Short Stories

Sherlock Does Homework

The artificial light burned Sherlock's eyes; he pushed his hands against the speakers to muffle the loud tune of the waking computer, coughing to assure complete inconspicuousness.
He imagined how his sister would react to this. She'd rat him out by accident, talking too loud, figuring everything out and ruining it. Or Mycroft, who would probably say nothing, even if he knew.
Sherlock would have said he missed his brother if he cared enough. He would've missed his sister if he knew how to have that emotion. She'd been gone for as long as their house. Was it bad he missed the house the most?
Why don't I love my family he typed into the Yahoo! search bar. It took a moment for any results to show up. He scrolled through the links, skipping past therapists and medicine ads, until something caught his eye. ...Sociopaths can be very dangerous if no medical attention is provided as soon as...
Sherlock clicked on the link. The computer started making a sound, like it was just as exhausted as he was. It hummed softly and Sherlock knew the monitor would start to heat up soon.
He read through the article quickly. What was described sounded familiar. He searched sociopathy and went through every link. ...can't understand others' feelings... often break rules... make impulsive decisions without feeling guilty for the harm they cause... lie, cheat, steal, and manipulate others...
"Oh no," he whispered, a hand pressed into his cheek. The other hand was firmly grasping the mouse, clicking through websites.
Then Sherlock found something else. It seemed to fit him perfectly. Lacking empathy, antisocial, disregard for rules.
"High functioning-"
"Sherlock? Honey, what are you doing awake?"
Sherlock closed the window and turned around to look at his mum.
"Sorry, just about to go to sleep," he smiled. His mother glanced at the computer screen, which was glowing with a blue light. She kissed his forehead and roughed up his curls before going to back to bed.
Sherlock shut down the computer and crawled into his own bed, tired but not a bit sleepy. He sat for hours thinking about this new title. A high-functioning sociopath: cold, lonely, apathetic. It was perfect, he hated that. Apparently the symptoms should lessen with age. But the symptoms were the only thing he knew about himself. Sherlock hated people and he'd thought it was a character trait, not part of some disease.
Eventually he fell asleep, but being a sociopath became Sherlock's identity. For a long time the only emotion he felt was hatred towards himself (and maybe some annoyance because everyone was so stupid and he was stuck in his numb little brain watching them all feel things and walk into walls).
Sherlock Holmes lived by the definition of a disease. Even when he grew up and met John Watson, he pushed down the little fondness he had for this person and stuck to what he knew. It seemed ridiculous to be a famous genius and not know how to deal with emotions. But accepting that he could like people, that he could form a normal friendship—no, no thinking about that. This is it, high functioning sociopath, that's it. No feelings, no friends, just a broken brain and some people trailing helplessly behind it.