The violin had been the first thing he had picked up when he walked into the flat a few hours ago. The case had been postponed for a few hours at John's insistence, and the inactivity was enough to drive Sherlock mad. Setting the violin aside, he had built a fire and checked on all his various experiments around the flat, but none had served to capture his interest.
Back to the living room not an hour later he cradles the wooden instrument against his chest. Melting into the chair by the fire, he finds himself slipping into his nightly routine. The violin had served to become the outlet for his boredom as he strummed out an absent melody beside a dying fire; but his fingers itched for the bow.
-A tin trash can across the street rattles, scattering his thoughts like leaves in the wind, and Sherlock twitches against the sound before regaining focus. Wood grains and strings shift beneath fingers that seem to operate without his knowledge.
John would disapprove, limping down the stairs with that sour look on his face and probably try to tell him what time it was. Typical John, always concerned with the earths relative position to the sun. A yowling cat- and again the battering of useless data jars him. But Sherlock needs John, and his boring, yet all the more invaluable opinions. So he settles into his chair, still fully clothed from the previous night, and plucks at his violin.
Tonight is a night that makes him unwittingly harken back into his own memory, before he had been able to hone down his senses. Track marks from an addiction long since given up ache from beneath his designer slim cut button up, and he rubs at the crook of his arm. To be able to block out every idling engine, siren and scent had become detrimental. He felt like a lost man in a desert. Every useless knock and groan had become like sandpaper on his skin, grating and biting into his concentration. Painful almost, the constant thrum of life around him as it trudged on in a hopeless world.
In a desert of monotony, Sherlock had turned to substance abuse. Opium had been the first thing to try, and although Sherlock felt completely free of the shackles of perception, the slight echoing tug of his subconscious mind would always pull him back, tethering him to reality and it's abrasive nature all too quickly. Marijuana left an obnoxious scent and a growing appetite, neither of which agreed with Sherlock. Methamphetamine would do more harm than good, and ecstasy wouldn't even provide the kind of mind high that he desired.
Sherlock had grown desperate, and at the odd insistence of his brother, had tried cocaine. The effect was nearly immediate as the drug was delivered into his veins. The sharp edge of reality began to dull, and suddenly everything was silent. The pounding between his ears could now be sorted out, filed neatly into drawers and cabinets and rooms. In a sedated lull and sequestered far into his mind, Sherlock had built up a safe haven against the beating of sensory data.
Memories had been saved, stored in the basement of his mind and quickly forgotten about. He had debated forgetting these things entirely, but Sherlock is not without the tradition that he had been brought up under. Some things were sacred, and even he cannot forget that. The scent of his father's disappointment in Mycroft after failing the bar exam had been the most potent memory, smeared with pipe tobacco and the harsh tang of domestic violence.
Sherlock excelled in the depths of his obsession, solving cases faster than they came up and never taking credit. Lestrade moved up in the ranks of the yard, and Sherlock's less than legal activities went overlooked. It had been a wonderful arrangement, until he had gotten sloppy. Mycroft had the grace to intervene when he had, pulling Sherlock off of the couch that had become dented with his presence.
The rehabilitation had been forced, and Sherlock felt himself slowly being cut off from the salvation that he had found. A therapist had come, to slowly peel away the layers of addiction and peek into Sherlock's most private of inner sanctums. After months of being coolly turned away by a patient whose mind ran faster than a bullet train, he had given up.
Sherlock had been released from rehabilitation after a month. Therapists had theorized he was autistic, but the diagnosis was tossed out just the same. Sherlock could care, he just didn't want to. So he hammered out a faint existence, living above a previous client out of boxes and suitcases and resigning himself to a nomadic nature. Sherlock identified with the homeless network in this way, and quickly became a trusted friend among their growing numbers. Caught in a sea of sepia, John stood out like a bright blue beacon. A life buoy to a drowning man, and he took to the doctor just the same.
With an addiction much like his own, Sherlock saw an odd oasis of calm emanating from the adrenaline junky. The sandy haired man had quickly become an anchor for the floundering sleuth, with his limp and hideous collection of outdated sweaters. He hadn't known it until they had met, but the stability that the wounded army medic provided was just the foil that Sherlock needed.
The static radio of a passing car pulls him out of his mind again, forcing him into the present. Rain patters the window behind him, starting suddenly and quickly becoming background noise for an ailing detective. Perfect. This moment was wondrous in it's simplicity, becoming a salve for his aching being.
And still, his right hand finds itself inching towards the pristine bow sitting propped up by his chair and before he knows it, his chin has nestled into the black rest and he finally feels pulsing between his ears cease as the music begins.
The notes waft up the stairwell and squeeze under a shut door to find John in bed with a pillow pressed over his head. Groaning, John shifts on his hips in the warm bed he had only just lain down in. John doesn't recall another point in his life where he has felt this exhausted. It hadn't been in the army, when he had been on his feet twenty eight hours of the day patching up men far too young to have been so close to their maker. It had to be in rainy London, living with a psychopath.
Sociopath, he's a sociopath.
John twists in bed, craning his neck to peek at the digital clock by his bedside. Squinting briefly, the red numbers burn into his eyes and he falls back flat on the mattress.
Not even five, it's not even five in the morning and already Sherlock is up and pacing around the flat with his violin. The bow worries across the strings in harsh, sweeping motions, spewing acidic sharps into the early morning.
Wiping a hand over his brow, John blinks, grimacing at the unusual thumping in his head. Not so unusual, now that he thinks about it. He had only gotten to sleep a few hours previous and being awoken out of a dead sleep by a squadron of dying cats was quickly taking it's toll on John's skull.
The way John looks at it, he has two options.
He can either drag himself downstairs and submit himself to whatever inane activities that Sherlock is warming up for. Or he can stay up here in the cozy confines of his twin bed and drift off to a place where sleep is abundant and the flatmate isn't a lunatic.
Another sudden ache from the side of his head forces him into a sitting position, the cotton blanket falling stiffly into his lap. The harsh pang in his head demanded caffeine, and silence. Knowing he is just going to have to forgo the latter, he swings his legs over the edge of the bed slowly.
Hissing when his feet make contact with the bare floor, he gropes in the darkness beneath him for the worn slippers that he keeps beside his bed. He had bought the brown canvas slippers after he had gotten home from the war. The undecorated linoleum of the halfway house he had found himself in had been incredibly cold in the morning, and the slippers became a necessity.
When John gets to his feet finally, his leg lets out a cry of protest, the muscles cramping and throbbing beneath his silk pajama pants. Clapping a hand to the limb quickly, he reaches for the cane that has been his company since returning to England.
The stairs had been the next insurmountable task before John on a cold Thursday not-quite-morning. Gripping the railing with his left, he leans perhaps more on it than his cane, and by the sixth step, he feels heavy on his feet. Seven and eight seem easier until his slipper catches a stray nail in the flooring. He can see it happening before his eyes, but is mostly powerless to stop his quick descent onto the ugly rug at the base of the stairs.
Sherlock's right arm lowers from his violin, listening to the uneven steps on the wooden stairs. John is awake, much as he had suspected. Steps number one through three are slow, indicative of either weariness, or pain. Weariness was out, he had just woken up. A knot forms in Sherlock's stomach as he listens to John come down the stairs, today would be a bad pain day for John. Four through six only increase the unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach. He realizes what is about to happen just as his foot hits step number seven; the loose nail on step number eight had yet to be fixed, and John had miraculously managed to avoid it thus far.
Acting quickly, Sherlock abandons the conduit for his suffering, the violin clattering to the carpeting. Sliding into the landing, Sherlock manages to just catch John by the arms, bracing the shorter man's weak leg against his own. John's cane topples down the stairs noisily, joining the mangled entrance rug in the corner. "Easy, easy." Sherlock says it more to himself as John stays tense in his arms.
Relief washes over John in waves as he finds himself unscathed and safely in his flatmate's arms. The sting in his leg brings him up short of breath as Sherlock steadies John against the wall. Marveling at the delicious contact between them, John takes a moment to study the detective in ways that he had never had the courage to do. He probably hadn't slept, and the shadows beneath his eyes have never looked more purple, but riding on those shapely, sharp cheekbones they look at home. Sherlock looks so delicate in this moment, his striking features colored by momentary fear.
John refuses to meet his eyes, those mysterious kaleidoscope depths would drown him before he knew it. But in the suddenly charged atmosphere, he finds his head lifting to study a strong jawline and those lips that he has lived with for the better part of two years. Cupids bow disappears for a moment as his lips purse quickly, but the look that was completely unidentifiable flees in a second. Finally, like a missile seeking it's target, John finds those glassy cerulean depths, flecked with concern and shadowed by an errant curl. Pale, cold fingers release their grip on his arms slowly, as if letting go too suddenly might make John shatter.
Regret flits across John's face as the contact between the two is broken. Bracing himself against the wall, he pulls the detective back by the shoulders, twining his hands in the supple fabric. Panic floods Sherlock's features before John tilts his head sideways and kisses Sherlock suddenly. Velvet lips slide against each other in apprehension, then confidence.
It was completely natural, Sherlock supposes, to be in love with John. But like so many other things in his life, he had failed to see it. John is stability in the eddies of Sherlock's busy life, and one of the only people that Sherlock can count on.
"You're very loyal, very quickly." His brother had observed, and how right he was. At the end of every case, John would be waiting with a cool washcloth and a bottle of paracetamol to preempt the post case migraines that Sherlock was so prone to. John took up the mantle of breadwinner when Sherlock couldn't be bothered to take paying cases, coming home after long days at the surgery down the street to find Sherlock manic in the flat, looking for something to ease the suffering inside his mind.
Sherlock lost himself in the moment as John's briefly quivering lips captured his. A million deductions sprang to mind like a sudden gunshot through his throbbing head, and as John's fingers comb through his hair and down his neck, the monotonous pulse around him ceases to matter.
God if it didn't feel wonderful to be in a state of unknowing with the only person who truly mattered. In this moment, he felt blind, deaf and dumb to the world around him, and it didn't matter in the slightest. The faint humming of his landlady beneath him didn't phase him like it usually did. Extraneous data didn't even register. The idea of soul mates wasn't something that Sherlock believed in the least, but he was certain now that he was a convert.
John's hands run down Sherlock's arms, stopping at the elbows. Sherlock can no longer distinguish the burning from the fire that John has lit in him, or the still smoldering remains of cocaine addiction that floods his veins. A whimper escapes Sherlock's throat, now raw with emotion as he crushes John to his chest.
Parting, Sherlock sucks in air as if it had been the first time and he meets John's impossibly blue eyes. The world has tilted on it's axis, and Sherlock could honestly care less that the earth revolves around the sun. It's not his world.
In eyes that have witnessed the cruelties of war and hands that have healed the sick, Sherlock finds safe harbor.