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

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sherlock is acting like he's just stepped into Oz. His facial expressions are varying from wonder to awe to fear, his lips pursing whenever his eyes scan over clowns with painted faces, lips hidden with lipstick and face paint. His eyes lighten when he sees stands of men and women selling candies and toffees, saltwater taffy packaged in discreet cellophane that crinkles. John is so out of his element.

He's never seen so many smiling children before. They swell around him, and all he can think about was that fact that he was never like this; he never smiled at strangers when they offered him pink and blue and purple candies. Lollipops the color of neon, chocolate with sea salts, bags of cotton candy larger than toddlers and tricycles and toy trains.

John was not a real boy. He grew up before the age of seven, and tried to wrap his mind around the thought of a normal childhood when he was much past his teenage years. To think that he's a 26 year old man, dawdling around in a sea of color for the first time in his life, to think that he is surprised by something so stereotypically childish... he is astounded. He may have been deprived of a childhood, but he wasn't aware that he'd been deprived of something as intoxicating as this.

He takes Sherlock's palm, which is clammy and nervous, and squeezes. He feels like he's said this a thousand times, but again, he asks if Sherlock is alright.

And he answers, "Yes," yet again.

Is he alright?

Well, surely, he is. But he's never felt this way. There's a certain kind of energy about this place that no alcohol has ever given him. Every color, every smell, every texture - they are all discombobulating and sobering at the same time, and John holds his hand to his leg to keep it from giving out like a twig snapping underfoot. God, he's not okay. He'd feel more "okay" if he were in the midst of battle, a gun in his right hand, a gray-green grenade in his left palm, and a handkerchief cutting off the blood flow in his shoulder.

He'd feel more comfortable on the operating table, with a scalpel held against his still-beating heart. He'd feel better if he was jumping out of a plane with only an umbrella to help break his fall. He would feel less insane if he were running through the streets, trying to hide from his step-father, work boots covered in puddles and mud.

Now, he is out of his element. His lungs feel arthritic. They are not working correctly. His hands are shaking into Sherlock's, and they are clenching onto each other so tightly that their skin is stitched together by desperation. You would have to pull them apart at the elbows to part their bodies. You would have to set John on the edge of the cliff with a 300 kilogram stone tied to his foot in order to have them separate.

Sherlock and John are more scared in this place than they have ever been in their lives. And they know it's stupid, and they know it's insane, and they know that wishing that they were in the midst of a battlefield instead of here is the worst kind of sadism, but they will stay because they are normal and not damaged and the adrenaline rush is just chemicals, the fear is just primal and unfounded.

They will stay, and breathe in through their arthritic lungs, for they are not broken. They're just waiting, like passengers, for a train that may not come.

***

"We should - uh," John stammers. "We should go on the Ferris wheel."

Sherlock's eyes shift to John, whose face is white as a sheet, and gulps. The Ferris wheel is massive. Looks like it came out of a sci-fi movie, with its blinking lights and all-too-real grandiose. He stares at it like it's a beanstalk, poking through the sky.

"Yes," Sherlock says, his voice a tiny whisper, "we should go on the Ferris wheel."

John steps onto it. It doesn't get up and walk. Sherlock follows, eyes saying, "Is it safe?"