John flicked the ring pull mindlessly, wallowing in the relentless "ping ping ping" of aluminium against aluminium. He lifted the can and drained the remaining third of the cider in one long gulp.
It tasted bitter and cheap, just like he felt.
He let the can drop alongside the armchair, listening to it clank as it landed amongst the others. John peered briefly over the side to look. Eleven empty cans lay in a disorderly pile, several of them leaking stale cider dregs into the worn carpet.
"Fuck." he cursed, spinning his body around the front of the chair and kneeling on the floor, righting the dripping cans against the tatty fabric chair's side.
For a long moment, he just knelt there. He looked at the line up, studying the rise and fall of the uneven height cider cans of differing brands. He lifted the taller cans and stacked them at the back, bringing the shorter ones to the front. Then he shuffled them again, lining them up in a tall-short-tall-short alternating pattern. Then he stacked them into a pyramid, revelling in the fact that even the unevenly-sized cans allowed him to do so but cursing once more when he realised he had one can left over. He attempted to stack it on top of the single-layered top can.
The whole lot came crashing down onto the floor.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" he swore again, reaching out and smacking the pile with his fist.
Then he felt it. The sting. The familiar burn. The rush.
He drew his left arm to himself and examined it. A long, clean cut along the side of his hand, probably caused by a wayward ring pull. It was beginning to bleed quite badly and, as John pressed the fingers of his right hand to it, he let out a hiss as the pain came sharp and hard.
The deep crimson was the last thing he had of Sherlock. It was his one final connection to his flatmate. The one lasting image that haunted his every waking moment and every nightmare. Blood. Deep, dark, sticky, red. The one thing that held Sherlock close to him. That linked them together.
He looked again at the cut, the blood and the pile of empty cans and nodded as he reached for the top one.
More. He needed more.
