missing, which was she wasn't a moody merman prince named Sherlock Holmes. John nodded in agreement, but he still looked rather doubtful.
"I don't know Sherlock, I just don't know. She's perfect, of course she is, I just feel like I'm missing something, something important, and I feel like it's staring me right in the face." John insisted. Sherlock just stared him right in the face, but obviously he was stupider than Greg running on zero hours of sleep and twelve cups of coffee.
"Yes well, maybe you'll find out." Sherlock muttered, going back to plucking some fish off of his tray and eating it. John nodded, poking around at his eggs but not looking like he had much of an appetite.
"She loves me; I love her, I mean, what could go wrong? What could possibly could I be missing?" John wondered.
"Exactly, I have no idea." Sherlock agreed, just nodding along to the rubbish John was spewing.
"I couldn't love someone else, I would know if I loved someone else, and my parents approve, her parents approve, everyone loves her, she seems like a great person and a great queen, just, something...something I just can't grasp even though it's just so close." John groaned.
"You don't always know what your heart is telling you. Or maybe you're just choosing to ignore it." Sherlock decided.
"But...I mean, what could it possibly be telling me? There isn't another girl in my life." John insisted. "There never really has been."
"Maybe...maybe it's starting to consider other options." Sherlock muttered, his face blushing so hard that it was almost impossible to look up at John's face, so he kept his head down, fixed on his platter of fish, so as not to see the fear in John's beautiful eyes.
"You're suggesting...I'm not...I would know if I was a homosexual." John insisted quickly.
"I know, and there's no way you are, or maybe there is." Sherlock whispered.
"Absolutely not, I've had little crushes on girls my whole life, I would have realized..." John muttered, but he sounded scared, as if he was trying to talk himself out of this idea rather than Sherlock.
"John, I'm not accusing you of anything, I'm just suggesting that maybe..." Sherlock started, but John got abruptly to his feet, knocking aside his breakfast platter with a clang.
"No Sherlock, no. There's no way I will ever be like you, and just because you want to plant ideas in my head, to scare me, it's not going to work. I'm marrying Mary Morstan and it doesn't matter what you say. You don't matter to me anymore." John snapped. Sherlock forced his eyes up on John in shock, hardly daring to believe he just heard those words come out of John's mouth. John looked like a scared animal, like he had been cornered and accused of something he knew was true, he looked stubborn and he looked angry.
"What if I said that I love you John?" Sherlock asked in a trembling voice, trying not to let tears roll down his face, trying not to look weak in front of the strongest person he knew, now breaking.
"Then I'd know you're lying. You just want me to say it back." John snapped, and with that he turned his heel and started down the stairs. Sherlock was left staring at John's overturned breakfast tray, feeling such an aching in his heart, feeling a stab of pain with each beat, knowing that once more he had failed. He had scared John away with the truth, it had been too much just to accept that fact that he was indeed a homosexual, or at least he was bisexual, or at least he was in love with a merman. The rest of the truth would crush him, and Sherlock didn't want to see that poor boy in pieces. If it meant he suffered himself, so be it. John didn't deserve the truth, he didn't deserve the pain, he didn't deserve Sherlock. He had said it himself; Sherlock didn't matter to him anymore. So Sherlock should try to make John Watson mean nothing to him, even though he knew that was impossible. He knew that John Watson meant everything. Sherlock sunk back under the waves for a while, trying to close his eyes and pretend that he was asleep, where memories and thoughts couldn't reach him, a peaceful, restful state of unconsciousness that could swallow him whole. Except Sherlock couldn't sleep, every time his mind started to drift off, when his eyes started to droop and his muscles felt weak, John's words would echo in his head like a gong, you don't matter to me, you're lying, I love Mary Morstan, and Sherlock's eyes would open in an instant, his heart beating out of his chest and his brain aching as it tried to process this sadness, this betrayal. John was...he was just saying things, spewing things out of his mouth to justify his marriage to Mary, something they both knew could never work, that everyone knew could never work. If didn't matter if John knew he was in love with Sherlock or not, it didn't matter if he knew he was gay or if he knew that he had fallen in love with his servant, it mattered that he knew something was off. He knew that Mary wasn't the one, and every little voice in his subconsciousness was yelling at him to open his eyes, if only he could. There was only one way John could realize his love for Sherlock, only one possible way that he could accept the truth so abruptly, and he was going to have to take his medicine. Sherlock lay on his coral for a long time, feeling as if lunch had come and gone and the sun had sunk and risen twice already, but in reality it couldn't be more than eleven o'clock in the morning. Footsteps in the hall knocked him out of his session of self-loathing, and he picked up his aching head to see who his visitor might be, hoping to see John walking slowly in, wringing his hands together nervously. Like he had a confession. In reality, however, it was Victor who walked up, with legs that looked so wrong attached to his torso in place of his golden tail. He was still wearing a suit and his hair, his dry hair, was slicked back in an odd swoop on top of his head. He looked very satisfied, very...human.
"Hello Sherlock." He muttered, walking up to the glass and staring at Sherlock from the outside of the tank. Sherlock let his head fall back into the coral and groaned loudly, watching as bubbles erupted from his lips and rose to the surface.
"Victor what have I done?" he groaned. Victor titled his head in confusion, and Sherlock raised his head to look at him again.
"What do you mean?" Victor wondered, and Sherlock rose through the water and glided over to the edge of the tank, right up to the glass. His fin hurt and his tail felt as if it was just a limp piece of cartilage and flesh, with no purpose except to send jolts of pain up his body whenever it moved.
"I think...I think I messed up with John, I think I scared him away. He said I don't mean anything to him anymore. I think he may be serious." Sherlock muttered, leaning his forehead against the glass and feeling the cold surface against his skin. Victor sighed, his breath fogging up the glass on the other end.
"I don't know what to say Sherlock." He admitted.
"Say something like, he'll always love you, or maybe, he's just killed Mary and is about to propose to you." Sherlock muttered, banging his forehead against the glass in agony. "Say anything."
"He'll always love you." Victor muttered, although the words sounded fake coming out of his mouth.
"He said that something felt wrong, off, about his marriage to Mary. I said that maybe his heart is considering other options, and he said that he'd never be a homosexual and that he would never be like me and that I didn't matter to him anymore." Sherlock whispered, tears collecting into the water around him, as unnoticed as his affection.
"And what did you tell him?" Victor wondered, his polished shoe tapping against the stone floor.
"I told him I loved him. And he walked away." Sherlock whispered, so close to the glass that he was sure his words bounced right off of it. Victor sighed heavily, frowning slightly.
"That's a shame." He decided. Sherlock groaned, turning away from the glass and turning his back on Victor.
"Don't be selfish. Don't lie. You know that this is what you've wanted all along, for him to slap me back into reality. Of course he'd never fall in love with a merman, with a freak." Sherlock hissed.
"Stop it Sherlock, stop it!" Victor insisted, banging on the glass and making Sherlock jump, turning to face him once more. "He loves you, I know he does, I see it in his eyes, I see it in his touches, in his words, it takes one to know one. I'm not being selfish I'm not trying to make you hate him, Sherlock, he's in love with you and he's angry because he hates the thought. The expectations that are crushing down on him, the pressure to be a good king and a good heir and find a good queen, he's rushing his life so that he can't slow down and consider what he wants. And he wants you. I know he does." Victor insisted. Sherlock took a deep breath, closing his eyes and squeezing out another tear.
"I don't think he does Victor, I don't think..." Sherlock silenced himself, swishing his tail back and forth just so that he could feel the pain it inflicted. "Why did you come?" Sherlock wondered.
"I thought you were in danger." Victor muttered.
"I'm not." Sherlock insisted, and he wasn't. Even if John was mad at him, it didn't mean that he was going to get hurt. Sherlock would rather suffer in the human world than be at peace under the waves.
"Of yourself, possibly. Greg told me about your little incident, that you tried to suffocate yourself." Victor pointed out. Sherlock sighed heavily, not really wanting to talk about that little hiccup.
"I was at a low point, alright? Just let it go." Sherlock growled.
"Mycroft's worried sick about you, he thinks you were kidnapped, Sebastian Moran was found unconscious in your room, door wide open, I didn't tell him the truth." Victor insisted.
"He's not that stupid, he knows exactly where I went." Sherlock snapped.
"I've only ever seen him like this once before, when you left, he's lost, he's terrified, just for once his heart of ice starts to melt." Victor insisted.
"Is that why you came, to bring me back, to pull me away from where I belong?" Sherlock snapped. Victor sighed, shrugging.
"I have no idea why I came; I just knew I had to come. To be with you." Victor muttered.
"I don't need you here, I don't want you here." Sherlock insisted.
"I can't go back Sherlock." Victor pointed out, looking at the floor in shame.
"Why not?" Sherlock wondered.
"I'm a human now, I took the potion, I'll be alienated, I'll be banned from the community." Victor muttered.
"I was a human and it worked out fine for me." Sherlock defended. Victor just laughed, shaking his head as if he didn't expect Sherlock to be so obvious.
"You're the prince; you can do whatever you like. Me, however, I'm no more than a soldier, a guard for the potions vault. No one cares about me, or my reasoning, or my feelings." Victor muttered.
"I won't let them ban you Victor; I won't let Mycroft do that." Sherlock insisted.
"I appreciate that Sherlock, but there's nothing you can do to help me." Victor sighed.
"There is something you can do to help me." Sherlock muttered.
"What might that be?" Victor wondered.
"Get me the potion that changes me back into a human, it's the only thing that can make him realize. We have barely two days until the wedding." Sherlock insisted.
"I don't...I don't have the potion to change back to a merman, I left it down there, I don't have anything with me. I never wanted to be a human but now that I'm here, I can't imagine how I was ever satisfied with the life of a merman. On land, you can be whatever you want, a nobleman, a peasant, a king." Victor insisted. Sherlock groaned, clenching his fists as he tried to think of a better way, an alternative.
"What if I was to go down there, somehow you could break me out?" Sherlock whispered. Victor just laughed for a moment, but then realized that Sherlock was being serious, and his smile faded.
"They'll catch you Sherlock, your brother..." he muttered.
"Not if I'm quick, not if I'm quiet." Sherlock whispered. Victor shook his head in doubt, biting his top lip and tapping his foot even faster than ever.
"You're injured Sherlock, there's no way you can go anywhere until you heal, at least a little bit." He insisted. Sherlock looked down at his torn fin, and realized that Victor was right; he could barely swim to the surface now.
"Alright then, time, we have two days. Tomorrow night I'll tell John everything, and if it's not enough, if he can't accept it, then the next morning I'll go down and steal the potion, before the wedding." Sherlock decided. Victor sighed heavily; looking around to make sure no one was listening.
"And what am I to do, just carry you down to the ocean? That will look a bit suspicious, won't it?" he wondered.
"Greg will help. Greg knows everything now." Sherlock insisted. Victor sighed, but nodded.
"Alright, whatever. If it makes you happy. Just...if you get caught, if your brother captures you, I wasn't involved." Victor decided.
"I won't get caught. Not when John's love is on the line." Sherlock insisted. Victor shook his head doubtfully, but smiled.
"Your idiotic plans, I don't know how you possibly come up with them." He decided with a laugh.
"They've worked so far, have they not?" Sherlock asked.
"Yes, well, I suppose some of them have." Victor decided. Sherlock just smiled, and with that he turned away and sank back on his coral, to think about his plan a bit more, to consider what he might say to John tomorrow night. He felt Victor's eyes on him for a moment, but after a while he heard his retreating footsteps and finally the closing of a door, leaving him in solitude once more.