Colorblind (A Johnlock Fanfiction)

Interlude

For all of John's self-directed anguish, for all of his dishonesty and repression - he was a light. He created color in irretrievable shadow and Sherlock had never grasped how.

How could anyone find value in ashes?

Ashes from smoldering rubble. Ashes that Sherlock hadn't been able to stop tasting for a week. Ashes that composed him, ashes that formed every time a piece of Sherlock burned and wasted away.

He was just debris, now. Every time John sifted through him and pressed his hands against these ruins, this skin, it was like being found in a dark room.

Sherlock could never let someone so steady and constant go. He knew that much. First time he saw him was like being shot - John's posture almost medical, holding a briefcase full of paints, abnormally bright in a concrete room, in the midst of a war. Although John hadn't known it, there had been indigo paint along his jawline. He had been desired so utterly.

This inclination was, indubitably, disease. Lusting after men. Loving men. Letting men touch him. And worse than that: under Sherlock's bruises, the sickness only worsened. (Was that love? Unreachable, brutal, subservient?)

John broke things as he mended things; he'd stitched ugly parts of Sherlock together, unapologetically rearranging who Sherlock had believed he was before. He had created art out of embers and rubble, and Sherlock still didn't know how to thank him with words, still couldn't articulate his vast emotion. He could never let go, either, so in this inexhaustible limbo he remained.

Would he ever be free of the relentless desire to be loved by John? Were these markings - where John had torn him and bandaged him, fucked him and made love to him - worth losing his sanity over?

In truth, Sherlock was hopeless.

No amount of broken ribs could make Sherlock stop wanting him.