A/N: Here we have a short story concocted by my terribly obsessive mind! This feature presentation is depressed/poetic, slightly OC Sherlock and helplessly unrequited love, with a healthy dose of overdue Johnlock lovin' at the end. Approximately 3-4 chapters heading your way, so be ready for semi-weekly updates!

This is in first person: Sherlock speaking to John about the private fantasies he holds, all playing out in his Mind Palace. Not a lot of dialogue at all. Stream of consciousness is one of my favorite forms to write in and I do believe it suits Sherlock nicely. Each chapter starts with Mind Palace and ends with reality, so be aware!

As always, thank you for reading and feel free to leave a review! They make me beam like the sun and do a little dance all at once.

Warning: This work is rated T for language and not-sex-but-lots-of-other-stuff at the moment, but IT WILL GO UP for smut and slash by the end. Of course I will warn you at the beginning of a chapter when that particular event occurs.

Disclaimer: This disclaimer will apply to this and all future chapters. I do not own the television show Sherlock, that right goes to the fabulous duo of Moffat and Gatiss. I do not own the characters Sherlock Holmes or John Watson; that right goes to the late great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I just worship these things shamelessly, and happily take no payment

i.

I am warm all over.

This is the first sensation. Unreal, obviously, but I let myself bask in it all the same. I can pretend for a moment or two.

The warmth feels like contentment. It hums through me like the breeze of some tropical sea, and I float on it selfishly. It simmers like steam off an iron, ready to flatten out my wrinkles. I let it burn my body, and I am branded; you're burning me up. I'll be 244th type of tobacco ash for someone to discover.

Wrapped around you I can feel the vibrations of your muscles, the rhythmic expansion and compression of your lungs, the pulse in your throat is writing calligraphy, writing moronic sonnets, memoirs on my palm as I rest it there on your Adams apple; you're soft.

Sentiment, John. I've joined the losing side, you sucked me in like a black hole but if space is void of temperature why do I still feel warm all over; you're not a black hole, you're the sun, a star of a massive size. You've caught me in your chemically defective orbit and I'm burning up in the heat of you. Conductor of light; you are the light in its entirety and I love the shine on my face as my lips run over your jaw, warming my entire body. Warm.

I don't suppose I've ever been loved enough to know truly what it is.

Here, in my fabricated reality, I am allowed to do this; to touch you and feel you, as if this vibrating, expanding, pulsing thing is mine to keep. Mine to hold and cage, pet and pamper like a cherished something, a delicate something.

I don't suppose I've ever cherished something that breathed, that beat.

But then again, you don't.

Here, in my vivid imagination, I can taste the curve of your earlobe and you'll hum, I can touch the soft skin beneath your shoulder and you'll giggle, I can rest my head on your abdomen and you'll rock my head up and down with a reliable intake and output of oxygen and carbon dioxide. All of it is mine.

But really, it isn't.

Because I am imagining right now, the you of reality thinks I am working on some boring case but I finished that two hours after receiving the files – dull – the you in my mind is wrapped in me, humming and giggling and rocking and it/this/that/you, everything in my own mind is mine mine mine to take and have and hold, I'm hunting down this feeling, this euphoric high of emotion like a white whale but instead of catching it it catches me and I am drowning. You drown me in my dreams, my imagination, my mind. All of me is yours.

But in reality, I am not.

And when I open my eyes, I'll remember that.

ii.

We're watching one of those idiotic movies you love to subject me to, secret agents who're terrible at being secret, get all the unrealistically submissive woman falling at their feet, wield guns like an inexperienced policemen; they jump across buildings like amateurs. Evil villains who're laughable, boring beyond belief, unimaginative and tedious begin blowing things up and I nearly snort out my laughter at your reverence, all of your attention is focused on the flashing pixels of the television screen and you're engrossed in it.

Jealousy of an inanimate object is a sickening reality.

I don't watch the film, that is a maddeningly domestic deed I will not take part in. No John, I watch you, showing more on your face than a thousand Bonds, I can watch the whole film on the reflection of your ocean-blue irises, your corneas, the expressions of your face. Your mouth is slightly open, lips parted like you're inviting me to take the top then bottom in between my own and study each with a reverent tongue and blissfully overloaded senses; you would overload my senses, John. You would overwhelm me.

Every so often the pink tip of your tongue leads a pretty line of dampness across and I want to feel the line on your lip where soft warmth meets chapped skin. You're begging me or am I begging you; No, the you-begging was a fantasy of another night, one of teeth and heat and perhaps ropes but the I-begging, that is every moment.

Every look.

Every touch.

Everything, John.

I beg you with everything.

By the time the horrid film is over, your head rests against the back of the couch, the credits role on the screen and it shines a blue-black light on your face, the shadows of your lines a bit heavier than they have been in the past, but still ruggedly handsome and breathtakingly simple. Hard jaw, soft cheek, heavy eyes, thin lips, you're David aged twenty years but with all the beauty of time molded in.

I've danced this waltz before, I know these steps by heart. These things I do for you John, I can't let you see them. You'd ask me to stop (I wouldn't want to), you'd ask if something was wrong (everything, John); You'd tell me that you are not like that (yes), I am not like that (no), we are not like that (maybe, perhaps, possibly; improbable). But I do this anyway, without thinking yet thinking through every second, awareness coursing through my fingertips. I feel the softness of your jumper as it yields to my hand; feel the muscles of your biceps as I lower you down onto the pillows; feel the scratch of your stubble as I run my palm across the outline of your jaw; feel the soft puff of your breathe on my finger as I trace your lip. You hum and I jump away. Scolding myself, I deposit the dark blue blanket onto your peaceful frame and leave the room, not bothering to turn off the television. The glow makes you look artistic.

I breath heavily, leaning over the countertop, staring into the sink drain.

Data.

That is all this is, all this was, all anything ever is; data to save for later, to save for the times where I need to touch you but I can't, you aren't here so I fabricate the realities I need in my mind. I hid you in an entire room, floor, wing, the entirety of my Mind Palace is you, John Watson, Remodeled and molded till I hardly recognize some of the halls. You've invaded my being like a virus yet I don't have the heart to look for a cure.

I look back at your resting form, breathing in the air we share here, in this two-bedroom flat in central London, where the roof leaks on occasion, I blow things up on occasion, I wear only a bed sheet on occasion, I worship you in my head on occasion; I look back at your artistically glowing skin, your deep-set eyes moving under blonde-lashed eye-lids. I wonder who you worship in your head. It will never be me, of that I am nearly 98% sure of.

Data.

That is all this will ever be.