Kleptomaniac (A Johnlock Fanfiction) [2015 Wattys Award Winner]

Chapter Twenty-Eight

A/N: see you on the other side, comrades.

John sits up at 4:30 in the morning, sweating bullets, panting like a dog. His entire bed is drenched in sweat, and his lips are parched with the dry air - in this state of confusion, he gets up and limps his way to the bathroom.

When he looks inside the mirror, all he can focus on is his face, which is horrendously gaunt. His pupils are blown wide, bags so dark that they contrast starkly next to his skin. He looks like he's a watercolor painting. Every color of him is exaggerated and unhealthily pale. And his eyes...

They look like they've been washed out; pastel tints of what they used to be, the smile but a fading memory. Crow's feet sit in the corners of his eyelids, unused, and the blues and browns less bright than usual. Not that they were ever bright, but now, they're just... plain.

Sherlock used to look at his eyes like they were imponderable galaxies, not hard to solve, but hard to dig through. Sherlock used to think that John was made of endless layers, like a Russian nesting doll that never got smaller. He could peel back the skin of him and never stop, for eternity; he could research every layer every second of every day until the minute he died. John was solvable, but also more complex than any jigsaw puzzle Sherlock had ever tackled. Sherlock used to look at him like he was worth something more than the sum of his parts. Because John was beautiful, and intelligent, and talented. And God, he thought that John lit up a fucking room.

He had faith in John (God knows why), faith that John couldn't find in himself. He thought that Sherlock's faith in him was enough to move mountains and build bridges; create little worlds of his own inside his head, paint stories of gold upon a canvas of silver.

John just wants one more second with him. One more early morning. One more smell, one more taste, one more touch; he wants to feel Sherlock with him, against him, he wants one more moment for them to be one and the same.

He looks into those bloodshot, terrified eyes - the ones that are looking back at him - and he thinks, I am going to hell for this. Not that I wasn't before. But it was more subtextual. God might've let me stay in purgatory for a few thousand years. Now, I'm just going straight to the fucking ninth layer.

John limps to his bedroom, groggily opens his closet, and puts on his winter clothes - and with a last second thought, he takes some post-it notes and a pen. He doesn't hesitate as he scribbles a note onto it; a note that is weighted and heavy, like brass.

At times in the evening, he used to think that these words were only said in lies, forced out of people's mouths to hide the truths of being alive. John was never a depressive, but he tried to be a realist. He hated the idea of having something taken away from him, out of his mouth, forcefully volunteered from his lips. He hated the idea of having to admit it, because admitting something makes it sound like you're lying in the first place. He hated having to spit it out like a necessary evil. He hated feeling like the other person had stolen your heart away from you, because then they had it, and you did not; they could do with it what they saw fit.

It seemed like something someone said before they broke; something someone said when it felt like the world was going to stop turning, when they were to the point of begging for mercy, and John himself promised a long time ago he'd never beg for anyone's acceptance.

But here he is, with those words on a sticky note, and everything on earth feels dead quiet.

When he's about to leave, he looks outside.

It's... snowing.

***

For some unknown reason, Sherlock decides to stay up late. Soon late turns to super-late, and then super-late turns into morning.