Trigger warning: mention of drug use.

Disclaimer: Based on BCC's Sherlock. Not mine.

Chapter 3: Distraction

Sherlock found that he didn't really mind teaching. He got through the first two weeks of classes without any major problems. He stuck loosely to the curriculum, with some adaptations and extra examples, which he retrieved from the collection of case files he kept at home. He did separate the extreme gore from the photo's he showed in class. The pupils had been relatively well behaved and attentive. They seemed to understand that telling their parents about the crime scenes they examined at school could put a stop to the fun, so John had only received one or two phone calls.

No, it was not the teaching that bothered him.

It was the complete silence he received from Lestrade. The knowledge that he might have screwed up definitely this time. The idea that he might not be a consulting detective ever again. He had let his arrogance become a weakness, and it had gotten in the way of his rational thinking. He had acted in such an uncalculated way that several other people had paid the price. He had been so eager to get to the mysterious Moriarty, so overconfident, and so out of control, that he basically provided the professor with some extra victims on the way. Sherlock Holmes felt extremely frustrated, and guilty.

He had started to feel rather depressed as the weeks of summer progressed and there had been nothing to do. John's school provided him with a temporary distraction now, but this elementary level science was not enough to get him through the evenings and the weekends.

The trouble in his head had started when John and Mary got married, about a year after they'd met at St Francis. John moved out of the flat, and Sherlock did not want anyone else to fill the empty space he left behind. Sherlock was happy for John, and got on well with Mary, but they had their own life now. Sherlock started to feel lonely. He had been alone before meeting John, but it hadn't bothered him as much then.

Of course he didn't tell John this. It would only make things awkward and it would come across as if Sherlock wanted his friend for himself. He knew how much John loved Mary and had no illusion or wish that he could separate them. So, Sherlock continued living alone, and slowly slipped down a corridor in his mind that led him to dark places. The need to eat seemed irrelevant, the need to sleep even more so. He kept chasing, hunting, on a constant high of adrenaline until he felt his body give way to exhaustion. This happened a couple of times, until the dark voice in his head whispered to him a simple solution.

It took another two months for him to actually cave, but when he did there seemed to be no turning back. Cocaine gave him the ability to go on longer and work faster. It fueled his body for the chase, but it also fueled his arrogance, his manipulative tendency, and his carelessness for others. He was able to hide it from John and Lestrade, and kept on going.

One night he set out alone to an address in east London, not wanting to wait for Lestrade to get a warrant. He knew this was the place. And he knew they didn't have much time before Moriarty had his men clean out the house and all traces would be removed. He just wanted to know who this man was. He just wanted to know who he was up against. And he desperately wanted to show that he could beat him. When Sherlock walked into the house he immediately got stabbed in the arm with a needle, and passed out within seconds, not seeing anyone. Unfortunately, someone at the office had noticed him leave and Greg had no choice but to go after him. The officers walked into an ambush and three of them got hit, one of them in the head.

When they found him, Sherlock had been brought to the hospital, where they found many more chemicals in his blood than couldn't really care that much at first, but slowly realised the implications of his actions as people came to see him.

Obviously Mycroft was livid and had the flat searched where they found a variety of narcotics that had not even been hidden very well. His brother had yelled at him standing beside his hospital bed, the only time Sherlock had seen him actually lose it. Lestrade visited him and told him that he wished that the self-destructive game Sherlock was playing had been his own death instead of that of one of his officers, and that he would never let him anywhere near an investigation ever again. Both his brother and Lestrade had only shown anger, but Sherlock knew that they were also incredibly hurt and disappointed in him.

John had been his usual caring self. He was angry, but even more worried about his apparently not so brilliant and dangerously thin friend, and had slept in a chair in his room until Sherlock regained consciousness. Of course he'd asked him why he did it, why he didn't tell him, and what was bothering him to become so self-destructive. Sherlock did not answer them directly but promised John he'd stay away from drugs, and he meant it.

But when he was alone in 221B, playing the violin, reading, experimenting, and attempting not to smoke he could feel the pull of the demons in his head. Tempting him, teasing him. He'd tried everything. He had even brought home a stranger a few times, but the distraction of sex never lasted for more than a couple of hours (of course there was also the problem of getting them out of the flat again).

This weekend he had done a couple of experiments on some human eyeballs (thankfully Molly hadn't cut him off), prepared the practical examples he needed for his classes the coming week, and made corrections to the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. And he was bored. Extremely bored.

It was Sunday afternoon and he had just opened the windows to let some smoke clear out of the apartment (eyeballs on fire). The warm summer breeze drifted inside. Disappointed with the results of the experiment he dragged himself to the living room and sat down in his armchair, back straight, muscles tense, looking stoically ahead but desperately trying to fight the urge to scream. He scratched his forearm, exposed by the rolled op sleeve of his silk black shirt. His eyes drifted to the experiment, to the stairs that lead to what was formerly John's room, to the refrigerator, which contained only some milk and several body parts, to the bottle of disinfectant on the kitchen table.

Something switched in his brain and suddenly he'd given in. Mrs Hudson's lock had been easy to pick and he'd known exactly where to look.

The bottle of whiskey he had found in her apartment had been expensive and sealed. Now it was half empty beside him as he was sitting on the floor with his back leaning against his armchair. He was not sorry at all.

The living room was blurry around him. Very intresting… experiment. Blurry vision, light head headed, hhhheavy limbs, no fffeelings at all…. should write this down

After several attempts he managed to get up and stumbled into the kitchen, grasping the bottle loosely in his hand. He had sworn he left the notebook on the table. After stumbling around for about 10 minutes, bumping into kitchen cabinets, he gave up and sat down at the table. The drink had tasted horrible when he took his first shot, but now tasted rather nice. His mind was nice and quiet, and he happily pored himself another in a mug he couldn't remember for what experiment it had served.

He wouldn't be able to remember the rest of the night.

Next chapter: A hate crime at school leaves one pupil in hospital, one in shock, and Sherlock mad as hell.