So you can either take this as desperate friendship, or unacknowledged love.
"I'd always secretly believed that a love as fierce and true as mine would be rewarded in the end, and now I was being forced to accept the bitter truth."
- Alma Katsu, The Taker
He hadn't been alone in a while.
He hadn't been unhappy in a while.
There used to be a time where he was alive, blood pumping, adrenaline coursing throughout his entire body, running, chasing, catching -
But now he sat alone, in his empty flat, in his lonely chair.
He wondered if it was because of his boredom. But not even cases could get his heart racing as it had before, get his breath ripping out of his body as it once did - instead, they somehow left him feeling even more alone, more tired, more worn out.
So sometimes, when Lestrade called him, excited words muffled through the phone, he'd just hang up.
He became quite good at acting, faking a genuine smile when his old friends came around for a chat, for a holiday, for a check-in. They had worried about him, now that his friend had moved out, but after seeing him they always left with surprised smile. He seemed just like himself but as soon as the door closed, he'd slump against a wall and stay there for hours.
Even his mind couldn't help him. He cursed as he fumbled through, unable to find the information for the first time in his fucking life, the items all cluttered and jumbled up in his damn head. He'd stay there for hours, just trying to figure out why the fuck he felt like this.
There were times where he might feel like himself again, when he stood with his best friend, his only friend, against the world, and damn but did it feel good.
But those times were so few and far between that sometimes he would turn to an even older friend, trembling fingers yanking his sleeve up to expose his black, purple, yellow, green bruised arms. He'd stab his forearm clumsily with the needle, hissing at the familiar feeling before hissing at the pleasure it brought. His head would fall back against his worn chair as he felt his rapid thoughts fall away, and he could breathe again. The best times were when they helped him forget, when he could just ride the high and leave it all behind.
But he always eventually woke up.