Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The morning had a distinctly bitter taste to it.

There was a certain quality in the air, before the sun rose, that was almost acidic; it stung the tongue and invigorated the senses like a shot of whiskey, singeing through Sherlock's airways and carving a path down his oesophagus. It was a spiteful sensation. As if even the sun was chastising him for being awake at such an ungodly hour.

He could admit, even to himself, that chain-smoking a pack of cigarettes at 3am was unhealthy.

But where the fuck else was he going to smoke?

John, as a doctor, hated the habit.

Sherlock's skin was almost numb where his large black coat left it unprotected, his fingers somehow paler than usual, sensation in his nose a fading memory. His left hand was wrapped around the frigid metal of the balcony, the rain from earlier leaving it damp with water droplets. The artificial glow of London around him blotted out the natural sky. It was black as ink above. Stifling in a way even being outside couldn't cure. Stifling in a way that he had to drown out with the shallow breaths the cigarettes left him with.

No, he didn't suppose it was healthy...

In the glowing light of his fag, Sherlock could see the yellowed tips of his fingers. His right hand was becoming that of a smoker's. Well, he was a smoker, he supposed - but then again, he'd never liked to put labels on things.

'Those things will kill you, you know,' John was fond of telling him.

Sherlock lit the next cigarette, stamping its predecessor out on the wet concrete beneath his boot.

His eyes were falling closed every couple of seconds, resting at a petulant half-mast that he despised with every iota of his body. God, how he hated his physical need to sleep. What was sleep but a distraction? Nature's means of slowing him down, of hindering his mind as it so endeavoured to tick away and peel back another layer of the hideous world around him.

He wanted to sleep.

In truth, he did.

But it had never come easy to him.

The clouds drifted across the sky lazily, like they had nowhere better to be. They were mocking him. Scuds of wispy deep purple haunting the endless black realm above. Like an omen. Each and every one of them.

And they seemed to whisper...

Sherlock, Sherlock, Sher-lockkk... they hissed on the windless air.

By the time he came to his senses, the sun had opened up a wound in the sky, from which bled a violent red-orange. Sherlock decided he might as well get on with his day.

~

Coffee.

Coffee.

More coffee.

He'd had three cups of coffee.

He was no more awake but now nursing a firmly unrelenting headache behind his temples.

John was up at seven, after what Sherlock knew to be a full and restful sleep (well, an as 'full' and 'restful' sleep as an ex-soldier could truly get), indicated by the relaxed and slightly-widened state of his eyes, and the folds of his shirt - had John had a nightmare, he wouldn't have bothered turning them down so neatly when he dressed.

Smug bastard.

John went through the motions of making himself tea and toast. It was a completely silent routine due to its familiarity. Sherlock watched him conduct it, observing John like an owl might a small mouse - detached, somewhere far away... peering at his quarry as it scurried along the floor, from his vantage point up in the branches.

Oh, three cups of coffee made him poetic, did it?

Interesting...

"You look like shit," John said, breaking the morning's silence.

"In what way?" Sherlock asked simply, cocking his head. Luckily, he was always aloof, and therefore John simply resigned himself to answering the detective's question and thus telling Sherlock exactly what he needed to hide tomorrow morning. John looked him up and down for a moment - his assessing gaze making Sherlock's feet itch with the desire to run away - the small crease appearing between the doctor's eyebrows, and his lips thinning as he came to his rather disappointed conclusion.

"You're pale. Paler than usual, I mean," John started. His hands held a butterknife that he'd forgotten about, coated in jam, suspended in the air as he tried to deduce Sherlock. "You look..." He paused, as if searching for the right word. "...Sick," John concluded.

"You're almost as good at compliments as Mycroft," Sherlock smiled, nevertheless tucking his hands into his coat pockets to avoid John's keen eyes spotting the nicotine stains on his fingers.

John scoffed, returning his eyes to his toast, muttering a defeated, "Honestly, it's like you've never heard of a sleep schedule,"

"I have!" Sherlock interjected, circling round the counter to snag a piece of John's toast from his plate. "I just find them terribly dull,"

He bit into the toast.

Ah, the jam didn't taste sweet.

Well, it was only comprised of 60% sugar - it wasn't like his smoking addiction was that out of hand...

Sherlock swiftly discarded the toast, lobbing it into the bin behind him, making John huff indignantly.

"Well, if you're not going to eat it, don't bloody steal it off me in the first place!" he grumbled, rolling his eyes.

Sherlock patted him on the head in a way that he knew John found annoying and went to go and find his violin.

~

He began with Paganini.

Then purposefully began trying to emulate the screeching of seabirds with his instrument, much to John's delight.

He was genuinely perfecting the sound to a great degree of accuracy...

"Would you please shut up!" John growled, after almost five minutes of Sherlock's best impression of a-seagull-having-a-seizure squealing non-stop through the living room.

Sherlock put the violin down, turning to collapse dramatically on the sofa. He threw a hand over his forehead like a lady from the 1600's on a fainting couch and cried with great distress:

"Bored!"

"I am painfully aware," John agreed, rinsing out his teacup. "I almost wished I worked on a Saturday, so I don't have to sit through the next eight hours of 'Bored!'," he lamented.

There was a small twinge somewhere in Sherlock's midsection at that.

John hated him. Clearly.

Well, it made sense.

He was Sherlock Holmes, after all...

Chain-smoking a pack at three-bloody-am - fuck it if he didn't hate himself--

Ping!

"Case. John, there's a case!"

The door slammed behind him like a death knell.

Chapter Text

Sherlock's head was spinning by the time they got to the crime scene, and that familiar gnawing sensation had started up in the pit of his stomach again, biting at his insides as it urged him to procure another fix.

It'd have to wait.

It was nearing ten-thirty in the morning, and the pale English sun was barely peeking out from the tops of the drab grey buildings that towered around them. He and John made their way across the busy street towards the two officers standing imperiously by a kicked-in door that was cordoned off with police tape. Even as exhausted and nicotine-hungry as it was, Sherlock's brain sprang immediately into action, logging every incremental detail like a computerised audit.

The door was standard. 2.6 by 6.6 feet - as was the theme with England and Wales; the Scots an outlier with their favouritism for 2.375-foot-wide doors. Made of uPVC; unplasticised polyvinyl chloride. Cheap, robust plastic, BPA-free, an average 25-year lifespan, and available in excess for the masses due to its environment-destroying, non-renewable-consuming oil and gas inception... The door was kicked in - no, not just kicked in. The patterns on the edge of the door were caused by a crowbar. Wielded by a man just a smidge above average height, who was left-handed... A small impression of muddied boot prints on the welcome mat, a souvenir of last night's rain (Sherlock would know) - which made sense. Break in at night. So, he likely didn't know the victim; or, at least, he wasn't invited in.

Theft of some sort? It was a relatively low socioeconomic area, so that was more than likely.

They were workman's boots, judging by the prints, different from the police in both their owner's typical occupation, and their state of cleanliness.

Workman with a crowbar. Just pushing six-foot. Average. Left-handed. Probably with a short temper and a drinking problem. Probably with priors.

Probably a theft turned ugly - but then why had Lestrade called him in?

Sherlock deduced all of this in a couple seconds. By the time he'd reached the bashed-in door and nodded curtly at the officers who stepped aside to let him and John in, he was already coming up with a multitude of theories as to what could be waiting for him.

It was this - this strange, sick thrill he got from not knowing - that sustained him when he didn't have an illicit substance coursing through his veins.

He knew that made him a bad person. Immoral, supposedly. Evil. He knew Donovan half-expected him to become a serial-killer one of these days.

But it seemed like such an ingrained trigger for him that he couldn't help it.

The thrill of the chase.

The game was on.

A glance to John as they ascended the stairs told Sherlock that perhaps he wasn't the only one experiencing a small thrill of excitement, though he knew John to be pure and good at heart, so he wondered briefly where the distinction was between his own feelings and those of his flatmate... How interesting it was to ponder other people's heads--

The carpeted stairs were narrow and well-vacuumed. Almost to the point of clean-freak. Interesting. Such a lack of dirt and dust and hair indicated that the victim likely didn't have any pets - which made sense, as Sherlock assumed this was a rental - or children, for that matter.

Young woman living alone?

Slightly obsessed with cleaning. Was it a coping mechanism? Did she crave order and stability due to a significant lack of it within her own mental psyche?

Potentially.

Grahan - Gary - Gareth... Lestrade rushed to them as they reached the top of the stairs. Sherlock sensed, more than saw, John stiffen next to him, his shoulders straightening. John was so in-tune to other's distress, such was the requirement of both a soldier and an army doctor. But it served as a useful indicator for Sherlock. John was his meter when it came to the insignificant matters of... people.

At least a 7, then.

"Lestrade," Sherlock nodded, attempting to look over the officer's head and into the room behind him.

"What have we got?" Was John's slightly more polite greeting, as he watched Lestrade's somewhat-haggard face.

"Well, it's um... It's ugly, that's for sure," Lestrade sighed. He ran a hand over the stubble that he hadn't been able to take care of yet. The man was clearly overworked. He'd most likely go to the pub after this curiosity had been dealt with.

John nodded understandingly, steeling himself in that military-way of his.

Sherlock frowned. Lestrade, as a police officer, saw a multitude of 'ugly' things every day. Surely, this was an overreaction? Or maybe it was simply one of those 'people' things that Sherlock didn't understand. Yes, one of those strange phenomenons he observed on the regular but never quite grasped--

Oh.

On second thoughts, he rather understood what Lestrade meant.

~

"Inflicted by the crowbar, most likely," John said in a monotone, his eyes sweeping assessingly over the body in much the same way as he'd sized up Sherlock earlier that morning. Sherlock wasn't exactly sure how to feel about that.

Lestrade let out a low whistle through his teeth.

"Fucking hell," he breathed. "After a certain number of years, you think you've seen it all, and then..." Lestrade trailed of.

"I know," John replied heavily. His blue eyes still fixed on what used-to-be a woman, John shook his head. Then he turned to Sherlock, who was pacing the part of the room that wasn't stained bright crimson, and taking in every single detail as best as he could with almost no sleep and a pounding headache.

"Thoughts?" John asked him, watching as Sherlock bent to run his finger over the windowsill of the only window in the room.

"Dust." Sherlock said simply, inspecting his finger in the light of the window.

"Care to elaborate?" Lestrade continued before John got the chance.

"Dust." Sherlock repeated, turning to face both of them. God, he could do this with a headache - how were people so slow?!

"It's wrong, don't you see?" He said, beginning one of his rambling explanations to the nonplussed expressions of the two other men in the room. "The stairs! They were clean - more than clean! This woman polished her doorhandle. Why is there dust on her windowsill?"

He asked it like a question, but both Lestrade and John knew him well enough to know that it wasn't one. They waited patiently for it all to be laid out simply in front of them.

Like feeding a baby.

Though Sherlock did quite enjoy the attention, it was true...

"The house is a rental. In a low-income area. This woman has barely any possessions - just look around," Sherlock said, waving his arms at the meagre furniture present in her bedroom. "Yet she's proud. Or something similar to produce the result that she cleans... Clean stairs, clean railings, clean doorhandle. The only thing in this house that I've spotted to be unclean is the contents of this room. Dust on the windowsill. Dust on the carpet. The room feels stale, and she has not cleaned it. Why?"

He paused to draw breath, then marched ahead even quicker than before.

"Because something is different about this room - even before there was a dead body in it. Look at the pillows!" Sherlock said, gesticulating wildly to the bed where the pillows were ever-so-slightly dusty and frozen in apparent disarray. "That's not where you'd usually put them if you were a clean-freak making a bed, is it?" He said, raising a brow.

"Yes, but she did get her head bashed in with a crowbar, so there's obviously been a bit of a struggle," Lestrade scoffed.

Sherlock whirled to face him, clicking his fingers as if to make a point, "No!" He grinned. "The struggle happened here--" Sherlock gestured to the opposite part of the room, pointing out various blood splatters and the position of the body. "The pillows weren't touched. They're still in their old position, from when she closed the door to this room and refused to clean it. Why? Something happened here. Maybe something concerning a family member - though there are no pictures I can see of any family at all, so forget I said that last bit," Sherlock amended, thinking on the fly, turning his head this way and that to take in the contents of the room and try to spot how the threads all tangled together...

"Something happened of significance to her," he concluded. "Maybe an ex-lover who mistreated her - yes, that makes sense."

He clapped his hands together euphorically, meeting the slightly-dazed expressions of John and Lestrade, who were trying their best to keep up.

"Young woman from a broken home gets out of her situation with the assistance of a strong-headed, burly, just-under-six-foot lover - a lot like her own father, but she doesn't realise it at the time; the human mind does like to go back to familiarity, after all - they rent this house together. He has a physically-demanding job - perhaps some sort of tradie or construction worker. And the abuse begins... One day, she's had enough. This bedroom is proof of that... The dust... She kicks him out. Gets rid of every memory of him. But she can't afford to move - she's struggling to make the rent as it is now that he's gone - but she wants to move. She's scared of him... Scared of what he'll do next."

Sherlock glanced briefly at the mess of red on the floor.

"--Maybe she sold drugs or became a prostitute to make the rent money... Maybe she became re-involved with some of the things she did in her late teens... Something. And she cleaned every other part of the house apart from this room. Because what does she need after that relationship, and in order to keep her very-reasonable fears at bay? Control."

He pauses. Continues.

"But he comes back. There's an argument. An altercation. Maybe he intended to finish what he started in this very room. The room she hasn't cleaned since. He brings a crowbar because she changed the locks. He broke in and... here we are," Sherlock finished.

He flicked his eyes from Gareth to John, trying to gauge their reactions. George had his mouth a little open, which he appeared not to be aware of. John's eyes held that same shine they always did before--

"Brilliant," John said.

Sherlock had to hide his grin.

He cleared his throat, feigning a sweep of his fingers through his unruly hair in order to massage briefly at his pounding head.

"Right, I'll be going," he said simply, making for the door. He paused with his hand on the frame, turning to Lestrade as his frazzled mind remembered something he'd also realised. "There's someone else," he said.

"I beg your pardon?" Lestrade responded.

Sherlock sighed - Lestrade probably assumed it was just him being rude, but it was actually because Sherlock's head was starting to feel like someone was taking a power drill to it.

"There's someone else - there has to be," he elaborated. "A coworker, a close acquaintance, someone she's confided in. Again, I point you to her stairs. She cleans for comfort, evidently, she was in dire need of some. See where she worked, who she worked with. Someone will know," he said.

And with that, Sherlock was out the door, and down the stairs, with a cheery "Ta!" called over his shoulders in a tone that fell flat even to his own ears. He heard John following hurriedly after him with a muttered curse.

Sherlock blinked for a moment in the brighter sunlight of the outdoors, even with the cloudy and colourless sky overhead.

Fuck, his head was pounding.

His eyes roved over the street before him, looking for options. He found one in the form of a shaded alley between two houses and quickened his stride until he was out of sight of the police officers guarding the crime scene. Sherlock turned to John to tell him that he wanted to walk home on his own--

Or, he tried to.

The moment Sherlock spun around to face his flatmate, he realised he'd severely underestimated the significance of his headache. He spun, unsteady on his feet, before tilting sideways into the wall, and steadying himself against the brick with a pained yell.

"Sherlock?"

John was by his side in a split-second, causing Sherlock to flinch before his brain caught up with the present.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he muttered grumpily, attempting to blink away the incoherence as a result of his mind-crushing headache. "Just overdid it on the coffees this morning," he gritted out.

John didn't look entirely convinced.

Chapter Text

Sherlock focused on his fingertips, clenched on the wall. The crevices of his fingernails were stained a slight yellow.

His vision blurred, doubled, then returned as normal. He blinked.

Once.

Twice.

He breathed out in a way that had to sound audibly manufactured to the seasoned doctor next to him.

God fucking damn it!

The bricks were rough to the touch, and he was clawing his nails into them as though they were the only thing preventing him from falling to the ground.

And Sherlock wasn't too deluded to admit to himself that this was precisely the case.

"Sherlock?" Came John's voice again, from somewhere on his right.

Sherlock did not turn his head to look at him, all his effort currently focused on remaining upright and not groaning in pain. His very skull felt like it was throbbing. Like his cranium was warping beneath incomprehensible force; metal bending beneath a blowtorch.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

He felt sick.

"Sherlock? Jesus, what's wrong?"

John was talking again.

Suddenly, there was a hand on Sherlock's shoulder.

His defences lowered by the pain, Sherlock couldn't control his flinch at the contact.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock wouldn't be surprised if blisters were forming on the surface of his brain. He wouldn't be surprised if the liquid in his skull was frothing and boiling like water in a kettle. He wouldn't be surprised in the least if his cerebrum succumbed and melted out of his ears...

His eyes screwed tightly shut against the sunlight that had suddenly become the equivalent of a billion high-beams trained unforgivingly on his irises, Sherlock's forehead found the wall. He was half-slumping against it, but he managed to grit out a half-coherent reply to John's increasingly worried queries.

"I'm fine, John," he gasped. "I'm just fine... Headache."

Nausea roiled within him, and he began to lose sense of the world around him. The wall became a concept instead of the tangible stack of bricks and mortar supporting him. John became a disembodied voice that floated through his bleeding ears with all the grace of a piercing siren. With his eyes closed, he could no longer see the nicotine staining his fingers, but he felt as if it had morphed into a frightfully caustic substance, like acid biting into his hands, ridiculing him for this weak-willed display.

Sherlock's sense of time was impaired by the deafening buzz in his head, but after what he took to be a few moments of chewed-out silence, he heard a distorted:

"Come on, let's get you home,"

There was a hand leading him--

He didn't like it.

Sherlock thought he must have tried to pull away, because the hand tightened, and its callouses were pressed more firmly into his wrist.

It was John's hand, he realised thickly.

John.

"Sherlock, you need to go home..." the voice faded in and out. "--In a right state... Co-- on,"

Was his body jolting with the pain?

No.

They were moving.

Walking.

There wasn't a wall at his nicotine-stained fingers anymore, and that threw him somewhat.

Sherlock's eyes opened in the thinnest of slits. A John-shaped blur warped before him. He looked down to see his wrist held firmly but gently in the army doctor's hand.

His mind faltered.

John.

Sherlock didn't like being trapped like this; held like this.

But it was John.

So, his mind deemed that it was alright. Just this once.

He trusted John.

Trusted him as the man helped his stumbling feet navigate the curves and dips of the pavement, as he helped him into a cab, the click of the seatbelt stabbing into Sherlock's head like a knife.

A rumble beneath him signalled that the car was moving.

Sherlock's head was resting against something again.

The wall - no, he was in a taxi, it couldn't be the wall.

And it was somewhat cold...

Window.

His head was resting against the window.

Sherlock bit harshly into the skin of his cheek, trying to quell the immense agony chattering through his skull. He tasted the rich detail of copper and realised that he'd bitten hard enough to draw blood. His tongue fretted at the wound, the tender sensation another defence against the pain in his head.

Even with the colossal agony, another feeling managed to fight its way to the forefront of his mind:

Panic.

It was not an emotion Sherlock Holmes often entertained.

But he felt it now. Panic blanketing in thick swathes over his logical reasoning, solidifying at the realisation that he was most definitely not in control. And that he was, undoubtedly... scared.

His burning head pressed against the unforgiving cold of the window, and the unfamiliar cab jolting them as they sped down the London streets he couldn't identify due to the pain, Sherlock found himself scared.

Terrified, even.

Erasing the lines of the boundaries he'd long ago set himself, Sherlock lowered his ego to stoop to the level of blatant displays of weakness.

God, Mycroft would find this hilarious.

Sherlock's fingers - those unworthy, nicotine-tainted fingers - shook as they sought out those of the man seated next to him. His eyes still clenched firmly shut, Sherlock felt the spark of a connection as John's grasp wrapped assuredly around his palm. The most incremental smidge of relaxation washed through him.

But it was there.

Callouses beneath his fingers.

John's callouses.

John's hand.

John's warm palm and steadying grip encircling his spasming hands with such a kind embrace that had Sherlock not felt as though his head was splitting in two, he might have cried with relief.

John, John, John, John, John...

~

The creak of the front door was a familiar call back to reality.

Sherlock cracked his eyes open with a dull groan just enough to watch his feet trip over the threshold of 221B. John, ever the constant, caught him. Half-held him as Sherlock tackled the infinite peril of the stairs. Shaky step after shaky step, dizziness and nausea swirling in him like a chemical reaction about to explode, Sherlock climbed the staircase.

One foot in front of the other...

And then his eyes were met with the familiar shape of the doorhandle.

Not very well polished... His mind supplied deliriously.

He couldn't for the life of him remember why that was relevant.

The sofa was soft beneath him.

He was sprawled - horizontally - lying down.

Good.

That was...

Good.

He didn't think he'd have been able to stand for much longer anyway.

His cheek pressed into the soft material of the sofa, Sherlock tried and failed to understand how the world could still be spinning if he was no longer moving. How the cushions had somehow managed to take on the exact conditions of a storm-tossed sea.

"John," a voice called out weakly.

With a jolt, Sherlock realised that it was his voice.

Those gorgeously gentle fingers were suddenly at his face, taming the wayward locks of hair stuck to his forehead, and attempting to smooth the pain-wrought lines etched between his brows.

"I'm here," came the reply.

Chapter Text

He was out on the balcony again, a pack of Marlboro Reds in his hands.

There was no wind tonight.

The air was stagnated like pond water, black and buzzing with flies, something unsightly rotting within its putrid depths.

The sky was lighter than it should be at this time. Split open like a garish wound that had ruptured its stitches, bleeding out the too-bright orange into the too-heavy air. It was off-putting.

It sent the hairs on the back of his neck standing upright.

Ridiculous, criticised a voice in Sherlock's head that sounded remarkably like Mycroft's. A sky cannot be off-putting, brother mine.

Sherlock pulled the first cigarette from the pack, showing the voice the metaphorical finger.

The lighter clicked once.

Twice.

Three times.

A flame sputtered to life.

A crease appeared between Sherlock's eyebrows as he stared down at the lighter.

Something was... wrong.

The flame was strange - there was something about it that was wrong...

Yet Sherlock couldn't for the life of him put his finger on what.

Shaking himself, he brought the jumping yellow light to the fag and watched as it began to burn. His lips wrapped around the cigarette, and he breathed in deeply, feeling as all the tension left his shoulders.

This was it. The feeling. The thing he craved. This was what kept him going.

He exhaled a plume of smoke that tried to choke out the bleeding sky.

Oddly, it was still absolutely silent around him. He expected to at least hear the usual chatter of London - the cars honking and the sounds of shrill arguments echoing from the open windows of houses opposite.

But no...

Today it was quiet.

Almost too quiet.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled again.

Then--

He coughed.

A sharp, short cough that hacked from his lungs.

He brought the cigarette back from his mouth to cover the sound with his unoccupied hand. He was about to raise the cigarette back to his lips when he saw it.

The specks of blood on his fingers.

He paused, mind racing.

It wasn't uncommon, he was aware. Smoking irritated the throat - the over 7,000 toxic chemicals it exposed to the smoker to causing everything from cancer to bleeding to trouble breathing...

Sherlock knew this.

He swallowed heavily, feeling like a piece of sandpaper was lodged in the back of his oesophagus.

But fuck it, he needed that cigarette.

Wrapping his mouth around the fag again, he took a deep, greedy drag of the life-shortening smoke--

And choked.

The force of his hacking wretches sent the cigarette tumbling over the balcony, plummeting out of sight into the blackness. Sherlock clapped both hands to his mouth, pressing tightly as if he hoped that would hold the horrific coughing at bay. When the gasping subsided, he pulled his hands back to find them red.

Red flecks all across his yellow-stained skin.

Red lines of blood and spittle connecting his lips and fingers.

Bright, bright crimson.

Shit.

Sherlock doubled over with a cry of pain as the coughs started again - even more intensely this time round. He felt the warm liquid gushing over his lips, falling to his cupped hands that were red, red, red...

But this time the coughing didn't stop.

It didn't let up, it didn't abate, it didn't wane even the slightest as the heavy seconds slipped by, within which Sherlock choked and struggled for breath. Blood was falling thickly from his mouth now in gushes. He felt like he was going to drown on it.

He was dying.

Don't be ridiculous, said Mycroft's voice. But it soon fell silent as Sherlock counted up to a full minute and the coughing hadn't stopped. His hands were soaked now. And still, he kept hacking up more and more blood. His throat was rasped and stinging, each cough a painful lurch of his insides that split him open and bit at him like a lion on a carcass.

He felt his knees shudder as they impacted upon the concrete. His hands caught part of the impact as he fell forward, bracing him so that he didn't collapse onto his face. When he pulled them back, two blood-painted imprints remained, stark on the white surface.

And still, he kept coughing.

He couldn't breathe.

He couldn't breathe and he'd counted one-minute and thirty seconds now...

He couldn't breathe--

"John!" He managed to yell, his voice cracking as a burst of blood splattered from his lips.

"JOHN!" He yelled, forcing his whole body to scream as loud as was physically possible, hoping against hope that the doctor could hear him, that someone would hear him.

But no one came.

He wheezed, gasping, yet more blood splattering upon the concrete in a horrid gush. His whole body was shuddering, wracked with deep, guttural coughs that made him spasm and convulse as he choked and choked and--

"JOHN!"

But he was alone.

~

Sherlock leapt upwards, not even grasping his surroundings before he'd tumbled off the sofa in a vice of blankets and crashed to the floor. His face pressed against the carpet, he clutched at his throat, drawing deep, frantic breaths into his lungs. His heart was beating as fast as a hummingbird's wings, and it took him a few, horrifically terrifying seconds to realise what had happened.

It was a dream.

His forehead was sticking to the carpet, coated in a thin sheen of sweat, and his fingers twitched like dying spiders against the skin of his neck, still trying to soothe the raw and bloodied wounds that didn't exist. He brought them to his eye-line again, turning over his pale fingers in the dim light, searching them for any hint of red.

But they were clean. For now.

Sherlock loosed another shuddering breath, before forcing the heels of his palms roughly into his eyes, trying to tether himself to reality.

He was alive, he was alive, he was alive, he was alive--

It was just a dream.

After nothing short of an eon had passed, Sherlock pulled himself up from the tangle of sheets upon the floor. His mind stumbled, trying to piece the picture together, half of him still kneeling on that balcony...

He remembered the headache, he remembered the cold window of the taxi - he remembered being placed carefully on this very sofa, like he was something important... The lights were off. A glance outside told him it was heavily nighttime. How long had he been asleep? He'd sprawled on this sofa early in the morning of what was now yesterday--

Fuck, he was really losing it.

Suddenly, the colourless space of the living room around him was too much. Too big, too imposing, too--

Sherlock's feet had begun to stumble forwards before he even realised where he was going. As swiftly and as quietly as he could, he made his way to the front door hearing it snick shut behind him. He didn't even look back. Out here, in the frigid night air it was better. Less suffocating.

He was still wearing his coat, and he pulled it tightly around himself as he raced down the streets of London, following the map laid out in his mind. He didn't have a destination in mind, per say - but he half felt as though if he stopped moving he might explode with whatever this feeling was inside of him.

His mind was racing faster than his feet, his eyes darting in an almost paranoid way from the bricks of the pavement at his feet to the side-streets, to the cars that whizzed by him in a blur of metallic, rectangular shapes. He could hear his own rapid heartbeat rushing in his ears.

After around fifteen minutes of near-sprinting through the streets like a half-crazed, rabid animal, Sherlock came to a stop. He curled his body into the nook he'd located; a small indent into the side of a building off a dimly-lit side street. It was secluded, and he could place his back right up against the right-angled concrete wall, tucking himself into the crevice like he hoped he'd disappear if he pushed hard enough against it. In his big black cloak, he blended right in with the shadows. The dull sounds of traffic several streets away hummed in his ears, but Sherlock felt that he could finally breathe at least somewhat properly.

In this quiet, secluded space, he finally allowed himself to break. His head tipped back to lean on the wall, Sherlock felt as his throat burned not because of the smoke, this time, but because of the tears springing forth from his eyes. They trailed down his cheeks in a flood that couldn't stop once it started, and Sherlock simply slumped against the brickwork and cried until his body couldn't physically purge a single tear more from his bleary eyes.

God, he was so tired. So tired of pretending to hold it together when all he wanted was the drugs to stave off the freezing ice of his head.

His goddamned, fucking head that didn't stop.

Not even to sleep, not even to let him rest for a mere moment - no, it just had to spiral on like a berserk catherine-wheel.

He was so tired...

His shallow breaths puffed into the air in front of him, curling visibly in white clouds due to the cold. Almost like the smoke of a cigarette.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

Sherlock didn't know what he needed, but he knew that its absence clawed at him. Knew that this horrible, terrible feeling that he couldn't verbalise ate at him in a black hole of missing; of void where there was supposed to be that unfettered abstinence in normal people. Abstinence from his cravings that so taunted and tempted him his every waking hour, abstinence from the indelible influence of his mind that depleted his resolve like an axe swinging repeatedly into a tree.

Prone against the dirty bricks like one of London's rats in a hidey-hole, Sherlock was gripped with the undeniable notion that he was falling. That he'd toppled from whatever ledge he'd been teetering on as surely as his cigarette had disappeared over his balcony. He didn't know where he would land, or how far the drop was, but he knew with a chilling certainty that this was only the beginning of a long and perilous road to the Hell he'd long-since deserved.

Chapter Text

He was prompted into standing only when the world around him once again became afflicted by the sunlight of a new day. Awash with dawn's quickly-onsetting beginnings, the crevice he'd tucked himself into was soon becoming one of uncomfortable brightness. He could not hide away in the dark any longer.

Sherlock began the walk home, his feet leading him without any conscious effort on his part to remember the way home. He could navigate London blindfolded. His mind, now, was turned towards his flatmate.

John.

His feet quickened, and he dodged the one or two cars of young party-goers who were only just driving home as he crossed the road. Disappearing down another unassuming street, he put his thoughts to wondering at the best course of action... He'd slip back, undetected, before John awoke, and - what? It was no secret to the doctor that Sherlock had had some sort of funny 'turn' yesterday. John would likely be... concerned, in that strange, human way of his. He'd probably want to talk, or at the very least enquire, as to the reason for such an episode. And Sherlock didn't think he'd be able to misdirect him at present. His mind felt dulled, his senses smothered; he was still so very exhausted, weaving through the streets in his great black cloak like the shadow of the man the newspapers portended him to be.

Emotions had always been elusive to him. More elusive than clues and solid, undeniable facts betrayed by finer details. He didn't possess the energy to do emotions right now. To be completely honest, he held a fair amount of trepidation for even crossing over the threshold of 221B. Around John - who seemed to notice everything where other people were blind - Sherlock felt so very weak. At the mercy of the man's kindness and understanding.

The worst thing was that deep down, he craved it almost as much as a needle in his arm.

Sherlock turned onto his home street, the faint light of dawn stretching long, spidery shadows over the features of the houses he passed. His head was still a might tender, and that feeling of exhaustion behind his eyes hadn't eased as much as he'd expected it to with all the sleep he'd just had.

The stairs creaked as he took them slowly, one pale hand gripping the railing. This bone-deep exhaustion seemed to extend past his body's physical limitations. He wanted to collapse somewhere safe and warm and sleep for a thousand years. But Sherlock had never felt safe.

Not really.

The door whined as he pushed it open, and Sherlock felt a veritable wash of dread sluice through him at the sight that met his eyes. John, it transpired, was awake. He was leant nonchalantly with his hip against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed. There was a steely determination in his features - still so impossibly kind as they were by default. He looked the epitome of someone who wanted to talk.

Sherlock suddenly felt a great deal of empathy for all the mice who'd come face-to-face with a cat.

"John," Sherlock greeted, painting a smile onto his own tired visage as he sized up the gravity of this issue he'd walked into. John picked up one of the two mugs on the counter, holding it out to Sherlock with a muttered:

"I made you tea,"

Sherlock took it, wrapping the mug in his spindly fingers and wishing it held something stronger than just English Breakfast.

"Thank you," Sherlock replied stiltedly.

Those blue eyes burned into him with a ferocity that several category-five hurricanes lacked.

"Where were you last night?" John asked conversationally. He took a sip from his own mug, picking it up off the counter and surveying Sherlock's reaction carefully over the rim.

Sherlock's mind floundered. If he'd been standing on a rug at all, it would certainly have been yanked from underneath him by now.

"Out." He supplied. He looked anywhere but John's eyes, focusing on an interesting spot on the kitchen counter.

"Where specifically?" John rebuked, taking a step closer toward him.

"Nowhere," Sherlock stuttered. The room felt much too small.

"Sherlock," John said.

Sherlock's eyes darted up to meet John's again. He felt nothing short of trapped.

"I was out, John," he replied, teeth gritted. "I wanted to go for a walk and clear my head, that's all,"

There was a silence. Sherlock stared into John's blue eyes, hoping they'd give way and allow him an exit from this confrontation. Sherlock could feel his chest tightening uncomfortably, and he felt once more like he couldn't breathe.

"What happened yesterday?" John asked carefully, after a pause. He'd switched tactics, and Sherlock was slow on the uptake. He stuttered. Which Sherlock never did.

Fuck.

"I-I, I um... I - it was just a headache, John. I'm fine. Told you, overdid the coffees," he stumbled.

Something flickered in John's expression. Something Sherlock thought might have been concern.

And then, John was right in front of him - to hug him or what, Sherlock didn't know - but Sherlock hadn't expected it--

John wasn't London's only consulting detective, it was true, but it was impossible to miss the full-body flinch that shot through Sherlock as John moved toward him.

John stopped dead, his eyes wide and one of his arms outstretched as he looked at the man who'd curled away from the touch instinctively, his own hands raised as if to fend John off, and his eyes screwed tightly shut as though expecting to be hit.

The silence that followed was thick and dead.

"Sorry," Sherlock gasped, snapping out of it and striding away from the door, not looking at John. "I-I'll be off to my room. To think about the case. And um--" Sherlock trailed off, not bothering to continue his obvious excuse as he walked to his bedroom door. He closed it gently behind him and walked to the opposite wall, sinking to the floor and burying his head in his hands with a mumbled:

"Fuck,"

Chapter Text

He was mad, he supposed, with evolution.

After all, that's what demanded so intensely that he crave human connection. Six million years of evolution, within which the ancestors of his species prospered in communities built off the principle of power in numbers. Individuals died alone. They succumbed to the cold and the hunger and their injuries. Groups, on the other hand, protected each other; allowed their genes to be passed on as they grew their species' capabilities. Discovered how the world worked. What really made it tick...

And now he lived in a world of concrete and technology, whereas if he'd been alive millions of years ago, he might have been born beneath the trees. But it didn't matter. Because intrinsically, he was the same flesh and blood that had once discovered it was much better to hit things with a rock than a fist. His surroundings might've changed, but all the proof he needed that society was still so primitive, so flawed and impossibly human was the grisly murders he'd dedicated himself to solving. Cheating, greed, control - such basic motivators for a species that liked to think itself separate to that of the world it inhabited; that it believed it'd tamed.

It was evolution's fault.

Evolution's fault entirely that something within him craved John's attention more than it needed food or water. It was a shortcoming he couldn't've avoided. Because much as he liked to delude himself into thinking that he was something more, Sherlock was only human.

His back was pressed against his bedroom wall--

Bricks, two coats of plaster - which was of course derived from either gypsum (sulfate mineral; composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate; monoclinic crystal system; chemical formula, CaSO₄·2H₂O) lime (calcium oxides and hydroxides; chemical formula CaO) or cement--

Sherlock bit hard at the inside of his cheek.

He remembered what Donovan was so fond of saying:

'Freak's here, bringing him in,'

What use was knowing the formulas for the individual components that made up his wall when his own humanity failed him time and time again?

Sherlock could still see in his mind as John's eyes widened at his flinch. His uncontrollable, weak-willed flinch.

Well, he knew what'd caused it... A hyper-aroused state induced by traumatic situations from which his body had become locked in a permanent state of 'fight-or-flight'. He knew John would probably know this as well... Was probably, right at this very moment, deducing Sherlock as though their roles had been reversed.

Posh, unruffled Sherlock Holmes...

John would probably be wondering how on earth a blatant aristocrat such as himself could react in such a way. John himself had been through so much, after all. It wasn't like Sherlock had been shot at - fucking hell, he was so pathetic--

Sherlock could feel that familiar weight on his chest again, like a steel-capped boot was pressing harshly down on his ribs. His body was taught like a bowstring about to snap, his breath bated, poised to spiral out of control at the first indication that he needed to run... He always felt like he needed to run. That spiteful voice rung through his ears in a barrage of barbed insults that he couldn't discern, because it was yelling and yelling meant...

Sherlock wrapped his long arms tightly around his legs, pushing his forehead into his knees as though he was physically trying to hold himself together. Alone in his bedroom, the fully-grown man lost himself in his hatefully over-zealous mind, the blood rushing so loudly in his ears that he could scarcely hear another sound--

But no! He had to be able to hear! Hearing was the only way he could avoid it - he had to... He couldn't bring his eyes upwards to face him; couldn't draw his gaze up to the face that so terrified him. He knew what was coming. He knew, he knew, he knew--

So why was he still so afraid of the pain?

It was just pain. It was just a physical sensation that every living thing experienced. It didn't matter...

'Get off the floor.'

No. No - please.

'Stand up. Now!'

Oh, god. No - he didn't want to. He didn't want to feel it again, he didn't want anymore pain--

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Sherlock began to whisper, his back pressed tightly up against the wall, his large coat quivering as the body below it shook. "Please no more, please. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--"

He would rather die.

Weak as he was, human as he was, he'd rather die than face this again. He was so scared - so scared...

"Please, please, please, please, please," he continued to whisper frantically, the words almost a chant now as he pled to nothing but his knees, which were damp with tears--

The worst part was waiting. Waiting, in that split second, for the pain to hit. Waiting to see how bad things would be this time. Waiting for the moment that yell split the air - waiting for the moment he was no longer in control, and instead he was pressed into the cold surface of the tiles, and he couldn't move, and... And then he'd wait in pain. When it paused - paused, because it never truly ended - he'd feel just how deeply he'd been broken. He'd be so keenly aware of how every inhale stung in his chest like a knife wound. How, even days later, he couldn't sit properly because of the bruised and blooming marks. And still his heart would beat so blindingly fast because it was waiting too. Waiting for the next time, as though it believed if it could just pound that much faster, he might be able to run away. But he never could...

Sherlock couldn't breathe.

But he was used to it.