To Alice. For being a good friend to an odd and awkward person when she needed you the most.
Thank you masterofthefall and Markings24 for betaing this piece.
The title of this one-shot comes from the song 'take me to church' by 'hozier'
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My breathing quickened as I ran through the hallways.
Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit….
I fucked up. I thought he'd care, not just leave me out with the trash. I shouldn't have told him. Should never have showed him.
*"John, there's something I haven't told you." His lips were tracing a pathway up my neck, leading towards the spot just behind my ear that made me melt.
"Whatever it is, can it wait?" he said, his hands moving under my shirt, resting on the small of my back. I thought about it. Even if I didn't tell him, he'd find out pretty damn soon. Surely it'd be better if I told him? The Other times I'd just run away, avoided the problem. But it couldn't be avoided, the time would always come. Unless I broke up with him, which was never an option.
"Just promise me you'll never run away…" I needed him. He was the one who allowed me to keep what little semblance of sanity I had. The one who kept my demons at bay.
"Never. You and me against the world, remember." He said, the chuckle clear in his voice.*
I only wish that was true. He'd seen them and run. Like they always did. Couldn't handle what they saw as 'their responsibility'. Why didn't they fucking realise that they just had to be there? They didn't have to pass a fucking test. They just had to see past the brains and the façade, and see me for who I actually was, not who everyone else wanted and expected me to be.
*Our mouths pressed together. This was where I belonged. With him in my arms and a hickey on my neck. He was shirtless and my fingers traced the lines of his pectoral and abdominal muscles, circling around his belly button, ghosting over the fine hairs there. Then his hands shifted to the hem of my t-shirt, and I stopped. My breathing quickened as I tried to remain calm. He could see, I just had to breathe. In and out. My head shifted slightly, forming a nod, and with that, his beautiful features instantly brightened. He lifted his arms, taking my top with them. In and out. I felt the cool air on my stomach as it was revealed to him.*
I collapsed against the stone wall, my chest heaving with cumbersome breaths. Why was I so stupid?! I always fucked everything up so fucking badly. I groped around in my pocket for the cold metal I always kept there. Damnit! I thought as I fumbled through the used tissues and paper detriments that littered the fabric. My fingers found the icy steel and I ran my fingers around its edge, relishing in the feel of the sharp pain that then emanated from my fingertips. I exhaled, showing my relief in that one motion.
*He pulled the fabric over the tips of my fingers, my torso obstructed from his view by the black cotton. I tried to remain calm, to convince myself that everything was fine. That my imagination was running away with me. He threw the top somewhere behind me, and his eyes traced across my newly exposed flesh. His eyes were immediately drawn to the thin, raised white lines criss-crossing my upper arms and my ribcage. Some fully healed over, some angry, red and weeping.
"Please tell me this isn't what I think it is." He stated, obviously trying to remain calm.
"Please, just hear me out." He turned away. "J…" He cut me off mid-sentence.
"You what?! We both agreed that this was over. That we would never do, nor speak of this again." I let my eyes wander down to his own arms. Traced with thin white lines, directing down towards two much thicker ones. One for each wrist.*
I pulled out the blade, grasping the smooth handle and staring as it caught the light of the setting sun. I dragged the light metal across the skin of my lower arm, as I let out a sigh of relief. A dream like trance overtaking me as my mind cleared. This was it. The only thing that helped. It may not get rid of the problem, but I could forget it. Forget all of the things that were wrong and lose myself in the feeling. This was my cocaine. My heroine. The thing that kept me going.
*He backed away, gasping for air. Oh god, please not this. Not now. He was hyperventilating. The doctors had called it a 'side effect' from his suicide attempt. The sugar coated way of saying PTSD. There was no other phrase for it. Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder. That's what it was. Plain and simple. The newspapers had been fucking hilarious. 'Damaged Teen Attempts Suicide In Baker Street High's Dormitories: Room 221B has been closed as a crime scene. Assumed to be as a result of hate crimes.' Yeah, sure that's what it was. Nothing to do with the abusive father and the drunk mother. Why would it have anything to do with the fact that his brother had been killed in Afghanistan? God, people were just so fucking blind!*
My blood pooled around the cut, giving me an odd sense of satisfaction. I had the power. I could control my own life. I cut deeper, the pain driving me, making my task clearer. What I had to do clearer. I brought up all my anger to the surface. All the memories that made me want to scream. Growing up in the 'perfect' brother's shadow. Never being enough. Handsome enough. Clever enough. Ambitious enough. Straight enough.
*I turned the corner and stood by the kitchen door whilst my Father complained loudly about the current political party in office. The radio blasting music in the far corner.
"Pansies, the lot of them. A bunch of fag's so distracted by the direction their dicks are pointing, that they can't running the fucking country before throwing into a ditch!" My Father everyone. Growing up I brushed off his comments. Thinking that when it was me it would all be different. He'd realise that I was still his son.*
My cuts subconsciously ran towards my veins. As I brought back the pain. The awfulness of that memory and its aftermath.
*The doorbell rang. Oh shit. He was early. Stupid James. Why couldn't he tell the fucking time?! I heard the door open, and my brother's haughty greeting of "How may I help you?"
James' voice rang clear. "Hi, my name's James Moriarty. I'm Sherlock's boyfriend." Oh shit.*
They had been so wrapped up with how it would 'look' they hadn't cared that their son was miserable. They set me up with girl after girl, whose brand new bright pink Lamborghini had been paid for by 'daddy dearest', banned him from seeing James and tried to get him signed up for hormone replacement therapy. Moriarty was so angry he confronted my mother. Ended up shooting her right in the head. Why did the fucking dick have to take a gun? It hadn't helped. In fact it had done the complete opposite. He got locked up, Mycroft got colder, and Father got….worse. Impossibly and irrevocably worse.
*I woke up to shouting. Since the 'incident' (as it had been dubbed) 'good old Dad' had fallen for the seduction of the bottle. He was erratic and irritable, but most of all he was angry. And with him anger bred violence. I got up and locked the door, then I went back to bed and fell asleep…A crash against the door raised me from my sleep.
"Why couldn't you just pretend to be normal?!" came the slurred voice of my father. "Fuck a few girls, find one that doesn't whine too much, settle down, get her to pop out a few little ankle biters and hope they don't come out as shirt-lifters like you did. Would that have been so fucking hard?!" My fingers itched for the habit I hoped I'd dropped long ago. I put my head under the pillow and tried to block out the sound. And then he was John. The boy who saved me, abandoned and broke me, saved me then broke me one last time.*
The blood loss was making me dizzy, but that only added to the sweet ecstasy I was feeling. Mycroft had found me. He came to see why I wasn't fucking yelling back like I usually did. I had emptied my sleeping pills into my hand, a whole box of them, taken them, and welcomed death. I woke up two months later with a splitting headache, and an intense anger towards my brother. No one understood. Except for that one sandy haired angel.
We met that September. Both attending 'the mad house'. Baker Street High for the Mentally Unstable. I wish I was kidding. We had a proper romance. Like one of the ones you see in the films. Kisses under willow trees, long moonlight walks, and a whole lot of shagging like fucking bunny rabbits. Then he tried it. And I wish to God he hadn't. All of a sudden our relationship was 'unhealthy', according to those bureaucratic fools in the school, and that was that. We got back together four months ago. No sex, neither of us were ready for that, but it was love all over again. John never spoke to me about that day he changed forever, except for the time he made me promise.
*Our fingers lazily intertwined in the evening sun. John was facing away from me, leaning against my chest as I trailed kisses cheerfully down the side of his neck.
"Sher?" he asked.
"What?" I mumbled against his skin.
"Just promise me you won't try it again." We both knew what he was talking about. Even then I wasn't sure I could make that promise. Even wrapped in the arms of the man I loved I couldn't promise that. But I couldn't let him know that. Ever.
"Ok….."*
I could barely see straight. The pain now blurring my vision instead of supplying that perfect clarity it usually did. Blood dripped from my arm as the world spun.
"John…I lo…" I tried to say. Wanting the world to know that with my dying breath I had told them that I didn't care that they didn't like it. Didn't care if they think it's unnatural. I love John Watson.
And then, I died.