Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Characters: Sherlock, Mycroft
Rated: PG-13 for drug use
Disclaimer: I don't own, I don't profit. I simply visit their valhalla to hear the stories.
Warnings: drug addiction depicted in a positive light.
You'd think this would be sad.
You'd think that seeing such a great mind brought down would be pitiable, that it would wrench something in your chest and make you ill.
It doesn't. If anything, there is a part of me that wishes I could keep him this way, the edges of the world blunted (but a blunted razor is still sharper than a butter knife), the colors smoothed together, a smile on his face and amusement in his eyes. High, Sherlock played his violin in a band - like him, they were prodigies, eccentric, desperate to escape expectation, reality, boredom.
He's relaxed. He is genuinely relaxed and honestly happy. It looks strange on him, but good. His eyes burn with unholy light and cocaine.
If only it wouldn't damage him so horribly with long-term use... if it didn't, Mycroft would buy coke for Sherlock himself, deal in seedy alleyways and sticky people. But he is a selfish man, ultimately, and he would rather have a miserable brother for a longer time than a brilliant, happy brother for such a short while.
He knows his choice (and it was his choice) hurt Sherlock terribly, and that Sherlock will never forgive him. He keeps the memory of his brother high on his sofa safe, as the first time since puberty (and last time) that Sherlock was at ease with humanity, and they with him.
Sherlock can't get a dealer in the entirety of Britain to sell to him. He can make it himself, he's a brilliant chemist and it is only a matter of time before he does, and when he does, Mycroft locks him away in hospital, and stays with him.
When it's all over, and Sherlock is released from hospital, Mycroft gives him two gifts; a belstaff coat, and a Stradivarius violin. Sherlock accepts them both without thanks, but that he accepts them is thanks enough. He is thin, and cold, and his fingers are too cramped to play, but he sits and plucks at the strings and thinks, the blade of his mind rehoned to cut the world, Mycroft thinks. Cut the world into ribbons.
He finds he does not care.