A/N: This is my fourth fanfic published today. I don't know how I'm doing this; I should be writing my final papers. But you know. The fandom life. Enjoy!
This is for a dear friend of mine, on her 20th birthday. M, you know who you are ;)
It's like a drug.
Other people don't understand, because they are boring and mundane and live common little lives that are filled with joy and sorrow and frustration, simplistic little things that serve as motive and method and nothing more.
He's not afraid of all of that. He removed it from his line of focus long ago, because, if left there, he might have become afraid of it.
He tells himself he's long since kicked the habit of emotions.
It's his brain that gets him now.
They don't understand. Nobody does, nobody he knows (except for his brother, who doesn't count) can imagine what it's like to be exhilarated, intoxicated, enlivened and uplifted by his own mind.
He's addicted to his own brilliance.
It is, after all, all he has.
He's long past pretending that his particular behavior patterns aren't categorized as "arrogant." He doesn't care. That's not what this is about—this titillation, this high he gets from watching himself work, from following the beautifully mechanized system of his mind that is so near completion. So near perfection.
Yet like any drug, there's a crash. And his mind crashes on two counts. He still gets bored, between the hits.
And he's still lonely.
But every addict knows there's no drug for that.