ivyblossom:

We tend to posit that Sherlock and John don’t communicate enough, and aren’t emotionally honest with each other, and therefore don’t know how they feel about each other. That’s a fun idea to play with, but I’m not sure that’s entirely it’s case by series three.

Obviously Sherlock knows how he feels about John at this point, and how John feels about him. Do you have a vacancy? He does. 

When pressed to replace John in his life, he does it, facetiously, with a girlfriend (albeit a fake one), and deliberately makes out with Janine in front of John to make him jealous. He knows what he’s doing, they both do. He doesn’t say it outright, but clearly he knows how John feels about witnessing that. It would be impossible for him not to know. It was the whole point, wasn’t it? Of course it was!

I’m not convinced Sherlock understood the committed and romantic nature of his relationship with John before his swan dive off of Bart’s, but he certainly understands it by the middle of series 3. Too little too late, Sherlock Holmes! Regrets, you’ve had a few?

John understands what’s happening, too, doesn’t he? Of course he does. He knows what’s going on between them. I think John has already been in a committed relationship with Sherlock. Of a sort, anyway. Maybe he was waiting for Sherlock to be ready for it to turn romantic, and maybe he was fairly certain that it would, eventually. But it didn’t end well. He got very ceremoniously and publicly dumped via fake suicide. They’re just friends now, understandably.

Sherlock is John’s unwitting ex, and John is very much committed to moving on romantically, though he’s not very successful at it. He’s trying to move on with Mary, in spite of the fact that he’s still in love with Sherlock. Tricky situation, but you don’t dump your current, blameless love when your sexy, lying, it’s complicated turns up again out of the blue.

Unless your current, blameless love turns out to be, oh I don’t know, a psychopathic killer who shoots your best friend in the chest and very nearly costs him his life. That might change things a bit, who knows.