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

Chapter Eight

Silence, and silence, and more silence. Not a single post-it note arrives on his doorstep, not a movie, not a dark mess of curls atop a creamy head, not anything.

A day, two days, three - they pass so slowly, too slowly, and John is almost left wondering if Sherlock took him out and bought him tea so he could kiss him. But that doesn't make sense.

A goodnight kiss, to take advantage of someone? A kiss? If Sherlock wanted to have taken advantage of John, he'd have certainly done it already. For God's sake, John would have let him, he was convinced of that by now.

The thing that bugs John, though, is that kiss hadn't felt like a goodbye. It hadn't felt like a goodbye at all; more of a "Wait here, John, I'll be back soon." It felt like if he sat at the door long enough, if he stayed awake till morning, he'd be able to catch a glimpse of him, in the shadows of the flat, writing a note that's barely three words long.

But it's been a week, and Sherlock hasn't come around yet.

***

He spends his time sitting quietly in the shade of a tree of the shoreline of a small carnival, smoking his low-tar, high-class cigarettes. No one believes that he's more than he is, but he uses that to his advantage; he'll sit in wait on the corners where the men with the all-too-large smiles pass, bumping into them and picking up knicks and knacks and phones and such. They'll grunt at him, he'll give them his prettiest smile, they'll back off, he'll walk away with a wad of cash and twenty more cigarettes to smoke.

Once in a while, he'll find a cigar. He smokes those slow, and rough, drinking the tar into his pinker-than-pink lungs with a weary heave and a tight suck. He drains it, he bites and chews and lets the heat of the burn warm him up a bit.

Today, he's sitting under that cherry tree, and he's smoking, and he's thinking - a lot, actually, more than he usually does. He thinks about the man who yelled all his secrets into the open air, and the way John pushed against him, the way John talked, and breathed, and the way he moved, like an automaton half-broken. Or was he half-fixed?

Regardless, Sherlock thinks, despite John, Sherlock recalls the kiss, he surveys it, he observes it.

He remembers the slightest clench of John around Sherlock's lips, and the way he almost unwound into his fingers. And the whisper of the wind, the falling of the snow, the questions raised in the night.

Did Sherlock like John?

Undoubtedly.

Did John like Sherlock?

Undecided, although seemingly... yes.

Was this hindrance going to stop Sherlock Holmes from stealing every goddamned thing under the sun?

He smiles, sucks in, then blows out.

The cigarette smoke twirls and dances like a gypsy, and then disappears into the cold. He flicks the bum away into a snow drift, and breathes in the winter, the carnival.

He drinks in the smells and the sounds, the children crying out for the cotton candy spinning itself around a paper stick. Sherlock can hear everything, the bouncing of the bumper cards, the yelling of the salesmen, screaming at you for "Fifty pence apiece, fifty pence apiece!" The glimmering of the lights upon the rickety rides splash color across a dark canvas of navy blue sky. They look like stars.

It's a galaxy, in the span of a few acres; all different people gathering and singing and laughing and kissing. It's the epitome of human creation, where the bad people hide behind posters and darkened corners, being sad and shooting up and waiting and looking. They're watching, just as Sherlock does.

He hasn't decided which part of society he belongs in, as sometimes he rode on the bumper cars and he could feel his heart pull at his lips, making him smile. He bought Pop Rocks and toffee from the vendors, sipping on his lemonade as he strolled down the lanes of the carnival, picking up things from people as they went by.

He contemplates people, he contemplates Mycroft, he contemplates what he is, why Mycroft can't see him, and he thinks that he's better off anyway, but is he really?

Because he's not in the carnival, anymore. He stopped going a year ago, when the world seemed to crash down upon him, when he discovered an inexplicable need to steal everything that wasn't his. He thinks that this is just a phase - but maybe it's not. Maybe he has to do this to replace his need for a family. Maybe the trinkets are his family.

So, yeah. Sherlock hasn't decided what part of society he's worked himself into.

Bad, or good?

All he knows is that he's sitting here, at 6 o'clock, in the cold of the snow. He watches the people, and for a moment - he wishes that he could steal happiness.

But mostly, he just wants to see John Watson.

A/N: I wrote this at two thirty. IT TURNED OUT RATHER WELL, DON'T YOU THINK?

I think next chap Sherlock is going to break into John's house and he's going to collapse on top of him because he's in a pissy mood and he's going to just kiss him silly

JOHNLOCK IS BAE