#fic

[acuriousincident]

It’s the final one.

He finishes shooting up in the bathroom mere minutes following John’s departure, sinking back against the bathtub with a deep sigh of relief. The effect is immediate, a happy high rushing through his veins, bypassing the blood-brain barrier and blocking his dopamine transporters. Leaving him flooded. Drowning.

He was drowning, really, before John came back from Yemen. This is just the chemical aftermath and he understands it better, he thinks, than the rest. It’s a matter of biology, of simple cause and effect.

As his mind slowly stabilises itself in its artificial equilibrium, he thinks about John.

Then, he bins his needle and dumps the cocaine in the toilet. Flushes and remembers how to breathe.

*

The flat, he thinks, is not messier than usual. All the same, he throws his energy into cleaning, sorting, throwing things out and clearing shelves. Simultaneously, he thinks about Dead Peter, the body beneath the floorboards. A contracted murder for sure, though the police is working a different angle, the spurned lover thesis. Sherlock already knows who ordered it (old Mrs. Clifford with the runaway Siamese) and why (bored) but seeing as Geoffrey won’t allow him access to the crime scene, his trail is growing colder by the second.

He stares at the taxodermied bat. Puts it back on the mantle with a frown. John’s bound to visit Mary, of course. She has medical training and the patience of a saint, she’s the only natural choice out of John’s narrow circle of acquaintances. Within long, he’ll be padding about in her new flat, sweaty and nauseous and trying not to vomit on her boyfriend’s medical magazines. Eventually, he’ll go to bed, restless and longing for another drink. And then?

Perhaps if Sherlock hadn’t cleared the flat for all alcoholic beverages upon John’s return, maybe he wouldn’t have had to binge alone, at night, in pubs. Maybe he would have stayed at home, pacing the flat with that terrible, lost expression on his face and maybe Sherlock would have tried to touch him.

Maybe that would have been a disaster, too.

*

He makes it through the kitchen twice, even scrubbing the floor, until suddenly, he’s in John’s old bedroom. He blinks, trying to remember how he got here and drawing a blank.

For a moment, he just pauses - in the middle of nothing much, hands curled into fists by his sides. Window, he thinks. Window, wall, floor boards (Dead Peter, Mrs. Clifford, cat). Closet. Closets. Bed. Door. He pauses. Blinks. Then, he runs his hand slowly along the window sill, dust clinging to his fingertips.

Skin particles.

Suddenly, he can’t breathe. He inhales, inhales again, faster this time, but it doesn’t help (of course not, you idiot, you’re hyperventilating) and he backs up against the closet on the other side of the room, gasping for air like a stranded fish. His fingertips feel dry and he rubs them together mindlessly, gaze flickering around the room.

John’s at Mary’s. John’s detoxing at Mary’s. John’s sleeping, eating and going through Hell at Mary’s, two days, he said, but two days a long time and when Sherlock’s eyes snap towards the window, he realises that it’s night.

It’s night and there’s a new injection mark on his arm because he didn’t throw it all away, of course he didn’t, he’s not stupid, and now he’s lost hours while John’s living life in slow motion. They’re finally completely and utterly out of sync.

He collapses against the closet, staring off into space and stubbornly ignoring the ache between his shoulders.

*

He comes down slowly, body shaking and stomach cramping painfully. With a wince, he gets to his feet. John’s room is shrouded in darkness, the flat almost eerily quiet (where’s Mrs. Hudson? Not at her sister’s, not in town, out of town, can’t remember, must have deleted it). He straightens up, wipes at his clothes mostly by habit, and starts towards the door.

Stops.

Though this room really isn’t his to sort, it isn’t truly John’s, either. Not anymore. John’s room is downstairs, is everywhere in 221B (he’s at Mary’s) and this room is just a semi-blank space for the left-overs, the stuff he hasn’t bothered to relocate.

There’s nothing important in this room (Sherlock’s in it, along with a bed, walls, floor boards, the window, closets, door).

He nibbles at the end of one finger absentmindedly, gaze trailing over the tallest closet. There’s nothing in there. There’s nothing of value. As he draws closer, a very distant part of his mind keeps signalling danger do not cross do not enter and he can’t see why not, there’s nothing in there, there’s nothing here.

With a sniff, he throws open the door. Clothes, he thinks. A row of binders, documents, personal but boring, there’s no need to go through them, none at all (John’s at Mary’s) but he does it anyway because Sherlock always needs to know, he can’t not know, and the comedown is making it worse, is making this search for nothing quite imperative.

As he swipes through punched pockets galore, he comes across exactly what he expected and then, something else altogether.

He stares. Blinks.

Pulls out the small velvet box and drops the binder onto the floor with a clatter.

*

In the end, it goes like this:


The sitting-room’s clean, it’s sorted like the rest of the flat, and he’s on the sofa with the small box open on the coffee table in front of him, empty now.

He passes the ring slowly from hand to hand, weighing it, feeling it out (it’s smooth, soft-edged, devoid of gems or textures; it’s from Mappin & Webb and hideously expensive; and it fits him perfectly, it feels exactly right).

He thinks about John, leaving for Mary’s. Leaving for Yemen.

Then, very, very briefly, he thinks about Eastern Europe.

Eventually, it’s another shot, another fix, and he’s back on the sofa, staring at the ring between his hands and waiting for John to come back, to come back and to leave again, as he’s bound to do. It’s not a matter of trust or love or any other sentimental construct, it’s just the most likely, most logical outcome.

And though it hurts like a bitch, he clings to it because he’s drowning and he might as well.

Final truly is a difficult, difficult concept.

~