Love is dangerous. Sherlock should've known that before he dove into it headfirst.

***

Mint ice-cream with a chocolate swirl slams down upon the coffee table with an obscenely loud bang, but Sherlock doesn't look up. He pretends to be thoroughly engaged in a newspaper article about the differences between cayenne and white pepper.

John stands over him for a moment, crossing his arms across his chest and keeping his expression tight. After a few moments, he snaps his fingers.

Sherlock averts his eyes from the page, and John gestures to the ice-cream.

"I don't want it."

"You don't want it?" This is, admittedly, not a scenario John played through.

"I don't want it. I'm not hungry. If it disappeared, I wouldn't even blink," Sherlock says, staring John down, although he's the one in the compromising position.

"If someone offers a kind gesture, you should take it without complaint," John replies coldly.

"Well," Sherlock says with a dismissive smile that doesn't reach his eyes, "I know no humility. Please, John. Enjoy it. God knows I won't."

"I got it for you."

"Do not interfere with my right to decline."

"But I - I got it because of you."

"You shouldn't have, John. Don't waste your time and money of such hopeless cases such as I, John. A little spanking should guide me back to the herd. I'll be in acceptable shape in no time."

John sniffs, once, twice, and walks away with the ice cream still on the coffee table. He's expecting Sherlock to give in - it's his favorite flavor of ice-cream, and whenever John buys some, he eats the entire pint in five minutes flat. But when John leaves, he hears the sound of something sailing through the air, and then, not a moment later, a thick thud.

He swivels back on one foot and peers around the corner; "What the bloody hell was that?" Sherlock looks up from his paper, and says, simply, "The ice-cream."

John, slowly, realizes, and looks down. In a trash bin is the gift, and with it, is a small smirk on Sherlock's lips.

"I told you," Sherlock says as he looks back down at the newspaper. "I don't want it."

"Are you f-" John cuts himself off, as gently as he can muster, he says, "I bought that for you. I bought it because..." Because I'm sorry. Don't you see that?

"Why'd you buy it, John?" Sherlock says, sitting up and pulling his knees to his chest. His toes curl and then relax, and he tilts his head. "Did you buy it to make me feel better? I don't need help to feel better. Surely, you know that."

"You know what?" John asks. "I'll just" - he leans down - "have it myself." He picks up the carton from the trash, and moves it in his hands.

It's still good. John shrugs, opening it, and limping back into the kitchen to get a spoon.

Sherlock's eyes widen exponentially, irrationally wide, as John takes the first bite. His lips part, breathing in the smell of peppermint, and he begins salivating...

Sherlock realizes what's happening and snaps back to attention. He can't break. He won't break.

***

The rest of the evening is silent and cold. John writes his papers, and Sherlock reads news column after news column, busily digging through papers to try and preserve his mind, which is going in circles.

When John says nothing, he follows suit.

***

He remembers when he wrote notes and passed them under the door, like he didn't want anyone else to see. He remembers feeling happiness fill him when he felt shadows near, because those shadows were always Sherlock. He was the best nightmare John'd ever had.

***

John, at about eleven, stops.

He stops, and he turns, and he looks at the bed where Sherlock lies. He looks like an angry archangel, with his hair whipped about in frantic brown curls, newspaper across his chest, like a hurricane passed right through. When John looks at him - when John stares down the barrel of that gun - he doesn't know what to do.

He gets up and shuts his laptop quietly, wringing his hands and trying to stay silent for fear of reawakening his... his boyfriend. But then;

"I know you're leaving."

John hears the voice coming from the bed. He turns to see Sherlock with one eye open, staring at him. "Don't look at me like a deer in headlights. You're free to go."

"Uh... hey. I was just going out to-"

"I don't care where you're going. Just make sure that you take the couch if you ever come back."

John stares at Sherlock, hoping that he's fucking joking - hoping that this is some sort of prank - but his eyes are dead set. It's all John can do to try to muster enough strength to grab his coat off the coat rack, throw on a pair of gloves, and walk bluntly out the door. Because that's how it is, now, isn't it? Blunt. Sherlock is blunt and stark and severely sincere, and so is the cold that nips at John's ears.

John thinks, Is this the end?

And that scares him, so John tries to stop thinking.

***

Sherlock could go on a long, tedious, overly romantic monologue to John in their last moments together, about how he's the only person that Sherlock has ever truly loved and how he makes every day brighter, like his life is an ingenious romantic comedy about the joys of being alive, et cetera, et cetera...

He could say, "I'm wrong, and I'm sorry, and I love you - please stay," but the fact of the matter is, Sherlock wouldn't know what to do afterwards; how to possibly convince himself that what he had said to John was true.

John was wonderful. Really, he was. But wonder is temporary, and dissatisfaction sets in all too quick. Of course he's the only man Sherlock has ever loved. Of course he makes every day a bit brighter, a bit less painful, and revitalizes a hidden drive in him to do something with himself. Of course there are things that Sherlock needs to say to John before they part, of course there are things he wishes he'd never done... Of course he has issues, and he's a freak, and John made his life a little more bearable despite mountains of reprehensible occurrences. But all things that are happening have now happened. Love turns to loved, and regret turns to regrets.

Of course he regrets meeting John. He always regrets the ones that count, and John will always fucking count.

***

John calls Sherlock the day after, as he hadn't come back to his flat. Instead, he barged in on Harry at 4am in the morning, mumbling half-discernible curses at her in a drunken stupor. Now he clasps a phone to his fingers and waits for some relief from the tension.

"Where are you?" Sherlock sounds emphatically bored, if boredom can be emphatic.

"Harry's," is John's laconic response.

"Okay."

"Are we..."

"Are we what, John?" Sherlock is holding a pen in his left hand, and John can hear it tap out rhythms across the phone - every click is a nagging at his heart. John slams his hand into the drywall above him and bites his tongue, letting the silence reverberate. "Are we what?" Sherlock repeats, louder.

"Are we..." John sighs, "are we no longer... an item. A thing. Are - are we broken up, is what I'm trying to say."

Sherlock pauses. It is quiet, in that loud sort of way that makes quiet not quiet at all. He then says, "Well, John. I am in your flat. It's as if I kicked you out."

"You didn't." John chuckles emptily, the noise sounding hollow; irregular. "I left my flat." Left you.

"It's okay, John."

"I know."

"Frankly, I think it's best that we... we decide to do something." Sherlock becomes aware that he's dancing around the lines; he's dancing around everything and not answering simple questions and it would be so much fucking easier if he just said "We're over," and left it at that but he cannot say it and he doesn't want to dear Jesus take the wheel-

"Yeah. Yeah, I agree."

"Okay."

"Erm, bye."

"Goodbye, John."

"Wait - Sherlock. Sherlock, I-"

"Yes, John?" The breaths in Sherlock's lungs dissipate.

"Never mind. Talk to you soon. Bye."

Sherlock hangs up and holds the phone to his chest, trying to calm himself down. He hates himself for trying.

***

Their silence is so bloody frustrating that John turns his impatience into something more passionate. Almost magically, he rides from one room to the other, uncovering a half-finished painting, and sits down, brush in hand, and tries to paint the brown of her eyes into melted chocolate. He tries to color her in with motherhood and adoration and a fierce protectiveness that John had never known in his own mother. He strikes color into her skin and her clothes and her eyes, and it begins to resemble her - this woman is the woman in his dreams.

He is so wrapped up in the colors, the paint, that he doesn't notice the creeping of footsteps behind him. "Interesting," Silence echoes. "That looks eerily like my mum."

"Your mum?" He had no idea Silence had a mother; but no, it's just Sherlock.

"Violet," he clarifies.

"Well..." John turns to face him, smile tightening. "That isn't possible, as she was in my dream." He pauses. "But she does look like a mum. Doesn't she?"

Sherlock nods once, and leaves as silently as he had come. Once he's gone, John turns back to the portrait, and all of a sudden, it looks a lot less like passionate painting and a lot more like a shaking child had drawn lazy brush strokes across the lines. The only thing John can allow himself to do is hold his head in his hands and breathe out all the pent up emotion. God knows he can't say that he's scared aloud; God knows. He stays up until three in the morning, painting, and falls asleep with a brush in his hand.

***

"Of course it bothers me," Sherlock says one cloudy day, only a week after the "incident." They'd spent their days in silence, the only noise rain hitting windowpanes in a violent passion. John's forgotten what the sound of Sherlock's voice sounds like, in the way that you forget what used to be your favorite song. Sherlock can't entirely blame him when his voice cracks, as they'd been spending the entire week apart... while being in the same flat.

"What?"

"It bothers me. My dad. Not seeing him, even in death - it bothers me. Not that that matters." Sherlock sits up in the bed, putting his book aside (he doesn't much like it).

"Yeah. Yeah, I... I thought so."

"John..."

"Yes...?"

"I'm aware that our relationship seems to have run its course."

"That so?" He doesn't allow his eyes to roam to Sherlock's; he just looks down at his pile of job applications and begs that the conversation they're having is going to disappear and undo itself.

Sherlock replies, "Yes." He looks up, and John does, too, and he hurts, but love is a losing battle. It's dangerous. Sherlock should have expected as much.

"We should talk about this..." John's voice trails off to a whisper, "before we do anything, y'know. Rash."

"Rash?"

"Yeah."

"Was it 'rash' when you punched me in the face?"

John is the type of person that makes "no comment" into a comment so glaringly obvious. He says nothing, and Sherlock understands.

"Is this it?"

"I think it might be."

"No, 'might.' Don't dance around it, John."

"Then," can John even say it? "This is it."

"We're done."

"We are," John agrees. He stands, and Sherlock does likewise. Sherlock has a bunch of words lingering in his mind.

He wants to stay. There's four things he can do in this situation, and staying isn't one of those things, but he wants to stay anyway - he'll beg, if he has to, "John," he starts, this is a mistake, "I..." this is a mistake, RED ALERT.

"I know that this isn't a romantic comedy. And I promised myself I wouldn't allow myself to do this - it's a mutual thing - we agree that this course of action is the best course of action - I go - you stay-" Sherlock stops himself, and begins again, running his fingers through his hair, RED ALERT, RED ALERT, SOMEONE, SAVE MY SOUL, "No, no, no, no, no" - he paces - "I'm saying it wrong" - his panic is endless - "I wish, John, I wish I was a computer, with emotions made in ones and zeros, you know, and everything could be programmed into me, right," he says, "and I wish the words were in my fucking head, but they aren't, so you must understand that I know that I can't say that you're the only person I have, the only person I want, that I've treated you terribly and I'm afraid of saying anything that might give me away - I'm not - I'm not-"

"Sherlock..."

Sherlock stops, as if he has a moment of glorious epiphany, and faces John with his eyes wide. "John," he says, voice wild, "This isn't a romantic comedy, and I can't say that my father is dead and my brother is gone and my mother is just a memory and that you make every day a bit more bearable in this chasm of bitterness that I hold inside of me. I cannot tell you how much I love kissing you, and I can't tell you that you're the first person that is qualitatively measured and not quantitatively, because you're everything I am not - I am many things, but you are not one of them - I can't say how honored I am and how sorry I am - it isn't in my vocabulary - I can't tell you how much I want to stay, because I can't tell you that I loved you since the moment I first saw your eyes, because of course that's ridiculous and awful and it sounds like the script in some fucking Grade B independent film with shoddy camera work, so I'm never going to say that to you." Sherlock wraps his coat around his shoulders as John stares at him, mouth agape, hands limp and eyes burning and bloodshot.

"It was a good run," Sherlock says instead. "Goodbye, John."

The door slams so hard that the perennials John had been growing fall out the window (again). John crumples to the floor with regret in the echoes of his shaking breaths, because he can't say how sorry he is, either.

A/N: it's three twenty eight at the moment and like

legitimate author's note? Comment if you can, i don't know, uh

relate... Or even if you can't

I had something to say, I forget

No but like

This is why i write i think

Because there's some things you can't say to people and some things you can't express in regular conversation without

As sherlock pointed out

Sounding like a "pretentious bitch"

But i just want to tell you that the song I'm listening to at the moment has the most beautiful words and the violin sounds as if it's crying for love it's lost and this song seems like it understands things

I guess it's okay to not be okay, or to be purposeless for a while. I'm gonna find purpose in something, someday, and i don't need to describe to you how purpose feels, because someday we're both going to know??

And things that have happened aren't going to apologize for happening, but it doesn't actually matter, anymore - it's done. And you might not be okay, but being okay is a process, and it's okay to be in the middle of that process.

There's things I can't explain, and there's things that Sherlock can't explain. Just don't overthink everything, and relax, because even if at the moment you have no purpose, you're going to find some.

At the moment, i am sure of three things:

I am not sorry for what I've done to you

I'm going batshit insane

And

I am so fucking happy that I don't have to deal with bullshit anymore. Or at least my tarot cards say so. Shoutout to LANA WHO GAVE ME SHITTY LUCK WITH HER DUMB TAROT CARDS

U SILLY PAGAN

What the fuck ana you sound like the script in some fucking Grade B independent film with shoddy camera work pls excuse yourself out the window immediately

Also, "between the bars" Elliott Smith

Or The Civil Wars cover (the one with the crying violins)

I put it in the media thingy (btw i moved it to chapter sixteen so) (sry)

BY THE WAY when I'm done with this story I'm going to rewrite some horrible one-shots, add music TO EVERY CHAPTER OF THIS STORY *gaspgasp* bc music is life