Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking—Clifton Fadiman
Sherlock is nine. It's hard for him to sleep. One shot.
Aiming to explain Sherlock's lack of sleep and food, his immaculately clean room and the beginnings of his violin all wrapped in one incident. Standalone, though I'll love you for reading the first part of the series
And the Maddy (Madeleine) here is the Holmes mother, Ben is the Holmes father, following the "Two Sides Of The Same Coin: A backstory on the Holmes parents" universe.
Might make some edits later, probably in the ending because this is all I can think of for now.
It started when he was nine.
Having a brilliant brain wasn't always easy for Sherlock the kid, and not when he was young enough to not able to control the gifts of thinking and observation he had been endowed with. Even as a child, Sherlock was dramatic and even though he claimed that he didn't exaggerate things, he often described said things quite ostensibly.
And so, people, sometimes even his mummy and daddy, didn't believe him.
So, on one night, when Madeleine tucked him into bed and patted his curls fondly after having given the nine-year-old a good shower for the day spent sitting in mud and trying to dig through it to find gold, (just like Mycroft had read to him from his geography textbook and planted the idea in Sherlock's head just to see the innocent nine-year-old try and find gold relentlessly) when Sherlock confessed to his mother that he wasn't feeling sleepy at all, Maddy smiled knowingly and turned off the light switch. Sherlock was truly as epitome of energy, very rarely sleepy and Maddy frankly felt that it was a boon to see his tousled head poking out from the sheets of his bed, instead of hearing Sherlock run about in the house, serving as a natural alarm clock for both herself and Ben.
Not Mycroft though. He slept like logs.
Sherlock heard the door close behind his back and knew that his mother was gone. He wanted to sleep, he really did. He wanted to sleep and dream of things that he heard his classmates talk of during the recess. Of the wonderful things that he read in books.
He didn't want to hear the frog croak a mile away, he didn't want to hear the wind rustling the leaves and he didn't want to set down to estimate by that sound alone how many leaves must be there on that. He didn't want to hear the bark and the howl of a dog. He didn't want to hear the howling of an owl or the flapping of the wings of several bats. He didn't want to make out shapes and he didn't want to sit up and figure out what they were. He hated his sharp senses.
He wanted to stop thinking.
It wasn't monsters in the closet or under his bed or even in his head. It was everything else.
—
Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking—Clifton Fadiman
He read this, and he dismissed it at once. It was not possible.
Once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
One could stop thinking, Sherlock reasoned, because where there is a beginning, there is an end.
That night, he shut his eyes, he closed his ears, and curled into himself, trying not to glean any data from darkness. His mind kept running hundred miles an hour. He didn't imagine things, he never did, so he didn't see shadowy things or spidery webs trailing up the walls.
He didn't sleep. He merely stared at the back of his eyelids. And if data seemed to be imprinted on them, it wasn't his fault. It really wasn't.
—
He slouched his shoulders, trying to avoid the suspecting, the knowing eyes of his teacher, Ms. Rye. His fingers trembled around the edges of paper and the round-tip scissors, and for one miraculous second, his eyelids drooped.
One snore later, all the other kids in the classroom were laughing their heads off, pointing at him. Trying to keep the tears in his eyes like a brave boy, he prepared his white knuckles for the fall of the iron ruler on them.
—
In the games period, Sherlock rubbed his sore knuckles and wrapped his handkerchief around it, watching the other well-rested children wreak havoc on the creaky swings. He tried to think why he couldn't sleep, and he tried not to think of thinking about sleeping.
His stomach growled in protest. He had taken to a last resort. He refused food during recess, and at home, Mycroft ate away most of the things, and Sherlock secretly passed his food to Mycroft, who ate without protest. Though the means were painful and at the end, he reasoned that he would faint out of exhaustion and hunger, at least he would get a night of rest at that. He hadn't slept for two days, and it was trying his nerves like hell.
That night, Maddy tucked him inside in his bed, her eyes resting on the dark circles under Sherlock's eyes. But she didn't leave. She sat beside him and ran her fingers on his sore knuckles, the corners of her lips curving downwards.
"What did you do today?" She asked quietly. Sherlock tried to strain his ears, to hear anything in her voice, accusation, anger, persuasion.
Nothing. She didn't even call his name. She didn't even utter the degraded version of his name. She merely wanted to know. And Sherlock was not in a divulgatory mood. Moreover, he knew that she wouldn't believe him. So he gave her something that she would believe.
"I was bored. I broke the window pane," he let out a ridiculously fake yawn.
It was obvious from her piercing eyes, that she didn't believe him.
—
Sleep to him was like a tap running dry. At first, it was sound, and then as the pressure increased, the flow reduced to a trickle, to a drop and came to a stop when he was nine. He saw everything. He heard everything. He thought, he thinked, he thunk. He couldn't not bother himself. He couldn't help. He couldn't stop.
The snores from Mycroft sleeping in the next room didn't help at all.
Yet, the next day, he was as energetic as a hamster in a wheel, as a televangelist in a hospital ward full of Alzheimer's patients with money. This time, Maddy was worried. Something was wrong, and it pierced through her heart that she couldn't work it out with her own little boy.
Ben arrived from his usual photography schedule, and settled in the sofa after helping himself to a cup of tea. After sensing that Maddy was unusually quiet and watching a show that she never did, he switched the telly off and looked at her, waiting for her to begin. When she didn't, he took the initiative.
"What's up?"
She bit the insides of her cheek and took a deep breath. "You should tuck Mike and Sherl into bed today."
Ben's face crinkled into a confused smile, "But you love doing that."
She ignored that. "And talk to Sherlock. Something's wrong with him."
He nodded, trying to think through, "What do I talk about?" He appeared genuinely confused. Maddy looked at him disbelievingly.
"What do you mean 'what do I talk about'? He's your son."
Ben, as always, didn't grasp the seriousness of the situation, "Don't tell me. I'm not a good example, you know it."
"You fixed things with your father, didn't you? Do the same thing with him!"
Ben finished his tea, and looked around for something sweeter, "Okay, what's wrong?"
"I think he has trouble sleeping."
"Well," Ben leaned against the kitchen counter, "I had to force you into bed, no pun intended," said he with a slight smirk, "even when we were flatmates, remember? It's just genetics," he shrugged.
"Don't talk about genetics, Ben," she returned the smirk, her eyes narrowing and crinkling with amusement, "Brainy talk doesn't suit you. And we weren't flatmates," she reminded him, "You banged on my doorstep and made yourself at home."
"I was the one who set you up in that flat. And if it wasn't for us being flatmates, you'd have ended up with that stupid boss of yours," he teased, and Maddy remembered the problem and shook herself.
"Focus on the matter, Ben. Sherl doesn't eat, sneaks all the food into Mike's plate—"
"Yeah, just like you did with me. It's just genetics."
A strict look from Maddy was all it took for Ben to nod helplessly.
—
Sherlock tried not to blink as his daddy tucked him into bed, and the bed creaked as Ben put his weight on the edge of it. Maddy had told him that boys tended to respond more to their father than their mother, and she had told him that his complete ingenuousness invited confidence. Sherlock would respond to him.
Maddy was right, he thought. Sherlock watched the ceiling resolutely, waiting for Ben to be gone. Ben sighed. He knew he wasn't very good at being a father, and he tried hard, he really did. But he wasn't good at it. He was good with kids, he always had been, being an overgrown kid himself, but he wasn't sure if he was good with Mycroft or Sherlock. He wasn't good at being fatherly or at feels and stuff. Maddy had managed to break through that, just like he had managed to break through hers, but he wasn't good at feels.
Nevertheless, he patted Sherlock's soft hair and with a nod to himself, took off his slippers and settled into bed beside him. Sherlock's eyes widened in alarm, and Ben tried to pacify him.
"Relax, I'm not sleeping here."
Then he realised that he shouldn't have said that. Maybe if he had told Sherlock that he was going to sleep there, maybe Sherlock would've relaxed and gone off to sleep. He cursed his stupidity. He really wasn't a very good father, he thought to himself, even with sixteen years of experience. His own sons made him feel like a moron.
Nevertheless, he took a look at Sherlock's knuckles, but didn't ask him what had happened. "Mummy tells me you have trouble sleeping."
He felt Sherlock nod beside him, and some of his anxiety wore off. He thought he had done a great job, and proceeded to prod him further, "I used to, you know," he lied.
He turned around to face his son, whose shoulders stiffened. Sherlock's eyes narrowed, and he looked away.
"No, you didn't."
—
The next day was a Sunday. As if it was planned and calculated, Sherlock fainted and fell while in the midst of running around with Redbeard. The Irish Setter whined over him, and barked loudly to Maddy while dragging the nine-year-old by the collar of his shirt. Mycroft rushed out to him, abandoning his homework, and carried Sherlock's limp body in his arms. Maddy fussed over him, and Mycroft didn't care that Redbeard was slobbering all over his homework.
That one hour was utter peace to Sherlock. He dreamt of nothing, he saw nothing, he heard nothing, he thought nothing. After all, it was hard for a nine-year-old boy to handle that extraordinary amount of information flooding the grey cells of his brain. And it was hard to turn it to 'off', not when it was grating against his brain like nails on chalkboard.
He simply closed his eyes against his eyelids.
—
The next nights were utter hell.
Maddy made Sherlock sleep beside herself, while Ben took Sherlock's empty bed. She read stories to him that he had by heart. She tried to distract him from consciously thinking about sleep by making him think about something else.
In the end, she ended up dozing to her side, and drowning in slumber. Sherlock's fingers crept to the bedside drawer, and found them. He slipped out of bed, and to his surprise found Mycroft in the sitting room, waiting for him with nothing written on his face. His brain switched on to alert, and he hid the pills behind him.
"Let me see them," Mycroft demanded. Sherlock stuck out his tongue, and before Mycroft could react, Sherlock skipped away and locked the door to Mycroft's room behind him and switched on the light.
The more he took, he thought, ignoring the incessant banging on the door and Mycroft's voice calling out for him, the more he would sleep.
—
The next thing Sherlock remembered was the door being broken in and Mycroft flinging away the sleeping pills from his little fingers. He could feel Mycroft's fingers shaking violently, and the frantic voices of his mummy and daddy behind him. Sherlock had been busy reading the label for the constituents, he had been about to pop the first one into his mouth but Mycroft had saved him in the nick of time.
"You are not to do that," Mycroft ordered, his pre-pubescent voice betraying the austerity in it, "You would've—"
"But I want to sleep," said Sherlock in almost a pleading voice.
—
It was only with great effort of body and mind that Sherlock learnt that he might not be able to sleep peacefully if his room was the way it was, unclean and disorderly, provoking thoughts. The counsellor told Maddy and Ben only one thing. Sherlock needed a thought-free environment. Otherwise, he could only sleep in naps and kips during day time, which was odd indeed. Ben, who was a master unprofessional interior decorator, took to it. Sherlock kept an obsessively clean room, always. So that when he went to retire for the night, there were no thought-provoking distractions. His windows were closed, he used earplugs and eye masks and his bedsheets were white and of the same threadcount as most of his clothes. There was nothing new to glean from them.
The counsellor advised a distraction that involved the creative side of his mind. After much protesting, Sherlock learnt playing the seven basic notes on violin, allowing his brain to relax in those infinitesimal moments of music, to aid to his concentration, to make his thoughts run in a more orderly way than the disarray of information earlier on.
And if he couldn't sleep in spite of all of the therapy, there was no way to remedy it, not with sleeping pills or any synthetic means. He would just have to live with it.
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