plucked the golden blossom
(Warning: This fic contains drug abuse and character death. It's not too late to turn back.)
Sherlock appears before him, arms stretched out obscenely long about his body, metres of flexible, smooth limb uncoiling, like snakes undulating. He looks like the strangest kind of sea creature, and John runs-
except he can't, and the long arms twine around him, comforting, suffocating, absorbing him in.
/
The first pill is round and hard and pink, an oddly solid weight in John's hand, as if it is the one fixed point in the universe, the only thing real in this world of undefined dreams.
John asks how long.
Up to eight hours, replies the pimply teen, who looks young, far too young to be doing this; who looks like he should be watching a movie with friends on a lonely summer's night like this. He's got gelled spikes of blond hair, so that's alright, and in the dark, his features aren't easy to make out, but then John catches a glimpse of a sharp, high cheekbone.
He places the pill on his tongue.
It's bitter, as pills usually are, but it'll make him better, as pills usually do.
/
The world is a mess of suffused colour:
too-sharp reds one moment and blurry blues the next, sharply sliding silvers and deep warm browns, and Sherlock appears before him, but it's okay, he's smiling, and John laughs, for the sheer joy of not-feeling.
/
The fourth patient to come in the next day has gonorrhea. He also has eyes like Sherlock's, green-grey and intense, and John prescribes him antibiotics and rest and swallows the pill down as soon as he's let out for the day.
/
"Not good," Pill-Sherlock tells him, graceful brow furrowed in what would be worry, if Sherlock were capable of caring, if Sherlock hadn't shown, by throwing himself off a building, that he hadn't cared at all.
John snorts. "You're one to talk, Mr Cigarettes-and-Cocaine."
Pill-Sherlock is silent. John isn't quite used to that, but he'll take what he can get.
/
Mrs Hudson tells him he's getting thinner.
"Take care of yourself, dear," she tuts, her eyes roving over him with nothing but concern, and John wants to tell her he is, he's feeling better than he has in a long time. The nightmares of a bleeding, broken Sherlock have stopped, and now there is only a whole, perfect Sherlock, waiting for him every night, amidst a kaleidoscopic swirl of brilliant colour, of distorted sound.
/
He meets Mary at a coffeeshop near the clinic, and she's got brown hair and blue eyes, so that's okay, and her smile makes him feel warmer than he's been in a long time. That night, he takes her home with him, and he doesn't need a pill.
He lasts two days.
Because Mary might warm him up, but Sherlock keeps him breathing.
He tells her she deserves better. She thinks he's letting her down easy, but she has no idea.
/
He has lunch with Harry soon after, and when she sees him, he knows that she knows, and they both sit, quiet, because there's not much left to say.
He reflects a bit on how strange this turned out to be, the alcoholic and the drug addict, because he remembers nothing but love from his childhood. He supposes Harry and him are genetic mutations of entirely too many generations of good, upright, non-trouble-seeking Watsons.
/
He quits his job. He tells Mrs Hudson and Sarah that's he's staying with Harry for a while.
He spends the last few weeks on the streets, but that's fine, because he has Sherlock, stronger than a memory, sweeter than a dream, real and his and just one swallow away.
/
His supply is finishing, and John makes plans.
It's simple, because his train of thought is easy, much like it was when he was a soldier:
Attack. Retreat. Kill.
But simpler, because now there's only one command:
Sherlock.
/
The last pill he takes is ethereal in his hand, hardly there; almost a small pink figment of his imagination. It follows several others through John's gullet, down to his stomach: a heady toxic confection of sweetly overpowering poison, singing John's systems to sleep, to shut-down.
/
Real-Sherlock is above him, long, gentle fingers on the side of his face: this John knows because Pill-Sherlock's never been able to touch him before. His face is creased with panic, wrenched with grief.
Huh.
"You're alive, you fucker," John tries to say, but his tongue is slow, slick-heavy in his mouth, and his eyes slide shut of their own accord.
Then there is nothing, no more Sherlock.
fin