A brief, sort-of-angsty-but-not-quite oneshot on nothing at all. Introspection, if that's what you want to call it. Title taken from Kate Bush's Never be mine.
Happiness.
He has recently started musing on the concept of it, on its enormous importance to people's lives. It does not play much of a role in his life, never has. People measure their experiences in the degree of happiness they bring, apparently. He understands it, even though he finds it to be horribly tedious, to live with a perception that limited.
(And isn't that just the problem, that he understands it all, all of the supposedly complex processes that constitute what others consider to be essentially human, all these things he witnesses and analyzes and comprehends rationally, but never emotionally, as if some vital element of it all, the key to perfect understanding, was constantly escaping his grasp…)
He isn't unhappy. His version of a scale of personal satisfaction simply does not contain the element of happiness in a prominent place, if it contains it at all. Memories can be interesting, or, far more frequently, unbearably boring, but not happy or unhappy. Certainly, coming across something truly unexpected brings a kind of ecstasy that might be described as happiness, except that's not what it is. It is, at best, relief, a distraction from that constant, dull pain somewhere in the recess of his mind.
Happiness, he begins to realize, is what is driving them apart. Invisibly, insidiously, the thought of it is infesting John's mind. It is written on his features when he thinks Sherlock isn't observing him, that terrible, thoughtful expression that shouts out the overwhelming question: Am I happy? The answer is not No, not yet, not anytime soon, but someday, John will no longer be able to shake it off, will fall victim to his own shortcomings and leave. Ultimately, the occasional thrill of living the way they do will not suffice to keep John from musing on what society considers to be acceptable goals in life, from yearning what others prescribe as happiness.
He will lose him to this flawed concept. The certitude with which he thinks these words does not hurt, does not, so to say, make him unhappy. He will resort to his old lifestyle, will look for strangers to soliloquize to.
(And isn't that just the problem, the things he allows himself when he doesn't tolerate them in anyone else, the readiness to take the easy way out even when it will ultimately turn out to be the harder one by far? He will let him go, will go on offering him nothing but thrill and hurting instead of happiness because he can't feel it himself, can't let feelings invade his thoughts, can't…)
The quiet whispering never truly shuts off, but it is barely audible, easy to ignore as long as there is something else to occupy his mind.
How is it that I can only ever write in this serious-business tone of voice when that's not even what I like to read argh
