Here's an unfinished 1.5k word drabble that i didn't have the energy to get done - or the plot

I really wanted bamf john but that in all honesty requires plot mapping in order to COMPLETELY flesh out and make original

This is so vague and short that it's like *shrugs while copying down every angsty idea i can come up with*

I gave up after four hours of constant rewording and then i realized the only way this oneshot would work for me would be if it was 13k words, with context, and that is time you and i do not have

Maybe I'll come back to this later???

I don't even have a title

The flow is non existent bc i skipped around in terms of transitions XD

I am vaguely disappointed but at the same time it's like "this was fun to write for about 35 minutes" "before it made me exhausted"

Have a good time with this babes happy Thanksgiving (づ￣ ³￣)づ

The thing about John is: when Sherlock appeared in his life, hand extended to him, looking down the eyepiece of microscope, he hated his vulnerability. Sherlock was there like an avalanche; an avalanche that thrilled John and destroyed him all at once. There was a cold rage in his eyes, underneath layers and layers of calculation, underneath standoffish quips and silent glances and lingering looks. Underneath "fantastic," and underneath "brilliant," and underneath "ridiculous," there was anger. The thing about John is: he's angry, too. Maybe because Sherlock jumped off a roof and left him alone to deal with the grief. Maybe because his wife lied to him. Maybe because he'd fallen in love with two sociopaths in the span of three years, people who ripped him open and tore his flesh, wearing his skin and dragging him through the ashes of burning corpses.

***

In the end, it's Mary who has a gun pointed at Sherlock's head. It's his wife, looking for all the world like an extension of her employer, pointing the Sig, finger on the trigger. When John enters the room where Sherlock is kneeling, head down, ready to receive his sentence, he's so shocked into silence that his gun falters from its place perpendicular to his chest. She doesn't look away from her target as she says, "Don't move, John."

Sherlock's head snaps up at the mention of John's name. There is no anger in his eyes, now. It's a hollow acceptance, a brokenness, a glaze of fear. John raises his gun to Mary.

"Put down the gun, John," she says, solemn. There is not a hint of smugness in her voice, no superiority, and John redoubles his grip to remind himself where he is, what he's holding. This person he's staring at isn't the Mary that put him back together again. This Mary is intent on tearing him apart. Over, and over, and over. "You wouldn't shoot your wife," she continues. "You're not a killer."

Sherlock looks down the barrel of Mary's pistol, and then back to John. "Do what she says," he begs. His voice sounds even more dire than when he was asking John to stay there, stay exactly where you are. (Don't move. Can you do that for me?)

"You think I wouldn't?" he hisses, straightening his elbows to the point that if he shot, the energy would bruise his shoulder. His hands are surprisingly steady, if not tense. Water drips onto his hand from the damp crossbeams above him. The entire room is stained with mold, and there's a chair in the corner where blood has soaked into the arms. Sherlock's crotch is wet. Jesus Christ.

"I know you wouldn't," she replies evenly, cold blue eyes finally glancing up to look at John's expression. Her features are steeled and blank, almost reptilian with disassociation. "You wouldn't shoot the mother of your child. You're not like us."

And that's where she's wrong: John's heart is scarred and tarry from everything that's ever happened to him. He is exactly like them. He knows this. Sherlock does, too.

He gives John a pleading look. There's a panic in his eyes, and John sees the conscious choice he has to make. His wife, or his best friend.

"Mary," he hears Sherlock whisper, while still staring at John. "Please. Not with him watching."

The realization dawns on John too late. Mary nods curtly, aims her gun at John, and John feels the explosion of pain in his hand a millisecond after the gunshot sounds off. He drops his gun because he forgets how to hold it, stars exploding in his sight, falling down with a broken yell. So, yeah. He doesn't watch as Mary puts two bullets in Sherlock's chest. All he knows is that he heard gunshots, and they certainly weren't his.

He grabs onto his Browning with the hand that hasn't had all its bones shattered. He can't think over the pain. His sight clears, and he sees Mary, and she's saying something like "objective terminated" into a com. He can't believe it, but he does. "Sherlock," he hisses, saliva trailing down his chin. The gun is pointed at the base of her skull.

"John," she orders, "don't do something you'll regret."

John shoots her in the head. And he doesn't think he's crying, because the sticky spray on his cheeks, on his eyelids, in his mouth - it tastes like red. He slides pathetically across the floor to Sherlock's body and doesn't bother to check his pulse. He's screaming his name. The heavens are grieving, lamenting. He knows because Sherlock's skin was the same color as the sky - pale, ghostly white - but now it is dirty and carved with crimson lines. John cries into his hair and smells the specter of his shampoo. It's all underneath. Underneath "fantastic," and underneath "brilliant," and underneath "ridiculous," there is death.

***

He's lost. It's been hours but he still doesn't know where his body stops and Sherlock begins. The gun shakes in his hands and clatters to the ground. He realizes his life is over.

His life is over.

***

Home is a grimy motel on the far side of the city. John goes inside and has a hard time taking the bullet out of his palm, biting down on a stick to avoid screaming. He stitches himself up and gets so high on painkillers he convinces himself Sherlock is alive.

He rummages through his travel bag and takes out the cocaine he'd taken from one of Sherlock's more reluctant sources. He weighs it in his hand. Three pounds of pure product.

Vices are in the Watsons' blood. He had Sherlock, and then he had Mary, and now they're both dead and he's not even share how he correlates. He feels like a piece of furniture that's been fucked on, used. Wooden, and with way too many stains.

John does a line with a maxed out credit card and a five pound note, and passes out too quickly to even register that he's high.

***

When he was young, John taught himself not to want too much, way before Sherlock came along. His father was a drinker, so every time he heard his mother crying he sat in the driveway with his sister and told her to find quartz among the gravel. He taught himself not to want his father's love, just like you teach yourself not to expect the sun to shine every day.

When Sherlock lives with him and he's up at strange, ungodly hours, prattling on about cyanide and Oscar Wilde, when John hears him showering and he comes out of the bathroom wearing only a towel, water tracing lines down his chest, John has to relearn how to stop himself from following the curve of his arse with his eyes. He has to remember not to walk in on Sherlock when he hears heavy breathing denoting the obvious. He has to stop himself from asking, "Who does he think about?"

John has to forget his name when he's in the shower, jerking off quietly. But what he can't forget:

Pink lips, pale skin, a trail of dark hairs leading down to places John would never touch. He doesn't forget "Girls aren't really my... area," and he doesn't forget "John Watson, you keep me right."

He doesn't forget his mother with bruises on her wrists. He doesn't forget the sun.

***

John wakes up an hour later, and by then all he has to show for it is himself and a burning throat.

He goes to the bathroom to wash his hands and his reflection in the mirror catches his gaze like it's a living, real thing. It is somehow like him, but not. All John knows is that he does not remember the sickly sweet catharsis of revenge (of blood spraying against his cheek; of wet, curly hair, threading through his hands) like his reflection seems to. He does not remember the broken bones in his hand, or Sherlock's name bastardized on his lips, twisted into a scream.

The cocaine is flushed down the toilet, and as some sort of retribution he flushes the plastic bag, too, which inevitably floods the bathroom floor. He works at the drain with his plunger, which ultimately doesn't do anything, but it's better than working his fingers into his tired eyes and thinking about the next step for him.

Home? Where was that?

Home was always with Sherlock, even when Mary was there to make him feel like he wasn't missing parts of himself. (Specifically, missing the vocal chords that had said Sherlock's name so many fucking times.)

He wants the coke again. Maybe that'll help him relearn everything he was before Sherlock walked into his life.

Later later later, mycroft comes over, angst ensues

Maybe he too easily let Sherlock kiss him into a wall and reclaim everything that Mary had taken from them both. He still can't fathom the exact anatomy of it: the chemical formula of the feeling that made him forget his morality.

He was still married when Sherlock told John exactly how and where to touch. He didn't tell him why, though. That was for afterwards, after John wrapped his legs around Sherlock's waist, pinning him to the wall; after he white knuckled his right hand against a door frame to keep himself up; after he allowed Sherlock to fuck him, hard and long enough that he forgot what color looked like. Maybe he forgot what happened, too, because neither of them talked about it the next day.

If John had the chance, he would've changed everything. It's all different now, though. He doesn't have the chance. He has a burner phone and 500 quid and enough grief to destroy himself, one piece at a time. He has a bottle of whiskey, and too many hours in the day.