Damn.
He'd slipped again.
Funny how he only ever realized it after the fact, after he pushed the needle in. He didn't think about it when he was tying the tourniquet or when he was carefully measuring the dose of cocaine he was about to put in his bloodstream. He only thought about it when it was too late, once there was no turning back.
John knocked on the door. (Echoing in my head.) Something about he was sorry for letting himself get captured by Moriarty. Sherlock wasn't listening.
"Sherlock, are you okay?"
"Fine, I'm fine, nothing's wrong." Sherlock had spoken calmly, if quickly. But it was plain from the look on John's face that he knew something was up.
"No, you're not." John popped into Sherlock's vision, concerned, running surreptitious medical checks (thinks I won't notice. Not stupid.) and generally making sure that his flatmate wasn't about to spontaneously expire. "Right," he said. "Okay, what have you taken?"
"Benzoylmethylecgonine."
"What?"
"C17H21NO4."
"The street name, Sherlock, not some chemical formula that I need a degree for."
"Figure it out."
John sighed. "You know this is going to screw you up, right?" He stood up and started pacing. "Maybe not now, maybe not in five years, but one day, you're gonna realize that your head isn't working right and it'll be because you got high."
(Anger?) "I am well aware of the long-term effects."
"What I don't understand is how you keep saying your brain is everything, but you keep screwing yourself up." Silence for a moment. "Sod it, I'm calling Mycroft."
"No."
"Yes. I am, and you're going to listen to what he has to say."
"No."
"Damn it, Sherlock! You need to stop doing this! I don't care that you call it recreational and not a proper addiction, you have a problem, and by God, I'm going to help solve it." The bedroom door slammed, and Sherlock was left alone with his chemically-enhanced thoughts.
The next thing to break into Sherlock's strange little world was Mycroft's voice. "Where is it?" (Angry.)
"Where is what?"
"You know full well what I mean." Mycroft's voice was bordering on a growl. "Where is the cocaine?"
Sherlock sat up and locked contracting pupils with Mycroft. "I am not an addict. I don't binge. I don't inject on a regular basis. It helps me cope. You know that."
Mycroft's voice was sub-zero. "And the morphine helps when you have sensory overload. There are other ways of stimulating or desensitizing besides drugs."
"Like what? Meditation?" (Doesn't understand, hasn't been there, hasn't felt that, why hasn't he?)
Mycroft didn't answer. Instead, he began pulling out the drawers and making a mess. "Be glad it's John and myself doing the searching and not the police. You would undoubtedly be in serious trouble then."
"Oh, I didn't realize you were suddenly the dictator of my life."
"I am trying to help you." Another deep silence. "No rebuttal? No whiplash comment about how you feel the drugs help you?"
"There's no need to say what you're perfectly aware I'm thinking." He retreated to the living room, to sit on the sofa and watched as Mycroft and John half-tore his room apart, looking for the packet of fine white powder. (Won't find it without searching my person. Left trouser pocket. Could charge assault if they did.)
Hours later, Mycroft found nothing. John found nothing. Mrs. Hudson, who'd been volunteered to help the search, found nothing. Mycroft left in silence, having spoken to John in private (not any of his business. I'm an adult.) before leaving. John was still angry, but by now it was too late and didn't matter.
Sherlock was tired from both the drug crash and the interruption to his life and so returned to his room. They'd put everything back, of course, leaving his room as tidy as it had been, but something was off. Something wasn't quite right. Frowning, Sherlock looked around his room before realizing what it was.
"You've disrupted my sock index," he said before shutting the door and going to bed.