Chemical Disaster {JOHNLOCK}

The Mummy

A week had passed and neither Sherlock nor John had mentioned anything about the detective moving back to his own flat. There had been a silent agreement for Sherlock to stay, after both men found out they actually enjoyed each other's company. Well, for Sherlock, it was closer to a need than an enjoyment; or perhaps it was both.

Although he swore on his mother's not-yet-existant grave he would never let slip the fact that the scrimmage which almost got John's head blown off had resuscitated in him the feeling of fear, Sherlock knew it had been there. He could still feel it germinating in the dark hollowness deep inside him, rooting at such depths it was impossible to pull out its tentacular sprouts. He could still feel it swirling in his viscera, John's presence the only thing capable of taming it, the only thing that kept that horrible sensation from physically strangling and mentally crashing him.

Aside from that, due to the lack of labyrinthine cases to keep his cerebrum busy, an awfully immersing sense of dullness had bought a ticked to join the party of negative emotions raging in Sherlock. Small talk with John was the only thing which painted colors over these mundane days.

Still, there was another problem: Sherlock was running low on adrenaline and other more questionable stimulants. Fear had clearly been dominant that night, but the many ups and downs had also brought him his kicks, and coming down from it was always hell.

*

     "I'm home!" John shouted from the doorway of his flat.

Each night, after John came home and he had dinner alone while Sherlock refused to participate, they had fallen into the routine of debating their sleeping arrangement. Sherlock would insiste that the couch was perfectly fine for him, and that since John was the one who spent the most time sleeping, he should be the one having the proper bed. John would then argue that Sherlock should have his bed because the couch wouldn't fit for him, as opposed to John, who was shorter.

   "Sherlock! I want to take the couch, so let me!"

   "No you let me!"

   "No you!"

   "This is ridiculous." There was a pause. They glanced at each other, holding their breaths. All at once, they burst out laughing simultaneously.

   Like the last time he heard John laugh, Sherlock felt a wave of warmth spread across his heart, the same heart that no one had yet been able to influence.

   "So. Does that mean I can have the couch?" John hazarded again.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "No."

    They'd seen no point in continuing their therapeutic appointments as they were now living in the same flat, and Sherlock somehow managed to make his brother Mycroft agree with that. John went to work while Sherlock stayed at home, waiting for Lestrade to contact him.

   As soon as John was back, Sherlock would start lamenting on the absence of thrilling cases, which, accordingly, lead to extreme boredom.

   As John entered the living room and didn't hear any complaints, he frowned.

   "Sherlock? You here?" His voice was carried through the living room, yet the only sounds traveling back to his ears were the ones of raindrops tapping against the rooftops of the street, pecking the rigid surfaces in a regular and predictable rythme. John would have found the percussions relaxing if the shortfall of acknowledgment from Sherlock wasn't currently working on making him feel the exact opposite.

The all the doors of John's flat were flung open in haste; the one leading to his room, to the kitchen, then finally to the bathroom. It took a gigantic effort for John to swallow back his scream when his eyes landed on the tall silhouette of a man lying in the bathtub of the dimly lit space. Shadows crafted a peculiar contour to his features, and his lips, haunted by a lunatic smile, prickled John's skin with goosebumps. The doctor's hand crawled up the cold ceramic tiled wall in search of the light switch. He pressed the small rectangle of plastic as his fingers reached it and the room was flooded ablaze with light.

John could discern the man perfectly now. When tears materialized at his eye corners, he blamed it on the blinding light. His emotions were a confusing blend of fear, pain, anger, alarm and something else his couldn't pinpoint.

  Sherlock rested in the empty tub, fully dressed, arms crossed over his chest in the fashion of Egyptian mummies, the rim cocooning his frail body like a sarcophagus. Sherlock's appearances were in accordance with the position of his arms. He looked like he had came back from the dead, with his blood-drained skeletal face, his pale skin sucked tightly to his bones, the tissues covering his cheekbones about to fracture under the sharp pressure. Two infinite black holes had assimilated the blue sky of his irises, and bags darker than clouds of a thunderstorm shaded his under-eyes. A raspy giggle escaped out of the his ashen lips.

It was the straw that broke the Carmel's back. Anger exploded in John, blasting the fear and pain that had first been tangled in a knot with the other emotion.

"Sherlock," John seethed, subconsciously relieved that his other feelings had been washed away by rage. That, at least, he could stand. "What the fuck?"

    When Sherlock saw John's wry expression, his giggling only intensified.

"Sherlock what the actual fuck?!?" John yelled, helplessness overwhelming him at a maddening speed. Sherlock's hysterical laughs saturated the tiny space, drowning John as easily as a child who didn't know how to swim. Just as he was about to sink to the bottom of this ocean of psychosis, a memory shone in his mind.

"Sherlock, if there's still some part of you in there, you better stop messing with me," John warned, "because if you don't, I will call an ambulance, and I'll personally make sure you get the unneeded attention your body deserves."

Like a mother who heard her child cry in the middle of her sleep, Sherlock straightened up steeply, the little lucidity he had left downright focused on John's words and the arduous task of formulating an approximatively coherent reply.

    "I'm fine, John." Sherlock delivered, content of having purged his voice of the dissonant high pitch.

   "No. You're astronomically high." John corrected severely, like scruple-less teachers would if their student hadn't offered them a primarily veracious answer.

   "The chemicals I manipulate are dosed in the most systematic and fastidious way, and therefore should be no source of nuisance. I'm am a scientist, and as I mentioned previously, I hate to overdose. The repercussions are quite the dissuading sort." Sherlock slanted the back of his head against the bathtub's rim, his Adam's apple poking out on his lengthy neck, and his eyelids slowly glided shut. He may as well have raised a sign with end of conversation, please be so kind as to walk away and stop bothering me written on it, but John did not resign.

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" John murmured, afraid his voice would break if he spoke any louder. "Sherlock, why?"

Sherlock's fixated stare was two wells of darkness and there was a semblance of sorrow to his tone when he answered, "You wouldn't understand, John."

"Try me."

Sherlock stayed mute and he rested his head back into its original stance.

John stared quietly at Sherlock's ghosty figure for a long moment. He did not find Sherlock ugly like this. He was not repulsed by this vison of him. It was just... sadness with bottomless depths.

   "Would you mind getting out?" Sherlock asked. "I'm going to take a shower."John noticed he sounded roughly sober, and when he check his phone, it confirmed that thirty minutes had passed. John had not seen time fly as he attentively contemplated Sherlock's face with agonizing eyes.