I have two needs. One is well written Sherlock/John fanfiction. The other is realistic Sherlock pov. It's too rare so I tried my hand at it. Enjoy the insanity, and when you're finished let me know you read.
Useless. Utterly useless. To be without use. Without purpose. To not have a reason for existing. To not fulfill a desired outcome, or to not have an intended outcome to begin with. In other words a vain effort that will only end in futility. Completely and utterly useless.
Worse than useless though, it is a waste of time, a waste of space and a waste of thought. In the infinite reaches of the glory that my mind palace is, has been, and henceforth shall be, this one scrap of information – this conversation with myself – has no place. Certainly there is room for it. In point of fact, the spot it occupies most frequently is a manila folder tucked away in the top drawer of the 27th filing cabinet of the room with the dreary wallpaper and no light source to speak of aside from that which streams in from the hallway. This room, located in the furthest point from the center, in the north east wing of the subbasement level was typically where I sorted things I found tiring. Paradoxes. Infinite loops. Other people's philosophical mash. Futile pursuits. Things that exist, are of no interest or use to me, that I simply cannot (for at least 4 justifiable reasons per sheet of information) delete. And of course, for John Watson.
But why should that space be wasted on something so maddening. So unrelated to me. So completely ridiculous.
I sit atop the kitchenette table with my fingers interlaced and elbows propped atop my uncomfortable and knobby legs, which rest on the only chair in the flat that is indeed not covered in beakers or soiled lab coats or instruments or illicit substances or magazines or wires of a mysterious nature. Poised rigidly on this table I glare into the empty air before me. Instead of cabinets, a great structure of hallways and stairways and doorways and other-ways that the material world had yet to see gleams, every inch of every room holding memories, information, research, comparisons, references, theories, and every scrap of knowledge that I deemed important (or at the very least, interesting).
Every weekday at precisely 5:00am, I wake without need for alarms or bells. The streets of London - wonderful London - are always quiet at this hour, so that is when I take inventory of my mind.
Lately, my routine has contained another static step. Every weekday at precisely 5:01am, after settling down somewhere in the flat - a different place every day of the week - and beginning my run through the whole lot alphabetically, chronologically or relative to my fancy on the given morning, I have to sit there wasting time to delete the same damned piece of information. The same file. The same idea. Every morning I set flame to a torn, folded, weathered sheet of college ruled spiral notebook paper measuring to a very peculiar 13"x9" and detailing the only experience with emotion that had ever tormented me for longer than a full minute.
Into the palace I glared, eyes wide, frustration coming off me in waves. In torrents of rain and wind. A hurricane of chagrin.
This won't do.
None of this would do.
But what could I do?
As long as it has been the beginning of me, it has been the end of me - I'm being tortured by my own (apparently) inescapable humanity. Even as I sit here amid my experiments, vastly intellectually superior to every person on this foggy mess of an island, my mind insists on constantly fixating itself on this one thought. This emotion. On this.
This.
How did this start.
Start.
Begin.
The beginning.
There's always a beginning. The first spark must have been when a man whose name I had long since deleted - a mutual friend of ours - said he would introduce me to someone I might be able to find a flat with.
I easily deduced every possible scenario. Based off the personality, history, faults, monetary wealth, race and orientation of the man in front of me there were several kinds of people with whom he would be acquainted. Of these hypothetical acquaintances, there was a small number that would actually be simultaneously hard-up to find housing in London, on good enough terms with the man to be a reputable housemate suggestion, and gullible or hated enough to be put in a room alone with someone as disagreeable as the man truly found me.
Despite that, in total there were over one-hundred thousand cases where the very specific type type of new person and I would fight and they would leave in the span of three minutes to three weeks.
The first three steps he took into my lab though, I knew he would fit into the under-fifty cases in which we get along. After the meeting was over, I filed him into the ten cases wherein we both enjoy at least some of the aspects of the company of the other, and also where he doesn't fantasize about leaving constantly.
By the end of our third meeting, I understood that there were only two scenarios left, and in both of them, I was in love with John Watson.
This was - and still is - troubling because I have taken an oath to remain loyal to intellectualism and the pursuit of knowledge, abandoning emotion for the fool's gold folly that it truly is. Even more so though... on occasion, the inevitability of my fall troubled me so because of the simple fact that John Watson was not gay.
I've known since the beginning. I was told mere minutes after I figured out it was inevitable that he would eventually be my first love, and naturally I was none too pleased. Of course, what I mean to say is that I was displeased about the reality that I would have to experience a first love, and not the reality that my love would never come to fruition. Another unnecessary experience, bedazzling the brain with chemicals and hormones, love is a chain reaction of emotion that dazzles the senses and dulls the mind.
If I were to work as usual, I couldn't afford to love, so I deleted it.
But it came back the very next morning, promptly at 5:00am.
If you enjoyed it, thanks. I'd appreciate a nod. Sleep now. Work tomorrow. Love.