Here's a story based off a dream I had, enjoy!
(also I know nothing about naming medicine so that name is completely made up and most likely inaccurate. Also I reused a name from an old story, lets see which of you can guess what it is!)
John Watson rubbed his bleary eyes, and sipped at his tea. It was four in the morning but he was awake and staring at his computer screen, researching new medical developments. Why was this?
Well unlike his flatmate Sherlock Holmes, he did not stay up just to push his body to the limit insisting he "didn't need sleep, didn't want sleep, and was busy thinking". No, John tried to sleep often, but more often than not the nightmares woke him up.
John hadn't had a war flashback or nightmare for a long time ever since he'd started running with the famous detective. He'd thought maybe the excitement was enough to distract himself with, but eventually the nightmares did return-and he had not been ready for them.
Every night he woke up in a cold sweat, unable to go back to sleep and haunted by ghastly images. Tonight he simply didn't go to sleep. It was boring staying up so late, but so far he'd managed to entertain himself with his blog, a bit of poorly written soap operas, half a book Harry had bought for him that he didn't really like, and now he was reading the news online.
The article had, of course, immediately grasped his attention. Written in bold letters the title read: Miracle Medicine Cures PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, and Bipolar Disorder.
"Well that's...impossible." John muttered aloud. He was skeptical of course, new medicines were introduced all the time that promised to cure every disease known to man. However, the more he read, the more he considered the possibility that this new medicine might actually do what it said it did.
"Oh good, you're already awake."
John nearly spilled his tea as he jumped from surprise. Sherlock had appeared next to him suddenly and soundlessly. The man moves like a cat. John thought.
"What?" He asked, closing his laptop and laying it on the floor next to his armchair.
"Lestrade just texted me." Sherlock replied, examining his phone. The screen cast an eerie light on his angular features. "There's been a stabbing."
"Oh boy, love me a stabbing." John replied sardonically. "It's why I get up in the morning."
"Getting up requires you having first gone to sleep." Sherlock replied.
"Yeah, mind your own business." John shot back. "You're one to talk."
"Are you coming?" Sherlock asked, nodding towards the door. "...Something to...keep your mind off...things." He suggested, letting the sentence trail off.
"A stabbing sure will keep my mind off gore ridden flashbacks." John raised an eyebrow skeptically, but even though the logic wasn't very sound he did feel a bit of warmth from what Sherlock was trying to do. He was also flattered that the detective had put his powers of deduction to use to figure out the case of John's sleepless nights.
"...Right..." Sherlock breathed, nodding.
"Oh come on." John laughed quietly, heading for the door.
The stabbing was indeed as gory as John had assumed. The victim lay in the kitchen, a cry for help frozen on his face, the surrounding area soaked in blood and protruding from the man's chest was a large kitchen knife. Sherlock immediately went to work, studying the scene with interest. John didn't see anything unusual about the scene that could cause them to call them in, but he was grateful for a reason to walk around.
"So, the thing is..." Lestrade began. "...this guy, Richard Bellin never leaves his apartment ever. Like he has some fear of leaving the house. He also doesn't get any visitors or so his neighbors say."
"So who came in and argued with him?" Sherlock finished the detective inspector's thought.
John looked through a pile of things on the table, and his eyes fell on a small orange cylindrical container which was familiar to him. A prescription pill bottle. He picked it up and studied the name and his eyes went wide.
"An agoraphobic man with reclusive tendencies who's never had any friends or enemies." Sherlock wondered allowed.
"Sherlock, you should see this." John called his friend over to look at the pills. Sherlock read the label and his brow furrowed, making it clear that he was unsure of what he was looking at.
"It's that new drug." John explained. "Autoazepam...well the generic name is Pritizin. It's an anti-anxiety medicine. I was just reading about it actually."
"Good work." Sherlock replied. John felt a strange thrill at having been complimented, and felt the need to add more to the conversation.
"It's not supposed to be available for public use yet, it's still in testing." He finished.
"We'll have to ask if Bellin was a test subject." Sherlock pocketed the bottle, making sure he did so without Lestrade's knowledge as the detective inspector grew uncooperative when evidence went missing. "Let's find out who's responsible for this drug and wait for office hours."
Returning to the webpage John had been reading earlier, the two man detective team discovered that Northwind Medical was responsible for the new medicine. Getting into the building was just as easy, all it took was one fake police ID declaring Sherlock to be detective inspector Lestrade.
Once news got around that the police were in the building, the founder wasted no time coming to meet them.
"Ah! Detective inspector!" The man greeted them as though they were old friends and extended his hand for handshakes. "I'm Brian Kelving, I run and own Northwind. Is there anyway I can help you?"
"We need to look at the lists of your test subjects for a drug called Pritizin." Sherlock informed him. The man's face never changed, he just smiled and nodded.
"Of course, right this way!" He lead them further into the building, through the shining waiting room and into the inner hallways. "All of our records are kept here in the main building, I will be happy to show them to you."
"This is a very interesting drug you've developed." John commented. "You say it can cure certain anxiety based mental illnesses?"
"Yes, its quite remarkable!" Kelving beamed. "All of our trial patients came back with amazing results, their lives were greatly improved. No more panic attacks, no more flashbacks, no more nightmares, no more depressive moods."
"Amazing." John felt fascinated with the idea. "But how does it all work? There's no information available publicly. What's in it?"
"What did you say your name was again?" Kelving asked John, who suddenly realized he had neither alias nor police badge unlike Sherlock. So he improvised with what he had.
"Anderson." He replied.
"Well, Mr. Anderson, your curiosity betrays you." Kelving said and for a moment John worried they were about to get thrown out of the building, that he'd blown the investigation when they were just two doors down from the record room. Then Kelving continued. "You're clearly a sufferer of anxieties yourself. You know we're about to launch widespread production. I highly suggest you get a prescription, your life will change greatly!"
"I will consider it, sir." John replied.
The party came to a stop at the record room, Kelving opened the door and walked in with Sherlock and John.
"The records for our Pritizin trials are in this cabinet." Kelving directed them to it. "Now, I have some business to attend to, I trust you can show yourselves out?"
John looked to Sherlock to answer, but he was already filing through papers. "Of course." He said. "Thank you for your cooperation."
For the next fifteen minutes he paced about the room while Sherlock went through folders and papers alike.
"Nothing." He declared after the long search.
"So the trail is gone?" John asked.
"Quite the contrary." Sherlock grinned. "There are papers missing from this folder. You see, the rest of them are filled as far as they can go without spilling out...clearly there's a lot of note taking to be done. However this folder is third from the front and contains just about five papers. So where did the others go? I'd say we're missing about one case file."
"Bellin's?"
"Someday got rid of his files, and they did so in a very sloppy way. So clearly they have the money or the power to make problems disappear." Sherlock murmured.
"You think it was Kelving." John concluded.
"Oh, I know it was him." Sherlock waved his hand in a dismissing fashion. "I knew it was him before we entered this room, what I can't figure out is how to prove it."
Sherlock had paced about the flat as he usually did when solutions eluded him. After the pacing failed to bring him any results, he retreated into his bedroom to think on it further.
John had begun to feel a bit ragged, and so considered the possibility of sleep. Eventually, even though he'd gone to bed early and exhausted, a nightmare ripped through the peace of his night and woke him again. As his heart pounded like he ran a marathon and his hands shook, he flung the blankets off himself feeling desperate to be moving.
He walked through the apartment, feeling very much like Sherlock did earlier that day. As he paced about he noticed something sitting on the table next to where Sherlock had tossed his coat. It was the bottle of pills from Bellin's apartment. John picked it up and read the label again. Then he rolled it about on the palm of his hand. He sat on the couch and rolled the bottle about, listening to the pills clatter about inside like raindrops on a metal roof.
I highly suggest you get a prescription, your life will change greatly!
As a doctor, John would never condone someone taking someone else's prescription medicine. However, as a doctor he also trusted himself to conduct a safe trial of a new drug on himself. If there were any side effects, he'd be able to just stop and know how to treat himself. It was fine, right? To just consider the idea of taking them? He was just considering it.
John suddenly felt an urge to see what the pill looked like. He opened the canister and poured one onto his palm. It was small and oblong and tan, and before John knew what was happening he had swallowed it.
Feeling a strange panic, he capped the canister up and carried it with him upstairs back to his bedroom.
Then he proceeded to have the best sleep of his life.
John Watson was a changed man.
He slept a normal span of time a night, he was cheerful, that limp that appeared from time to time was completely gone, it was like there had been a rain cloud over his head all this time and it was now suddenly gone.
Of course, Sherlock was suspicious.
"I have an update on the Kelving case." He informed John one afternoon, looming in the doorway like a black shadow. The doctor was finishing dressing, pulling on his shoes.
"Oh?" He asked.
"I say this because I know you haven't been following it." Sherlock mentioned, feeling that he should mention it because it was strange for John to not get involved with what Sherlock had come to consider their work.
"What's the update?" John asked.
"What are you keeping in your sock drawer?" Sherlock asked, changing the subject.
"What?" John's brow furrowed. Sherlock shook his head and frowned.
"I'm going to ask you that two more times. If you haven't answered me by the third..." He let the sentence hang in the air, a dark look coming over his face.
John had all but forgotten the threat later that day when he came home from a day at the clinic. He was feeling strangely, his head hurt and his hands were shaking. He even had a cold sweat trickling down his skin. All he could think about was taking a pill and going to bed. When he entered the flat, Sherlock was waiting for him, sitting in his chair and staring at the door.
"What are you keeping in your sock drawer?" He asked.
"Piss off." John replied.
The next morning John reached for the pills before he did anything else. He swallowed one dry, which as a doctor he knew you should never ever do, and then opened the door to find Sherlock just outside it.
"John, what are you keeping in your sock drawer?" He asked.
"Look, do you have some sort of problem or..." John didn't get to finish because Sherlock had already pushed past him. By the time John got a hold of the man, he'd already yanked the bottle of pills out of the sock drawer and was glaring down at them.
"You don't need these." Sherlock growled. "And better yet, you weren't prescribed these. You know they're dangerous because they killed a man to cover up their side effects."
"Sherlock, give them back." John ordered, but his voice was tinged with desperation.
"Do you remember, three months back, when you found me in a drug den too high to remember my own name?" Sherlock asked. "And you dragged me home, and you sat next to me through the entire withdrawal process, and you kept me fed and clean and safe from relapse? I cannot believe that same man is taking a drug he found at the scene of a crime just because it's the easy way out."
"Sherlock..." John blushed, feeling thoroughly ashamed. The detective sighed and pulled John into his arms. The doctor froze, letting Sherlock hug him. He had been expecting a slap but instead Sherlock had hugged him.
Sherlock pushed past John again, no doubt to flush the pills. John sat on the bed and put his head in his hands, unsure which scared him more: the thought of the nightmares returning, or his current situation.
When he finally mustered up the courage to come downstairs and face Sherlock he was greeted with a mug of tea, and not with a judgmental look or a lecture. In fact Sherlock didn't mention it at all. He just stayed close to John, fetched him tea and watched him in silence. John distracted himself with the news on his phone. He was shocked to see Lestrade had made the top story. He scrolled through it and his eyes widened as he read that Lestrade had just arrested Kelving for the murder and the cover-up.
"You let him have your case?" John gaped. Sherlock looked the other way.
"I had something else to think about."