My heart is waiting to figure it out

Throw me something

Help me turn it around

What do we do when we're out of control?

Butterfly Boucher, It pulls me under

Looking back on it, there are things that Jim would do that would raise a red flag in my head. I chose to ignore that flag most of the time, but it was there nonetheless.

I dragged him to a party once, and when one of the guys got so drunk he fell into the pool, too plastered to fight his way to the surface, I found Jim looking on and laughing as he watched, not even pretending to try to do something about it as everyone else around was frantically running to the rescue.

We would watch slasher movies together and he'd go on and on about how the killer had it wrong and how he'd do it instead, gruesome details included. He once got upset because a real life serial killer had made a mistake and gotten caught by the police. "He called his wife!" he shouted, "He called his fucking wife! Who does that? Why would he call his wife?!" I emitted the idea that he'd probably done it out of sentiment. He blinked at me like I'd grown an extra head then buried his head in his hands. "So disappointing, so disappointing!" he started chanting over and over again until I told him that if he didn't shut the hell up about it I'd leave his house. He looked at me as if he was trying to evaluate how serious I was and, once he'd decided that I might actually do it, he changed the subject and started clinging to me.

Because he could be clingy. I'd often spend the night in his house because, well, he had a house, which definitely beat shared campus dorm rooms. Sometimes I'd get up in the middle of the night because my sleep was terrible back then already and I would go have tea, or work, or read to try to make myself sleepy. When I got back, he'd grab me tight in his sleep and wouldn't let go. After a while I started setting a glass of water and a book next to the bed in advance because it had become impossible for me to leave the bed, as he'd fall asleep with a hand on my chest, arm or shoulder and would automatically hang on at the first sign of movement.

He'd also get very jealous when I talked to other people – the fact that I can potentially be attracted to anyone of either gender didn't help matters, of course – but I ended up telling him that if he kept trying to smother me I'd leave, and he agreed to give me some space. He would still get that strange look in his eyes when my attention was on someone else, but at least he didn't say anything.

He would also have fits sometimes. It didn't have anything to do with me, it's just that his brain would sometimes got into overdrive. Then he'd start talking fast and loud, pacing around, pulling at his hair or punching walls, mumbling about the stupidity of the world, and the pointlessness of life, and why won't people just think, and why won't they see... When that happened, I'd taken to just walk up to him and hold him. It would always take a moment, but eventually he's start hugging back and calming down. I'd feel his heart hammering in his chest, then it would slow down gradually to return to normal. He'd start shaking all over, and I would tell him everything was alright and I was there for him. I really meant it at the time.

Dating Jim was never easy. In fact, every time someone asks me how I can deal with Sherlock, I'm tempted to say that I've had practice. But in time I learned to cope with this side of him and to pull him out of these dark moods. I was the only person in the world who could calm him down, ground him. I thought I'd found a rhythm, a way of reaching him when he was too far gone. I thought in time I'd get to the bottom of this strange condition of his. I can see now how presomptuous I was.

Jim was always beyond my help, mostly because he didn't want my help. Wrong emphasis : he didn't want my help. He wanted my presence, he wanted my attention, he wanted, yes, my love. But he didn't want to be helped, cured or saved. He wanted to be accepted as he was. Knowing this now, I realize I should have handled things differently. That's not to say I should have just accepted everything from him. But I definitely didn't react the way I should have.

One thing I loved about Jim is how protective he could be. I defended him in front of the other guys, but if one of them started to turn against me Jim would bare his proverbial teeth. I always managed to keep him from actually picking up a fight with others because a) I didn't want him to get in trouble for my sake, and b) I could hold my own, thank you very much. But there was one fight I couldn't keep him out of, and that's the one that ruined everything.

Now before I get into that, a little backstory. I didn't have a nice, guarded childhood. When my sister was about one, my parents got into a fight over my father's drinking habits. This resulted in my mother slamming the front door behind her and my father drinking himself to a near-comatose state at home while Harry slept upstairs. My mother, for her part, walked into the first bar she could find, chatted up a man and shagged him in a bathroom stall. She came back home the next day and my parents were both suitably sad and contrite for a while, that is until they found out she was pregnant. With me, in case that wasn't obvious. She cried and told my father the truth, and when I was born his name was on my birth certificate, as if nothing had happened.

You may think they intended to forget about it and move on. You would be wrong.

Before I could even walk or talk properly my father would make it clear that I was a mistake, that I wasn't his son and that he wished I'd never existed. I grew up bombarded with insults and mockery. He contented himself with the verbal abuse for a good eight years until one day, while his friends were around, I tripped and knocked down a lamp. He walked up to me, slapped me across the face hard enough to make me fall, then grabbed me by the hair and shoved my head into the broken pieces, shouting "Look what you've done!" while his drunk friends laughed and cheered. After that, the punches flew as hard and as frequently as the insults.

My mother knew and saw, but she never did anything to stop it. I must have been about ten when I tearfully asked her why she let him do this to me, and she said that I was her mistake, a product of her own weakness. She had no right to tell her poor husband, the innocent victim, what he should or shouldn't do with me. Harry of course, was too scared that he'd turn to her if she said anything, so she stayed out of it. I think it's one of the reasons she's a drinker now. I think she still feels guilty about never trying to help me.

It should be no surprise that as soon as I turned eighteen, I left the house without looking back. I'd been working a student job since I was sixteen and saving up the money, and I'd gotten a job as an assistant at a GP's practice to help pay for my tuition. It wasn't easy but I got by. The problem is, when you come from an abusive household, you can't always cut ties completely. They always have this hold on you, no matter how much you tell yourself you never want to see them again.

One year, one of my grandfathers – who had no idea how my parents treated me, no one did – had been surprised I hadn't attended a familial gathering for so long and said he hoped to see me for Christmas. My father of course ordered me to go and I, thinking I would be fine if I just spent the evening and then got back to campus, gave in and went. I came home the next day with a black eye. I hadn't been quick enough to answer the unavoidable "How come we haven't seen you in so long?" question asked by an unsuspecting aunt, and my father made sure I remembered never to give anyone a reason to suspect him again.

When Jim saw my face upon my return, his eyes turned completely black. He asked me what had happened and, after trying to dismiss it, I finally broke down and ended up telling him everything. I had always been bullied and threatened into silence by my own parents, but right there and then I let the dam break as Jim sat there and listened. I told him how they hurt me, how I'd felt alone all this time.

And of course, as people do in such situations, I let my anger get the best of me, saying how I hated them and how I wished they were dead. I cried my way through most of it, and when I was done Jim hugged me. It was the first time he initiated a hug. He told me everything was going to be alright, that he was there, that he'd make sure no one would hurt me again. I believed him. I felt relieved. I felt safe.

A week later Harry called me in tears. The brakes of our parent's car had failed and they had plunged to their death at the bottom of a pit. I don't really remember what I told her, probably some commonplace words of comfort. As soon as she started sounding like herself again, I hung up, my mind filled with static as I turned to look at Jim. I didn't even need to ask. I knew what had happened. I confronted him about it, and he just smiled at me – beamed at me – and said, "You're welcome."

I blinked at him once, twice, then the yelling started. I stood there, gesturing frantically and hurling abuse while he sat there in silence. He seemed genuinely surprised at my outburst. He honestly didn't understand why I was so angry while he'd obviously done me a huge favor. That's when I realized Jim wasn't simply a bit odd, he was completely and utterly mad. He didn't see the good or bad in situations, he only saw problems and solutions. A true mathematician.

I took a steadying breath and asked him, as calmly as I could, if he'd ever done anything like that before. He looked away, thinking, and then announced, "Five." I felt sick, yet I pushed and asked him about those five other people. He never mentioned the names, but he had no problem telling me the stories.

The first one was one of his classmates from when he was eleven – eleven! – who Jim poisoned because the kid had bullied him. The second and third ones were his next door neighbours, five years later. They had threatened to get his whole family evicted and Jim had arranged for their beloved television set to implode in the middle of the night and when they tried to escape, they found the doors and windows blocked. The fourth victim was his own grandmother. She had found out about his homosexuality and was going to tell his parents, so he pushed her down the stairs. And finally, he drowned one of his cousins who suspected his implication in their grandmother's death and told him she would go to the police.

He told me about all this as if he was telling me mere childhood stories. The horror, fear and disgust that I felt must have shown of my face, because Jim started to get angry himself. "Why are you looking at me like that?" he said, "What do these people matter to you?"

I shook my head, wondering how the hell I was going to make him understand. When I spoke, it was barely above a whisper, "You're a murderer.

- Thanks for the update, sweetie," he said, actually laughing at me, "But I was aware of that fact.

- You killed my parents," I growled, hating the way he was patronizing me.

He huffed in annoyance, "You said you wanted them dead, I fixed it for you. What more do you want?

- I didn't mean it!" I shouted, my hands flying up to clutch at my hair in despair, "I was upset, I was angry! That's just the kind of stuff you say when you're angry!

- Well, careful what you wish for!"

I told him I'd go to the police, but he just laughed at me again. "Johnny, Johnny, Johnny," he said, knowing full well that I hated to be called that, "What are you going to tell them? That I killed your parents because you asked me to?

- I never asked you to kill them!" I shouted stubbornly at him, "I never wanted you to do that!"

He shrugged. "What other reason could I have to do it? What do you think a judge would think of it? I've never even met these people!" I was horrified, because I knew he was right. If I went to the police, I'd probably end up being arrested as an accomplice. Jim smiled triumphantly, knowing he'd won this fight. He put his arm around my shoulders and whispered in my ear, "You are the only thing in the world that I care about, John Watson. But if I go down, you're coming with me."

Things are getting pretty serious here, what is John to do now?

Thank you for reading, see you next time!

nerwende