White Noise

Maybe This Isn't Healthy

John woke to the sound of silence, and when he opened his eyes he saw that, of course, he was alone. The daylight had streamed through the open garage door and driven his shadowy companion away; leaving him sprawled out on the tile, his arms wrapped around the air as if it ensured the darkness's loyalty.
"John? John?!" Mary's voice called desperately through the house. John groaned, grabbing hold of the coat rack and pulling himself to his feet, shutting the door to the garage almost as soon as his horrible wife made her entrance.
"John honey, there you are! What are you doing up?" Mary wondered, the worry in her voice not easily masked by her cautious smile.
"I thought...thought I heard a noise." John lied in a very rough voice, clearing his throat awkwardly and rolling on the bare heels of his feet. Mary looked over him curiously, as if wondering what her disheveled, miserable looking husbands was doing near the garage at six o'clock in the morning.
"Is everything alright? You look sick." She decided. She came closer, and John just backed away, almost on instinct, huddling into the coat rack with a yelp of surprise. Mary held up her hands innocently, but she kept on persisting, and John squeezed himself into the coat rack so efficiently that he was soon covered by Rosie's little winter parka and Mary's polka dotted rain jacket.
"I'm not, I mean, I don't feel all together well, but all in all I think..." John sputtered. Mary's hand cut him off, not with aggression, not with anger, it was a simple touch on the forehead, most likely to check his temperature, but that proved too much for his feeble state, and with a moan of defeat, the feeling of her skin sent him into a well overdue state of miserable unconsciousness.

    When John woke he knew immediately that something was wrong. Something felt...well, it felt horrible. So that wasn't the wrong part of course, that was just part of his normal schedule really, it was the sunlight on the ceiling, the chirping of the birds in the windows, the overall feeling of pleasantness that was trying to poke its optimistic rays into the darkness of his misery. And then she appeared, looming over his vision like the mother of all shadows, though not nearly as beautiful as the shadow that had melted over John the night previous.
"Mary...what time is it?" John groaned, rolling over onto his side even though he still hadn't processed what was going on.
"It's around twelve honey, just sit still." Mary assured. She placed something on his forehead, something very cold, and if anything it only shocked him to a point of alertness. He tried to sit up abruptly, but Mary held him down with a firm hand, pushing him ever so gently into the couch so that he could rest his head among the pillows that she had stacked up for him. Her touch sent shivers down his spine, like the touch of an ice cube against your skin, or that feeling when you have the impression that something bad was going to happen, or someone evil was watching you. The shivers that were running down his back had no resemblance to the ones he got when Sherlock touched him. That was electric, like a current conducting through both of their bones, that was magical, it made John want to get closer. Mary's touch just made him want to run, despite his terrible state.
"Work, what about..." John muttered, but Mary shushed him, pressing her finger softly to his lips and making him recoil in disgust.
"I called Mrs. Turner; she knows that you're taking a sick day." Mary assured.
"And Rosie?" John wondered, suddenly realizing the absence of the second pest in his life.
"At daycare, safe and sound." Mary assured. John nodded, letting his head fall back in ease. He hated to wake up and not know what was going on, it was one of the only times in his life where he felt truly helpless, truly reliant on the people he insisted he could live without. If Mary hadn't been his wife right now he would've been lying on that floor for who knows how long? He had no way to call the ambulance, no people to summon to wait on his every need and put ice packs on his forehead. Sherlock would've have done anything except put makeup on him and take pictures, that fallen angel would probably just saunter on down to the club now that his husband was out of the picture. John groaned in agony, not so much physical agony, purely mental, but it hurt to think of the pain Sherlock was putting him in right now. All of this was because of his absence; it seemed that all of John's discomforts came from that man, if they weren't coming from his wife. It was a pattern of his, he saw it emerging, he picked the problematic lovers. Maybe he just absentmindedly wanted his life to be chaos, or maybe he was just very manipulative, and a single smile would lead him down the path no other before him would dare take. Of course Sherlock's smile was enough to bring even the purest of men wandering across to the dark side. And yet, John had always been under the impression that he was headed towards the light...
"What were you doing by the garage John? The door was open, the car was on, the battery is dead." Mary admitted in a solemn voice.
"I thought..." John sighed heavily, shutting his eyes to block out her concerned, beautiful face. "I thought I heard a noise, maybe it was just hysteria, you know how I sleep walk sometimes."
"But this isn't like you John, you've never passed out like this. I'm worried, and I know you're the doctor here, but I still can't help but wonder if something's happening medically...mentally..." Mary admitted with a very nervous voice. John laughed, a very crazy sounding, unconvincing laugh, and yet she just smiled timidly, as if she thought that was a joke. But finally John could agree with something she said, she was right, she had to be right. John's brain wasn't healthy, his heart was controlling it down to every nerve ending, and his heart had been placed under the brutal control of a beautiful man who left him through the night. Now John had no idea why he had passed out, but maybe it was about time he got a proper night of sleep. He was wasting away without that man's love, and soon he was sure that he'll just dissolve into the wind, like dust piled up in a rather humanoid figure.
"I'm fine." John lied in a cracking voice, a smile on his lips as he closed his eyes once more. Mary was silent for a while, John was pretty sure that she must've left, but if he concentrated hard enough he was sure he could still hear her breaths next to him, polluting the air with the recycled oxygen from her tainted lungs, he was almost disgusted by the sound of it. And to think that he was breathing the same air, the same that had passed through her lungs and out her nose, it was almost enough to make him ask her to leave. But when he opened his eyes he figured out that, to his relief, he really was alone, and Mary had presumably left many minutes before. Maybe it had just been him breathing, or possibly it had been the shadow that hung still under the couch, clinging to the wooden beams and hiding from the sunlight that passed through the gaps in the curtains. John spent the whole day on the couch, veering in and out of consciousness like an erratic driver crossing over the white line on the right side of the road. He knew that he had nothing to be awake for, however he was honestly scared of what he might see in the inner workings of his mind, he was afraid that if he let himself slip back into the world of imagination that he would never be able to return. The shadow's presence last night had nearly drove him to insanity, to death itself, he couldn't see it again, he couldn't permit its presence. So he did his best to keep himself awake, moving the ice pack over his head multiple times to make sure that it was cold enough to drag his sagging eye lids open. Mary still didn't make an appearance, which led him to believe that she had gone out for the day. Mary didn't work, she was a stay at home mom, however she did like to go on her shopping trips or out to lunch with her friends. Instead of working hard to make money she worked hard to spend it, leaving John the only financial supporter of this crumbling household. It was unlike Mary not to check on him for long periods of time, and by long periods I mean two to three minutes, so when her ghostly figure didn't hover into John's vision for more than ten minutes, he was quite sure that she had gone out. Time slipped farther and farther away, and soon John was wondering where Sherlock was now. He was trying to block out all the images he didn't want to see, however it was becoming increasingly difficult with nothing else to distract himself. He knew what Sherlock had done and quite possibly what he was doing now. He was probably laying in some expensive bed, covered only in white sheets, his black curls laying against the white pillow and his skin glowing in the afternoon sunlight. Maybe Victor was next to him, running his fingers down Sherlock's cheeks, or maybe he was softly muttering things, maybe he was kissing him, or maybe he was taking photographs on one of those fancy polaroid cameras, pictures that would end up sitting on his kitchen window sill and staring at him while he washed the dishes. Where ever Sherlock was, John knew that he hated it. Whoever he was wish, John knew he hated them. No man deserved to lay with Sherlock in those white sheets except John, no man deserved to love him and kiss him and whisper their broken promises other than John. Victor had his chance, and evidently things didn't go exactly the way he would've liked, and now it was John's turn, it was his right to collect the remains of Sherlock's heart and try to piece them back together again. It really was painful to think of Sherlock with anyone else other than himself, and to be honest he doubted that even he deserved him, however he knew that he had to ignore the morality of it all and focus purely on his selfish instincts. The moment Sherlock traded him for another man was the moment John was forever trapped with Mary. If his own liberator decided to throw him back in the cage then there was no way he was ever going to escape again. Maybe he hadn't been good enough, maybe he hadn't been romantic enough, something happened in their relationship that didn't please Sherlock to his fullest extent, something made John subpar, second to Victor and maybe to a lot of other strange men, with names that he would never know. John was becoming increasingly lonely; he almost wanted even Mary's company, just for something to focus on other than his betrayal and his pounding headache, centralizing from where he had smacked his head against the floor the night before. Maybe he had a concussion, maybe he had brain damage, but something had sparked a sort of chain reaction, starting with his mournful shadows and ending in his own unconsciousness, something had led him down a slippery slope and he had fallen head first, quite literally. Sherlock. It was always Sherlock, it always would be Sherlock, it still was Sherlock. This was all his doing, as if he had known this was coming, as if he had known that he was taking John's hand and leading him farther and farther into the darkness, all while claiming to be the light. John groaned loudly, wishing he had Sherlock by his side; he had questions, so many questions, questions that couldn't be answered by simply lazing around on this couch and wondering the answers. He needed to see Sherlock, he needed to be in that man's presence, maybe his kisses would be the antidote to John's madness, or maybe they would make it worse than ever. John decided that it didn't matter what Sherlock's presence would do to him, it mattered that he was there. He needed to know that Sherlock hadn't abandoned him, he had to be sure that even though Sherlock flatly left him and betrayed him that he was still lodged in the only place John knew where to find him. Besides, he had questions, questions that could only be answered through the mouth of the most beautiful man, answers that had to flow off of those cupid bow lips and into the fresh air before John would truly believe them. So he threw the icepack from his head, his head rolling on his neck as he tried to sit up, his feet numb against the cold, hardwood floor. John looked around at the empty house, where the sun was just starting to sink. John pulled himself to his feet miserably, his legs wobbling madly underneath him, as if they were constructed purely of Jell-O. The world seemed to be spinning, as if John was the axis and everything else revolved around him like the sun. As a medical professional, he was almost certain that this wasn't normal. However he hobbled to the car, pulling his jacket around him and prying open the door. John fell into the seat in a state of unmeasurable weakness, his eyelids falling closed and his head pounding loudly in his head, the beating of a drum that signaled surrender. And yet John had to push on, he simply had to. John stuck the key into the car and turned it on, hearing the sputtering of the engine and then silence. He was too tired to even notice that this was a bad thing. John turned the key again, more agressivley this time, as if that would make any difference at all. This time it didn't even try to start, all was silent, and he had a vivid memory of Mary, her face hovering in the darkness of the garage in front of him, her golden hair and her tanned skin, "the battery died..." Yes, she was right, the battery died over night, when he had left it running as he was having his personal time with the heir to the darkness. So no car...that was a bit of an unexpected twist. John didn't know what happened after that, he didn't remember much except for flickering scenes of suburbia and the scraping of his bare feet against the rough, hot asphalt. He gained consciousness somewhere around the coffee shop, his hand pressed up against a brick wall and his face dripping with sweat, his clothes soaked nearly all the way through with a liquid that felt like water but could be anything. He didn't know how he had gotten here, but his raw, aching feet told him that he had most likely walked. He could barely stand right now, but he was so close, the terraces were sparkling in the sunshine with their dull iron sides, and he might have even saw the red couch if his vision wasn't so blurry. He had to push on; he had to see Sherlock... Ashe shuffled along the brick wall he noticed another gleam of something, a sort of golden ring, wormed onto his finger as if by an unseen hand. His wedding ring had somehow found its way back onto his finger, although it hadn't been pushed down to the place on his finger where he usually wore it, which suggested that another person had a part in its mysterious return. John hissed at the sight of it, however he was much too weak to do anything about it. He was sure that if he let his hand go from the wall that his legs would finally give out, and he would collapse on this busy street, amongst the discarded cans and pigeons, and no one would ever notice his absence. They would simply step over his mumbling, unconscious body, as if he were nothing more than an inconvenience.