John found him there, in the kitchen.
He stood by the sink, wrapped up in a sheet and staring intently down at the little blade on the counter.
John walked up to him carefully, padding across the linoleum. He watched the slight tilt of the head, the narrowing of the eyes, and the furrow in the brow.
Odd...
"This wasn't here last night."
"No, it wasn't..." John rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet uncomfortably. "Uh..."
"But if I didn't do it, and you didn't do it..."
"Sherlock. Be honest with me. Are you being serious, or is this just some scheme to keep pretending it's not yours?"
Sherlock looked back at him with a scandalised expression on his face. "I've told you before... It's not mine. Look. I'll even let you have this thing searched for prints and DNA, if that's what it's going to take to prove it to you. Happy now?"
"I don't... I don't think that's necessary..."
"Of course it isn't, because I've never seen this blade before in my life! And even if I had, I would have cleaned it chemically, so a test would be useless!"
"Not really helping your case, Sherlock..."
"You just have to trust me! Oh, COME ON! When have I ever lied to you?!"
John licked his lips, glancing up at the ceiling pointedly. "Ummm…"
"Well… aside from that… and that… and… that. I'm… I'm being honest here. I… promise. Cross my heart and hope to die, or whatever stupid things normal people say. I didn't do anything. Really. If I had I'd be telling you right now. I'm clean."
It was never just the simple fact that you were cutting yourself.
That wasn't really what made it so hard.
It was the fact that you couldn't tell a soul.
This Sherlock knew.
You were always so painfully aware of those scratches and scars; you carried them everywhere you went and dealt quietly with how much they made it hurt just to do the simple little things.
Changing clothes.
Showering.
Moving.
But that was just physical pain.
Easy enough to deal with.
You did it to yourself, so that was justified.
The hardest thing was that no one knew. No one sympathised with you. No one was sorry. It would be so easy just to reach out and pick up that phone, to open your mouth and say something...
But you couldn't do that.
This Sherlock knew.
No matter how much you wished to tell someone—anyone—you couldn't.
You would not let yourself.
For fear.
You couldn't even have put it into words, really, but just for someone else to share the weight of that knowledge... It would have been an incredible relief.
But that would mean the relief in blood would have to stop.
The real release.
No.
No...
Those razors had become your friends; you had favourites... If they took them away from you...
It would be almost like losing family. Family that shredded skin…
So you kept your mouth shut.
This Sherlock knew.
When someone did know, it was… bittersweet. Someone was finally sorry… someone finally sympathised and fed what you viewed as your self-centred longing with unwarranted hugs that made you feel strangely sick inside.
Because they cared.
They cared when you didn't deserve that.
They cared even when your heart felt as if it weighed three hundred pounds, when, on the worst of the worst days, even drawing breath was difficult.
Even if you didn't say anything, they cared.
Even if they didn't understand.
This Sherlock knew.
But in the end, they took those friends away from you. They tried to keep your skin intact, at least. What they didn't know, then, was that they had taken on the responsibility of those blades.
They had taken their place.
And now they had to help you.
But it wasn't just them; you had to try, too. You had to put up a fight, because you couldn't always let other people fight your battles for you.
This Sherlock knew, and this was why he had not cut.