what the fuck why did i write this, augh
the science of circumvention, spins a different ending for 'the great game'. rated pg-13, and warnings for drug content and disturbing images.
Sherlock grinds his teeth a lot more these days, and audibly.
Yes, he's perfectly aware that it's bad for him. Yes, he's perfectly aware that bruxism inevitably will drive his smile to something uglier (shortening and blunting the teeth, intercuspation, temperomandibular joint dysfunction), but, quite frankly, he can't bring himself to care enough. It's not as if he doesn't notice he's doing it - of course he's doing it, of course he notices, he notices everything - it's just markedly identified as a coping mechanism. Destructive, but necessary.
He gets thwaps on the shoulder from John, when he notices. "Will you stop that? You'll grind the things down to powder."
It's been two weeks since the pool, since the semtex and the gun, Westwood and a cruel cruel smile done up like barbed wire. There's a part of Sherlock that wants to forcibly delete it all, to forget this ever happened and goddamn Moriarty and everything with it. There's a larger, angrier, spiteful part that defies him, that plays the scene over constantly in his mind with the click-whir of a projection film.
He needs more details. He needs to see what he's missed.
The flat's been redecorated, but it looks like Ted Kaczynski has done the job. The walls are coated; newspaper clippings, obituaries, photos, business cards, anything. Anything, anything, anything, everything that he knows about James Moriarty - it's a fixation, it's an engrossment, it's a fucking raving obsession that he can't shake (and he has tried).
John doesn't ask him if he's all right, because he already knows the answer. John doesn't ask him to stop, because he knows he needs this.
"Janus Cars employee: David Lincoln, graduate of Newcastle with top marks, incarcerated -- "
"Have you slept yet?"
" -- years ago, you're the one keeping track. How long has it been?"
"Three days. At least a quick lie down, Sherlock."
"I don't need it. Waste of time."
"Yes, well. Those working brain cells are overrated anyway."
Sherlock suffered massive burns up his right leg, and one of his fingers is splinted (messily, after he tired of the traditional one getting in the way, making him clumsy, and they're taped now). He has two broken ribs and three more cracked, and he can still, clear as day, feel the spot where John's arm was wrapped tight around his chest, protective, and it hurt then and it did sometimes now, seared into his flesh like a brand.
John doesn't know about the searing, but he does know about the rest, which he details and lets knowingly fall on deaf ears, tossing on a bit about him being stubborner than a mule for good measure.
"It's like arguing with a brick wall."
Sherlock's fingers trace haphazard lines across a map of London, several buildings highlighted, even more streets marked in Sharpie.
"Except the brick wall doesn't shower, and he smells a bit."
"Nobody's making you stay."
"Oh, so you are listening?"
"Hardly," Sherlock corrects, as he stands on the coffee table, rudely, arms akimbo and teeth snagged sharply into his bottom lip.
"Bed, Sherlock, please. I'm begging you." You're ruining yourself.
There's a long pause, and then, "Five minutes," and it sounds enough like a promise that John's comfortable, accepting.
It's seven and a half minutes later when Sherlock slips into the confines of his room, and beautifully, amazingly, the light switches off from underneath the door.
//
13 APRIL 2010 13:17
At least long enough to
know you're still alive in
there. that's all i'm
asking.
13 APRIL 2010 13:22
An hour.
13 APRIL 2010 13:30
She's empty.
13 APRIL 2010 13:31
No sign of her bones.
shd be an interesting one.
13 APRIL 2010 13:34
'Should' is only three
more letters. It's really
not that difficult.
SH
13 APRIL 2010 13:35
I'll be down shortly.
SH
He distinctly remembers enjoying these crime scenes, at some point in time, back before they were just a desperate ploy to get him out of the flat. He only comes anymore when Lestrade's texts are frequent enough (or frantic enough, overwrought enough), when he stops rolling his eyes long enough to feel the small twist of guilt (or perhaps it's just impatience).
They function like clockwork and he certainly feels like clockwork, like he's a machine that's wound too much, like all his cogs and gears are whirring and he can't get them to stop (more than usual, too much). His skin's too tight and his clothes don't fit and when he steps out of the cool comfort of his flat, he's suddenly aware of eyes, everywhere, of the sun and the footprints and all the details of the world churning inside.
John is a help, though he'll never admit. Something solid, of which he is inherently sure.
They investigate. She's, indeed, very much dead. Sherlock gathers what he needs and leaves. Even Anderson's not so bad - Donovan keeps getting these funny looks around Sherlock and John, ever since the pool incident; she casts sidelong glances like he won't notice. Her jaw squares when she does this, and there's no doubt in Sherlock's mind that it's a direct cause of Anderson's strange new habit of shifting nervously and biting his insults in two before they can escape. Sherlock doesn't ask, or even induce, because he doesn't care.
The two get a takeaway, Thai, and spend the night in the flat. Sherlock uses John as a sounding board for the case, and only looks towards his Wall of Jim five and a half times. He eats pad thai and two extra spring rolls, and John breathes a sigh of relief.
//
Sherlock's apartment was never clean, not really, and not in the dusted and scrubbed and tidied sense - that much is obvious - but in the sense where he spends long hours in the bath, in his room, longer than John wants to ask about. After all, Sherlock is an aficionado, practiced after long years of carefully hiding his nastier habits. He's a neat monster, fastidious, and while John can't directly prove it, can't find needles laying around (and he looks for the powder traces, Sherlock knows he does, and the tiny bags with orderly amounts of white dust and other colors and creations that John can't care to think about), he knows better.
The glazed eyes are difficult to miss, and Sherlock is sorry for that.
The finding him cold on the sofa, mouth slack, eyes frozen, needle still jammed into his arm; that one's probably worse.
Sherlock's reliably shocked that John never carted him to the A&E, and when John orders him to be still, checks his vitals and lectures him quietly, wordlessly (far more effective than any speeches could be, with his set jaw and that horrible, emptied, disapproving look in his eyes whenever their gazes meet, it's awful, it makes Sherlock's stomach feel like it's been hollowed out), his lack of protest is notable, and he's silent.
Silent; not quiet. Silent like the absence of sound, like the cavernous, infinite feeling of the room, like all the buzzing of the questions and curses and hisses and swears like should probably be said but aren't, at all, it's just silent, it's devoid, and Sherlock doesn't trust his mouth to speak, to form the words he's thinking of saying but couldn't possibly explain correctly, not now. Words, which had always been his best friend, fingers linked and clutched tightly, and now he despises them, none of them are good enough.
"You're trying to kill yourself, aren't you?"
John's voice is steady, just like his hands, and when he speaks it cracks the ice that's glazed over the two of them, that cold and brittle silence. Sherlock's eyes are shut and his head is tilted upward; John's fingers touch against his glands, callused.
"I mean, I know you are, I'm not thick. Not really. I'm no consulting detective, but," and there's no tremor when he speaks of this, interesting, "I should know." The signs.
What's most fascinating about John Watson is the spaces between his words, the tiny allowances and confessions he releases, carefully and quietly. He knows he gives them - he has to know he gives them.
"I'm not going to watch that, and you know it. And if you want me sticking around -- "
"Nobody's making you stay."
It's a constant threat, and it always guts the room, absolutely eviscerates it. John's jaw squares, and though his hands have no purpose to be there, not clinically, his palms are flat against either side of Sherlock's neck - he's a brace, he's a rock (and Sherlock can't bear to open his eyes).
"I'm not going anywhere just yet."
Mm. That's what he was afraid of.
//
The devil is in the details, and whether he's just ignoring them or just hasn't noticed them - he knows he's ignoring them, of course he's noticed them - he can't say for sure, or actually, probably, doesn't want to say for sure; yes, that's far more likely. He can see it in the way that John doesn't tidy the flat anymore, not like he used to; he can see it in the wasted food on the counter (molding over by now, attracting flies); he can see it in the way there's jumpers and addressed mail and constant reminders.
He uses John's cane (defiantly, childishly) because it's better than limping (his burns, they're still bad, unkempt, he's missed two appointments at the surgery already).
"Just because you think I don't need it anymore -- "
"Because you don't need it anymore."
" -- doesn't mean it gives you any right -- "
"Your pain is false, a conceptualized fallacy that your brain wants to believe, perhaps even needs to believe, but your limp is imaginary, and mine is quite real."
The look on John's face is astounded, appalled, betrayed. Sherlock feels disgustingly proud.
"Get your own cane, Sherlock, I mean it."
"Then take it from me."
John doesn't come back that night. Sherlock takes twice his oxycodone with a glass of wine, and spends long, long hours lying on the floor, on his back, staring up at his wall (his artwork, his end).
They're functioning. They're not working.
//
"Minghun, it's an ancient Chinese tradition, a ghost marriage. An unmarried male is buried with a young woman; essentially, a wife for his afterlife - largely out of practice in this day and age, but still, observed, occasionally."
"The bones are removed?"
Today is one that tests his patience. He's drawn together by fishing line these days, each thread snapping at its respective time and place, snagging tight on his skin whenever it gives way. It shows in his face, in the deep and sculpted dark smudges under his eyes, in the bright bright fire to them that's always there and never seems to fade, these days - he's angry, he's irritable, he'll do anything for a fight and it's incredibly evident in how he lashes out.
"Less traditional - this woman didn't die of natural causes, obvious, even you lot can figure that much out. The lateral surgical marks detour, slight enough to appear uniform with the others, but he's careful, this surgeon, all the lines are straight, methodical, and the curve isn't in his character; therefore it's noticeable enough to find there are traces of -- "
"Sherlock, the speech, spare us, we've all seen the autopsy -- "
" -- stab wounds. Cause of death: intrathoracic hemorrhaging -- "
"Honestly -- "
" -- and is the general demographic of the room reduced to children?" Sherlock turns his attention to John, waving a flippant hand. "It's like working with children, at the least, certainly."
"Sherlock, reel it in."
"If they'd merely be compliant sounding boards."
"We're right here, you know," Lestrade interrupts, giving a small wave, "hello."
"Do they expect me to be taking this seriously? Because they're certainly not, so I'm not sure how I'm meant to be," Sherlock ignores him, and John grates out a warning, his name - it's careful and testy and bound tightly in twine, just like Sherlock feels.
"Any time you want to include us on the conversation!"
"John, could you please inform the good Detective Inspector -- "
"Sherlock!"
It's delicate now, and John carefully rubs his forehead, thumb pressing worryingly into his temple. Sherlock's eyes rivet directly to Lestrade's, savagely. "Can I assist you?"
"Now you've done it."
He ignores John's comment. Lestrade looks absolutely decimated.
"What are you trying to get at?"
It's a trick question, and a banal one. "Isn't it obvious?"
"Not to me, no."
"All right, that's enough out of you," John tells Sherlock, with all the quiet demand of a soldier. His fingers are strong when they latch around Sherlock's forearm, and he tugs - not angrily, definitely authoritatively - towards the door. Sherlock doesn't budge, not right away, but his jaw shifts. Irritated.
There's that itching sensation at the back of Sherlock's skull again, what he knows but he doesn't know and what he should think and what he absolutely, completely, gut-wrenchingly doesn't want to. John Watson is the picture of normalcy, and in the most desperate of ways, Sherlock molds his ideals around the man; they shape easily around him, that picture of good, because John is good, and knows what's normal (despite being absolutely and unmistakably insane in his own right - he's still here, and that's endlessly mind-boggling, fantastically mind-boggling).
Sherlock can feel his psyche begin to pervert, and it crumples, little by little, daily. His morals are all wrong and so is everything else.
"Go home, Sherlock," Lestrade agrees, quietly, and Sherlock achingly wants to ask why, what changed, but he's too childish right now, just bull-headed and spiteful. He turns on his heel, with fingers still unmoving on his arm, though he doesn't mind. Present, but the two work as one unit, regardless, and it's not as if they're actually there.
He feels misplaced, like a puzzle piece that's been jammed into the wrong spot entirely, and it's utterly devastating.
//
Colors are all wrong. Pink looks like burgundy and the details Sherlock once relished, the ones on which he so closely depended, are his enemies, but not silly like Mycroft, like arch enemies and comic books and things that didn't matter, but on a scarier level, like his wall, like haunting chuckles and names that start with 'M'. He hates the things that he notices, and he does do well to try to delete the most of them - they're no use, he doesn't care how true, they're cluttering up what space he needs for his work.
Emotions, clouding and beguiling.
He tries to think back to a year previous, when things mattered less and his mind wasn't so fogged. He can't. There's vodka in the freezer, and that helps, but it makes him wrung dry, like an old sponge, and he lies on the floor for hours, his legs swung up onto the sofa and his head ticking endlessly back and forth to the tune of a song, to the tune of his own thoughts and the whirling, rushing feeling inside of his ears.
Things are quiet (as opposed to silent), and John's novel is painstakingly not being read. He's been going over the same paragraph for well on a half hour now - Sherlock knows but doesn't say, doesn't want to interrupt, only that's a lie, and he does, soon after, he can't handle this quiet, this buzzing, and maybe it's not quiet, it's silent, and he forgets what calm feels like and when clamping the heels of his hands firmly and forcefully into his ears doesn't quell shouting thoughts, he speaks, finally. Hours of silence later.
"I never did ask you."
John's given up on his book, and he shuts it and sets it just on the table. The cane leans lazily, against the arm of the couch, and Sherlock wonders, vaguely, if he falls asleep here, if he'll never wake up, asphyxiated in his own vomit. He shouldn't finish this bottle.
"Ask what, then? What's on your mind?"
"Everything," Sherlock answers predictably cryptic, and his hands work in counter-clockwise circles around his ears, "and nothing."
John waits patiently for him to explain; he always does.
"I don't understand," Sherlock adds after a few beats. His eyes flutter shut, and for a few long seconds, passes the time, rolling them around, darting them back and forth, seeing how long before his thoughts churn.
(Because they're up and down and roundabout and cross in different sections that he can't keep track of, at least right now, and there are some times - but only some times, the not-special times, because if it were all times, he'd be always disappointed, achingly disappointed - where he tries, he really tries, wishes he could try to control them, and he forces them into tiny roundabout circles, just for a little while, just so he can breathe again, all that noise, all that static.)
"I don't understand why you're here, and I absolutely don't understand why you have not bothered to leave."
There's a pause, a noted one, and Sherlock can see John prop his chin up on the flat of his hand as clearly as if his eyes were open, just by the shifting of the fabric, the soft exhale of breath as he considers his answer (because he always does, carefully and precisely). It's lucky Sherlock's eyes are shut. He's tired of colors. He's tired of red, he's never liked red.
"Do you want me to leave?"
Ever so exact, ever so doctorly.
"I don't think I'd be here, if you didn't want me here."
But he does open his eyes (fabrications and fairy tales were never his forte), and he does focus on John, then, and the result twinges something inside him, he can't explain - it's ugly, and twisted, and coiled in something that's utterly defeated and hateful. John's expression is one of pity, one of concern that's engraved deeply onto his features, and Sherlock knows it well, if a quieter and subdued form of it. It's not right, everything is just that slight bit of off, like it's burning too brightly in his mind and maybe he's not remembering correctly.
He wonders, idly, why he's never asked John, why he's never questioned the smattering of scarlet caked to the side of his head - it's macabre, what's missing, and you can almost see straight through, all the bits of skull pulverized and tangled in his hair and the tiny pulsing veins and capillaries still twisting away, it's fascinating, it's horrid, it makes the entire room stink of copper and cooked meat (pork, Sherlock decided, long ago). It's all he can smell, ever, he can taste it in his mouth and his pupils constrict when he looks at the man. Pinpricks.
Blood delineates down the curve of John's jaw and sops into his sweater, the same one that he never changes, the same blood that never changes, and Sherlock never asks, why did he never ask? Is it because he already knows the answer?
"Correct," Sherlock responds, after a pause that's pregnant with reluctance.
His breath comes slowly and difficultly, and he's never quite forgotten something so simple before, something so base. Each puff burns in his throat like cigarette smoke, but he hasn't touched the things in months, even with everything else, but smoking doesn't hurt like this, it doesn't feel like cotton and fire and thick, thick, thick like he's swallowing around a pillow. The sensation is so foreign, it's so distracting, and he has nothing to compare it to, absolutely nothing in the world, which is the most exhilarating thing he can think of, the most frightening thing he can think of.
"Are you all right?" John asks. His tone is rife with worry, with apprehension, and when he speaks, the unspeakably red lines paint down his fingers, where his chin's still rested. Sherlock watches blood sluice down John's wrist, into his sleeve.
"I'm fine. I'm -- fine."
Sherlock's fingers steeple under his chin, and he stares up at the ceiling.
His chest hurts.
Sherlock grinds his teeth a lot more these days, and audibly.
Yes, he's perfectly aware that it's bad for him. Yes, he's perfectly aware that bruxism inevitably will drive his smile to something uglier (shortening and blunting the teeth, intercuspation, temperomandibular joint dysfunction), but, quite frankly, he can't bring himself to care enough. It's not as if he doesn't notice he's doing it - of course he's doing it, of course he notices, he notices everything - it's just markedly identified as a coping mechanism. Destructive, but necessary.
He gets thwaps on the shoulder from John, when he notices. "Will you stop that? You'll grind the things down to powder."
It's been two weeks since the pool, since the semtex and the gun, Westwood and a cruel cruel smile done up like barbed wire. There's a part of Sherlock that wants to forcibly delete it all, to forget this ever happened and goddamn Moriarty and everything with it. There's a larger, angrier, spiteful part that defies him, that plays the scene over constantly in his mind with the click-whir of a projection film.
He needs more details. He needs to see what he's missed.
The flat's been redecorated, but it looks like Ted Kaczynski has done the job. The walls are coated; newspaper clippings, obituaries, photos, business cards, anything. Anything, anything, anything, everything that he knows about James Moriarty - it's a fixation, it's an engrossment, it's a fucking raving obsession that he can't shake (and he has tried).
John doesn't ask him if he's all right, because he already knows the answer. John doesn't ask him to stop, because he knows he needs this.
"Janus Cars employee: David Lincoln, graduate of Newcastle with top marks, incarcerated -- "
"Have you slept yet?"
" -- years ago, you're the one keeping track. How long has it been?"
"Three days. At least a quick lie down, Sherlock."
"I don't need it. Waste of time."
"Yes, well. Those working brain cells are overrated anyway."
Sherlock suffered massive burns up his right leg, and one of his fingers is splinted (messily, after he tired of the traditional one getting in the way, making him clumsy, and they're taped now). He has two broken ribs and three more cracked, and he can still, clear as day, feel the spot where John's arm was wrapped tight around his chest, protective, and it hurt then and it did sometimes now, seared into his flesh like a brand.
John doesn't know about the searing, but he does know about the rest, which he details and lets knowingly fall on deaf ears, tossing on a bit about him being stubborner than a mule for good measure.
"It's like arguing with a brick wall."
Sherlock's fingers trace haphazard lines across a map of London, several buildings highlighted, even more streets marked in Sharpie.
"Except the brick wall doesn't shower, and he smells a bit."
"Nobody's making you stay."
"Oh, so you are listening?"
"Hardly," Sherlock corrects, as he stands on the coffee table, rudely, arms akimbo and teeth snagged sharply into his bottom lip.
"Bed, Sherlock, please. I'm begging you." You're ruining yourself.
There's a long pause, and then, "Five minutes," and it sounds enough like a promise that John's comfortable, accepting.
It's seven and a half minutes later when Sherlock slips into the confines of his room, and beautifully, amazingly, the light switches off from underneath the door.
//
13 APRIL 2010 13:17
At least long enough to
know you're still alive in
there. that's all i'm
asking.
13 APRIL 2010 13:22
An hour.
13 APRIL 2010 13:30
She's empty.
13 APRIL 2010 13:31
No sign of her bones.
shd be an interesting one.
13 APRIL 2010 13:34
'Should' is only three
more letters. It's really
not that difficult.
SH
13 APRIL 2010 13:35
I'll be down shortly.
SH
He distinctly remembers enjoying these crime scenes, at some point in time, back before they were just a desperate ploy to get him out of the flat. He only comes anymore when Lestrade's texts are frequent enough (or frantic enough, overwrought enough), when he stops rolling his eyes long enough to feel the small twist of guilt (or perhaps it's just impatience).
They function like clockwork and he certainly feels like clockwork, like he's a machine that's wound too much, like all his cogs and gears are whirring and he can't get them to stop (more than usual, too much). His skin's too tight and his clothes don't fit and when he steps out of the cool comfort of his flat, he's suddenly aware of eyes, everywhere, of the sun and the footprints and all the details of the world churning inside.
John is a help, though he'll never admit. Something solid, of which he is inherently sure.
They investigate. She's, indeed, very much dead. Sherlock gathers what he needs and leaves. Even Anderson's not so bad - Donovan keeps getting these funny looks around Sherlock and John, ever since the pool incident; she casts sidelong glances like he won't notice. Her jaw squares when she does this, and there's no doubt in Sherlock's mind that it's a direct cause of Anderson's strange new habit of shifting nervously and biting his insults in two before they can escape. Sherlock doesn't ask, or even induce, because he doesn't care.
The two get a takeaway, Thai, and spend the night in the flat. Sherlock uses John as a sounding board for the case, and only looks towards his Wall of Jim five and a half times. He eats pad thai and two extra spring rolls, and John breathes a sigh of relief.
//
Sherlock's apartment was never clean, not really, and not in the dusted and scrubbed and tidied sense - that much is obvious - but in the sense where he spends long hours in the bath, in his room, longer than John wants to ask about. After all, Sherlock is an aficionado, practiced after long years of carefully hiding his nastier habits. He's a neat monster, fastidious, and while John can't directly prove it, can't find needles laying around (and he looks for the powder traces, Sherlock knows he does, and the tiny bags with orderly amounts of white dust and other colors and creations that John can't care to think about), he knows better.
The glazed eyes are difficult to miss, and Sherlock is sorry for that.
The finding him cold on the sofa, mouth slack, eyes frozen, needle still jammed into his arm; that one's probably worse.
Sherlock's reliably shocked that John never carted him to the A&E, and when John orders him to be still, checks his vitals and lectures him quietly, wordlessly (far more effective than any speeches could be, with his set jaw and that horrible, emptied, disapproving look in his eyes whenever their gazes meet, it's awful, it makes Sherlock's stomach feel like it's been hollowed out), his lack of protest is notable, and he's silent.
Silent; not quiet. Silent like the absence of sound, like the cavernous, infinite feeling of the room, like all the buzzing of the questions and curses and hisses and swears like should probably be said but aren't, at all, it's just silent, it's devoid, and Sherlock doesn't trust his mouth to speak, to form the words he's thinking of saying but couldn't possibly explain correctly, not now. Words, which had always been his best friend, fingers linked and clutched tightly, and now he despises them, none of them are good enough.
"You're trying to kill yourself, aren't you?"
John's voice is steady, just like his hands, and when he speaks it cracks the ice that's glazed over the two of them, that cold and brittle silence. Sherlock's eyes are shut and his head is tilted upward; John's fingers touch against his glands, callused.
"I mean, I know you are, I'm not thick. Not really. I'm no consulting detective, but," and there's no tremor when he speaks of this, interesting, "I should know." The signs.
What's most fascinating about John Watson is the spaces between his words, the tiny allowances and confessions he releases, carefully and quietly. He knows he gives them - he has to know he gives them.
"I'm not going to watch that, and you know it. And if you want me sticking around -- "
"Nobody's making you stay."
It's a constant threat, and it always guts the room, absolutely eviscerates it. John's jaw squares, and though his hands have no purpose to be there, not clinically, his palms are flat against either side of Sherlock's neck - he's a brace, he's a rock (and Sherlock can't bear to open his eyes).
"I'm not going anywhere just yet."
Mm. That's what he was afraid of.
//
The devil is in the details, and whether he's just ignoring them or just hasn't noticed them - he knows he's ignoring them, of course he's noticed them - he can't say for sure, or actually, probably, doesn't want to say for sure; yes, that's far more likely. He can see it in the way that John doesn't tidy the flat anymore, not like he used to; he can see it in the wasted food on the counter (molding over by now, attracting flies); he can see it in the way there's jumpers and addressed mail and constant reminders.
He uses John's cane (defiantly, childishly) because it's better than limping (his burns, they're still bad, unkempt, he's missed two appointments at the surgery already).
"Just because you think I don't need it anymore -- "
"Because you don't need it anymore."
" -- doesn't mean it gives you any right -- "
"Your pain is false, a conceptualized fallacy that your brain wants to believe, perhaps even needs to believe, but your limp is imaginary, and mine is quite real."
The look on John's face is astounded, appalled, betrayed. Sherlock feels disgustingly proud.
"Get your own cane, Sherlock, I mean it."
"Then take it from me."
John doesn't come back that night. Sherlock takes twice his oxycodone with a glass of wine, and spends long, long hours lying on the floor, on his back, staring up at his wall (his artwork, his end).
They're functioning. They're not working.
//
"Minghun, it's an ancient Chinese tradition, a ghost marriage. An unmarried male is buried with a young woman; essentially, a wife for his afterlife - largely out of practice in this day and age, but still, observed, occasionally."
"The bones are removed?"
Today is one that tests his patience. He's drawn together by fishing line these days, each thread snapping at its respective time and place, snagging tight on his skin whenever it gives way. It shows in his face, in the deep and sculpted dark smudges under his eyes, in the bright bright fire to them that's always there and never seems to fade, these days - he's angry, he's irritable, he'll do anything for a fight and it's incredibly evident in how he lashes out.
"Less traditional - this woman didn't die of natural causes, obvious, even you lot can figure that much out. The lateral surgical marks detour, slight enough to appear uniform with the others, but he's careful, this surgeon, all the lines are straight, methodical, and the curve isn't in his character; therefore it's noticeable enough to find there are traces of -- "
"Sherlock, the speech, spare us, we've all seen the autopsy -- "
" -- stab wounds. Cause of death: intrathoracic hemorrhaging -- "
"Honestly -- "
" -- and is the general demographic of the room reduced to children?" Sherlock turns his attention to John, waving a flippant hand. "It's like working with children, at the least, certainly."
"Sherlock, reel it in."
"If they'd merely be compliant sounding boards."
"We're right here, you know," Lestrade interrupts, giving a small wave, "hello."
"Do they expect me to be taking this seriously? Because they're certainly not, so I'm not sure how I'm meant to be," Sherlock ignores him, and John grates out a warning, his name - it's careful and testy and bound tightly in twine, just like Sherlock feels.
"Any time you want to include us on the conversation!"
"John, could you please inform the good Detective Inspector -- "
"Sherlock!"
It's delicate now, and John carefully rubs his forehead, thumb pressing worryingly into his temple. Sherlock's eyes rivet directly to Lestrade's, savagely. "Can I assist you?"
"Now you've done it."
He ignores John's comment. Lestrade looks absolutely decimated.
"What are you trying to get at?"
It's a trick question, and a banal one. "Isn't it obvious?"
"Not to me, no."
"All right, that's enough out of you," John tells Sherlock, with all the quiet demand of a soldier. His fingers are strong when they latch around Sherlock's forearm, and he tugs - not angrily, definitely authoritatively - towards the door. Sherlock doesn't budge, not right away, but his jaw shifts. Irritated.
There's that itching sensation at the back of Sherlock's skull again, what he knows but he doesn't know and what he should think and what he absolutely, completely, gut-wrenchingly doesn't want to. John Watson is the picture of normalcy, and in the most desperate of ways, Sherlock molds his ideals around the man; they shape easily around him, that picture of good, because John is good, and knows what's normal (despite being absolutely and unmistakably insane in his own right - he's still here, and that's endlessly mind-boggling, fantastically mind-boggling).
Sherlock can feel his psyche begin to pervert, and it crumples, little by little, daily. His morals are all wrong and so is everything else.
"Go home, Sherlock," Lestrade agrees, quietly, and Sherlock achingly wants to ask why, what changed, but he's too childish right now, just bull-headed and spiteful. He turns on his heel, with fingers still unmoving on his arm, though he doesn't mind. Present, but the two work as one unit, regardless, and it's not as if they're actually there.
He feels misplaced, like a puzzle piece that's been jammed into the wrong spot entirely, and it's utterly devastating.
//
Colors are all wrong. Pink looks like burgundy and the details Sherlock once relished, the ones on which he so closely depended, are his enemies, but not silly like Mycroft, like arch enemies and comic books and things that didn't matter, but on a scarier level, like his wall, like haunting chuckles and names that start with 'M'. He hates the things that he notices, and he does do well to try to delete the most of them - they're no use, he doesn't care how true, they're cluttering up what space he needs for his work.
Emotions, clouding and beguiling.
He tries to think back to a year previous, when things mattered less and his mind wasn't so fogged. He can't. There's vodka in the freezer, and that helps, but it makes him wrung dry, like an old sponge, and he lies on the floor for hours, his legs swung up onto the sofa and his head ticking endlessly back and forth to the tune of a song, to the tune of his own thoughts and the whirling, rushing feeling inside of his ears.
Things are quiet (as opposed to silent), and John's novel is painstakingly not being read. He's been going over the same paragraph for well on a half hour now - Sherlock knows but doesn't say, doesn't want to interrupt, only that's a lie, and he does, soon after, he can't handle this quiet, this buzzing, and maybe it's not quiet, it's silent, and he forgets what calm feels like and when clamping the heels of his hands firmly and forcefully into his ears doesn't quell shouting thoughts, he speaks, finally. Hours of silence later.
"I never did ask you."
John's given up on his book, and he shuts it and sets it just on the table. The cane leans lazily, against the arm of the couch, and Sherlock wonders, vaguely, if he falls asleep here, if he'll never wake up, asphyxiated in his own vomit. He shouldn't finish this bottle.
"Ask what, then? What's on your mind?"
"Everything," Sherlock answers predictably cryptic, and his hands work in counter-clockwise circles around his ears, "and nothing."
John waits patiently for him to explain; he always does.
"I don't understand," Sherlock adds after a few beats. His eyes flutter shut, and for a few long seconds, passes the time, rolling them around, darting them back and forth, seeing how long before his thoughts churn.
(Because they're up and down and roundabout and cross in different sections that he can't keep track of, at least right now, and there are some times - but only some times, the not-special times, because if it were all times, he'd be always disappointed, achingly disappointed - where he tries, he really tries, wishes he could try to control them, and he forces them into tiny roundabout circles, just for a little while, just so he can breathe again, all that noise, all that static.)
"I don't understand why you're here, and I absolutely don't understand why you have not bothered to leave."
There's a pause, a noted one, and Sherlock can see John prop his chin up on the flat of his hand as clearly as if his eyes were open, just by the shifting of the fabric, the soft exhale of breath as he considers his answer (because he always does, carefully and precisely). It's lucky Sherlock's eyes are shut. He's tired of colors. He's tired of red, he's never liked red.
"Do you want me to leave?"
Ever so exact, ever so doctorly.
"I don't think I'd be here, if you didn't want me here."
But he does open his eyes (fabrications and fairy tales were never his forte), and he does focus on John, then, and the result twinges something inside him, he can't explain - it's ugly, and twisted, and coiled in something that's utterly defeated and hateful. John's expression is one of pity, one of concern that's engraved deeply onto his features, and Sherlock knows it well, if a quieter and subdued form of it. It's not right, everything is just that slight bit of off, like it's burning too brightly in his mind and maybe he's not remembering correctly.
He wonders, idly, why he's never asked John, why he's never questioned the smattering of scarlet caked to the side of his head - it's macabre, what's missing, and you can almost see straight through, all the bits of skull pulverized and tangled in his hair and the tiny pulsing veins and capillaries still twisting away, it's fascinating, it's horrid, it makes the entire room stink of copper and cooked meat (pork, Sherlock decided, long ago). It's all he can smell, ever, he can taste it in his mouth and his pupils constrict when he looks at the man. Pinpricks.
Blood delineates down the curve of John's jaw and sops into his sweater, the same one that he never changes, the same blood that never changes, and Sherlock never asks, why did he never ask? Is it because he already knows the answer?
"Correct," Sherlock responds, after a pause that's pregnant with reluctance.
His breath comes slowly and difficultly, and he's never quite forgotten something so simple before, something so base. Each puff burns in his throat like cigarette smoke, but he hasn't touched the things in months, even with everything else, but smoking doesn't hurt like this, it doesn't feel like cotton and fire and thick, thick, thick like he's swallowing around a pillow. The sensation is so foreign, it's so distracting, and he has nothing to compare it to, absolutely nothing in the world, which is the most exhilarating thing he can think of, the most frightening thing he can think of.
"Are you all right?" John asks. His tone is rife with worry, with apprehension, and when he speaks, the unspeakably red lines paint down his fingers, where his chin's still rested. Sherlock watches blood sluice down John's wrist, into his sleeve.
"I'm fine. I'm -- fine."
Sherlock's fingers steeple under his chin, and he stares up at the ceiling.
His chest hurts.