"You have to keep eye contact. Watch the person as they're walking past, smile, distract. The key is distracting them. Bumping into them, making their senses focus on something else so you'll be able to steal anything they aren't paying attention to. Humans, as a general rule, can only pay attention to one thing at a time."
Sherlock demonstrates eye contact for a moment, holding firmly onto John's shoulders as he speaks. "So far," he explains, "I've stolen your watch, your wallet, two cough drops and a condom from you, as we've been speaking." John opens his mouth to say something, but Sherlock cuts him off. "Shut up."
"I-" Sherlock stifles the utterance with his left hand, speaking over John's mumbling. "There's a person coming. I'll show you the technique, but you have to blend in. Go... hug some trees. Or something idiotic like that," he says, dragging himself into the busy London sidewalk. John walks twenty paces away, to where a bench is, and he sits in it as he pretends to watch the kids play.
Sherlock has this crazy, swaggering grace, and he uses his charm duly, giving the girl walking down the street a knowing look before bumping into her with his arm. He moves so fast John doesn't see his hand flicker across her purse, delving in deep to grab a wallet. He says, "Sorry, sweetheart," in a voice that makes the girl who's walking audibly melt, and he gives her one last smile before walking back to John. His kind smile is gone, replaced with a gleeful mischievousness in his eyes. John watches him curiously; his hand is behind his back, hiding what he looted.
"What is it?" John asks, a disapproving grimace on his face.
"Wallet," Sherlock says, holding it up. "Only... thirty dollars, though."
John stares at Sherlock, crossing his arms in annoyance. "I don't like this."
"It's an invaluable art of the criminal times."
"I don't want to be a criminal."
"What do you want?" Sherlock asks nonchalantly, dropping the wallet into a plastic bag.
John shrugs.
"You may possibly want your wallet back," Sherlock muses quietly.
"Yes, that."
Sherlock smiles before holding up something else; "Also, maybe your condoms?" He's grabbing on tightly to two packets, and John's teeth grit as he lunges towards Sherlock's hand. Unsuccessful, of course - Sherlock's got a 13 centimeter gain on him, and he lifts it high above his head like it's some sort of medal. John gets a hold on Sherlock's arm, pulling it down inch by inch, grunting a yelling in frustration. "You're a git," he says loudly, "I need those-"
"For whom?"
John yanks on Sherlock's arm viciously as he yells, "I'm not telling you!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes!"
"Do you want them back?"
"Yes, Sherlock," John mumbles. "I do want them back. Evident by my yanking on your damned arm."
"Alright," Sherlock says defensively, "don't get your pants in a twist..."
He wraps his arms gently around John's back, coming to touch where John's pants begin and his leather jacket ends. Playfully toying with the pack of condoms in his hand, he leans so close into John he can't see those metallic blue eyes. "Alright," he promises, and he closes his mouth around John's as he slips them into his back pocket, quickly enough that John doesn't notice it. He brings the hands that were previously at John's sides up to wrap them around the curvature of John's face, breathing in deeply through his nose so he can kiss him forever.
***
There's one goddamned thing John is completely sure of. He does not like stealing.
The way Sherlock does it - like he's just playing a part in the brilliant fucking scheme of things, giving and taking, keeping the balance equal - John almost regards that to make it worse. He swears to God that if he had the chance he'd help this guy, get him therapy, or something... but he's sort of distant. Doesn't like the idea. They're not close. Not close enough.
John doesn't know what they are. Sherlock has to trust him; he knows John isn't going to call the police. But he can't trust him that much, for God's sakes, what did John even do? He doesn't have a job to go to, no family (besides his sister Harry, and his mum, but God knows where they are, and it feels rude to just plop himself down at his dad and step-mom's house with no warning), so he isn't especially, you know, useful. He's passive. Life takes him where it takes him, and he doesn't attempt to sway the tides, God forbid he encounter a situation that involves... guns.
This is the most exciting thing that John's done in his year-and-a-half back. He watches Sherlock move like a dancer, his smile everlasting, his hands fluent as they grab and yank at wallets and watches and things he never thought would be so easy to take, and while watching, he feels his heart constrict and tighten when Sherlock realizes he can take anything he wants.
He never used to like people like that. But then Sherlock looks up at him. Like he's searching for approval. Like he wants John's approval.
And for a second, looking at that gorgeous human being... John approves.
***
There's a pile of scribbly notes on John's doormat when he wakes up, accompanying a movie that looks very PG rated. Literally. A pile.
It starts off simple.
Good morning, John.
-SH
Maybe, a bad morning.
-SH
Are you awake? You're never awake when I come.
-SH
I profoundly enjoy speaking with you. I've never truly spoken with anyone except for my brother. But you're not my brother.
-SH
All the same... I don't know what you are to me. And I'd love it if you could clear some things up.
-SH
What are we?
-SH
John has found himself wondering this on a very daily basis - it's one of those things he simply can't get away from, no matter how much he tries, no matter how much he watches Disney movies.
What are they?
They certainly aren't friends. Friends don't kiss. Friends don't shove each other on couches and straddle them down by their waists; friends don't stay up till early hours of the morning just to watch the other smoke expensive cigarettes and eat toffee. They don't start kissing and licking the taste of strawberry Pop Rocks from their mouths ("It literally is popping, while I'm kissing you," John explains, laughing) and trying to take their shirts and their trousers off simultaneously while rolling on the floor in an awkward, sweaty mess of hot limbs and wet, slick tongues, that slowly inch down towards-
Ahem.
They aren't friends.
For some reason, John would never go on a date with anyone else. It would feel so wrong, searching, when John has a perfectly fine partner right here, to kiss and to steal away and to be okay with. Sherlock Holmes is the best thing that's happened to John since he arrived in London. He's the best thing that's ever happened in ever, and John may not be okay with that but he's sure as hell accepting.
Maybe they're partners.
Maybe they're lovers.
Maybe it doesn't matter.
Well, of course it does.
John keeps the reply lodged in his throat, because if he says it aloud it'll be on his long list of problems. He has enough of those.
So he pushes through and he keeps on reading.
I'm not one to like people, John. In fact, I find them to be boring, idiotic and docile. But I like you.
-SH
I think of you constantly.
-SH
I want to kiss you, constantly.
-SH
I want you. Constantly.
-SH
So I'm asking myself, quite constantly, now, what you are to me. Why I need to be with you, all the time, why, when I'm around you, stealing doesn't become important. Why breathing isn't important. Why existing isn't important.
-SH
I've always believed that love was somewhat of a disadvantage. Something that distracted you from being productive. An absolute liability, that lowers your senses, blinds you, makes you almost inoperable from all that emotional hindrance. It distracts you from doing anything remotely useful.
-SH
But now it's a bit clearer. That's not how my brother said it worked. It's not supposed to happen like this. I'm not supposed to give in.
-SH
John, I...
-SH
John holds his breath, afraid to turn the page for fear of his heart ripping in half. What could Sherlock possibly say that he hadn't already? This is already too close. They're already fucking rushing to fill themselves up, John isn't stupid, he can tell that this is some stream of high-calorie drive that makes them this way, and all this wasn't going to last, it never does.
John, he...
He what?
He grits his teeth and looks at the next piece of paper. He reads it, and it burns him.
I'm beginning to think that I want to be in a monogamous relationship with you.
867-5309
-SH
John crumples up the piece of paper so fast it nearly slices open his hand.
***
He doesn't want this.
He doesn't want this.
He's so tired of being close to people.
He's so tired of failing people.
He's failed Harry and Mum and Dad and David and everyone, God, he's fucking failed at fucking everything and he doesn't want Sherlock to realize that if they start this it won't end.
***
John never manages to reply.
At six in the morning, five minutes after John falls asleep, Sherlock finds a pile of ripped up papers on the doormat, angrily, horridly destroyed in a fit of uncanny rage. He doesn't know what to do with the shredded papers, so he just dejectedly picks every piece up, one by one, and throws them into the trash.
He bustles into the snow without putting his collar up, and it's awful cold when he gets home and the only thing that will help soothe him is a spot of tea. (Made in someone else's coffee maker.)
He lights one of his cheaper cigarettes and reclines back into his bed, contemplating.
Sherlock doesn't know what to do.
***
John gasps as his eyes shoot open, the morning light piercing through the windows insistently and making John squint until the light is just a blur across his vision. His mattress smells like alcohol snd mint and smoke and all that Sherlock is, and there's a stain where a cigarette butt met John's sheets, a burn that John stares at before he goes to sleep each night. All John can think about is him, he is everywhere, and John doesn't quite mind it anymore. He likes being distracted.
In a sudden change of mind, he texts the number that Sherlock gave him last night. Unfortunately, Sherlock never manages to reply.
A/N: i literally wrote this five mins ago and I have no idea how this is going to play out so pls hi five me for failing at my life thx