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

Chapter Twenty-Seven

For three hours, John breathes deeply and tries not to cry. For three hours, he stares at the wall in front of him and holds his head in his hands, wondering where everything went wrong.

Was it just doomed from the start?

He doesn't want this; John doesn't want to leave. Not only because Sherlock was the only form of bliss he's ever known, and Sherlock deserves happiness, but because he still has promises to fulfill. He still has to watch movies and read novels and he still has things to say and places to kiss.

This is no longer a matter of Sherlock's kleptomania. It is no longer a matter of John's post traumatic stress. It's a matter of morality, and Sherlock never was a very scrupulous person, but maybe - just maybe - John's changed him.

***

When Sherlock gets back to his dilapidated flat, he sees his hoards.

Books and house keys and candies and cigars and cigarettes and bong pipes and car keys and mail and keys to locked boxes and guitar picks and jewelry and food and keys to people's hearts and wallets organized alphabetically.

He thinks that if he burns it all to a fucking crisp - if he melts down those keys and smokes the candies until they're caramelized mistakes - he won't hurt anymore. So he opens the window violently, getting a rusted metal bucket out of the bathroom, and throws it all into the bucket, tears staining his reddened cheeks. He doesn't let himself cry aloud, he just silently lights the flame with gasoline and places it next to the open window, even though outside it's freezing and he left his coat back at John's flat, along with his scarf and his heart.

He left everything with John. He feels like a broken vinyl album. If you ran him under a backlight, you would see bright blue fingerprints all over his body from where John touched him. And if you tried to open him up and look inside, you would be surprised to find that at the moment, in the place of a heart, there's a locked box with a key that only John knows about.

All of Sherlock's defenses are down. He's not okay. He burns with those items in that metal bucket, writhing in agony, wishing that he could erase John from his mind.

Maybe... if he just sleeps long enough... John will disappear. With him, will disappear the dreadful feeling in the back of his mind that he just may never recover.

***

Sherlock was right. John cannot say how sorry he is.

***

And if there is a god, He would be in this room, with Sherlock, breathing in the vile incense of sorrow and regret and He would admit that He did not make the strength of unconditional love strong enough.

***

John wonders what Sherlock is doing. He contemplates texting him.

"What are you doing?" he would say.

But there are some unspoken laws that can't be broken, and if he sent Sherlock a text, well, he would feel invalidated. After all, it was a mutual understanding.

***

Sherlock doesn't wake up at 4:30 the next morning.

Or the morning after that.

***

John goes to sleep at 8 o'clock, after he throws all of his job applications in the trash and ignores his brain's pleads to not swallow down three sleeping pills at once. Surprisingly, his dreams don't reawaken him.

***

Sherlock visits John's flat every day, sitting outside a park bench and watching people pass by. He isn't entirely what he would constitute as concealed, but if John ever comes out, Sherlock doesn't notice. The curtains upstairs never stir, and John's front door never opens.