As It Should Be

Chapter 6: Cobwebs

There was a night, well more than one, where Sherlock thought to end it all before. There were times even as a child the small genius figured out the ways in which life could be better, and concluded that he would always be without them. But he never tried, not really. Even as a misunderstood teenager, when he hadn't eaten in a week, and had avoided meal times for at least a year prior, his emaciated body sitting in a hospital bed, nutrients forcing its way into his bloodstream. Impossible for him to reject this final meal. He had thought. First chance he got he'd jump from the roof. But it didn't work out that way, because as much as he truly believed he wanted to die, the truth was he just wanted to be okay. And to his great surprise the group therapy and inpatient nurses actually helped. So he left, well in body and in spirit and he went on with life. Of course, he knew, it wouldn't last, it never did. He found himself back in the same hospital for a second time at 18, a few weeks before he was due to leave for University. This time, he had insisted, he never intended to hurt himself. Mycroft scoffed at this, he had seen the scars. But this wasn't an attempt of any kind, nor was it a refusal to take care of himself or a desire to disappear as before. He had just simply miscalculated.

"You! Miscalculated! I highly doubt that brother mine" Mycroft asserted at the preposterous. "You have the greatest mathematical mind this country has ever seen...well second greatest" He smiled. "I highly doubt you can miscalculate a dosage to such disastrous results."
"Well the problem, Mycroft, was that I was high when I was calculating!" Mycroft raised his eyebrows but didn't reply.
"Please just...don't worry the parents."
"I think the amount of substances in your system will do that all on its own, Sherlock."
"I mean, don't tell them it was on purpose." Mycroft moved to reply but Sherlock interjected - "Because it WASN'T on purpose." And so, against his better judgement, Mycroft kept Sherlock's secret...or he backed up Sherlock's truth. Whichever, he only kept up such a deal on the premise that Sherlock would stay in treatment until he moved away to University.
"I don't want to receive a call from Oxford telling me you're dangling by a rope from the chapel's spire."
Sherlock often felt guilty, when he saw Mycroft care. It felt easy to resent yourself and reject your life when you thought no one cared. He didn't much care for the reminder that he wasn't, in fact, completely alone in the world.

Going to University was difficult. But he had places to hide, and things to focus on, and ways to distract himself enough to not feel the overbearing guilt of hurting people he, regretfully, loved. He would spend most of his time in the chemistry lab, when he wasn't in lectures or extracurriculars. He was already starting research on a proposed PhD before he'd even had a week of first year classes. It was almost futile going to the lectures anyway, since he already knew everything they were attempting to teach him. Though it passed the time. And he was supposed to be socialising. Which he didn't really do. Until James.

Everything felt better with James. The world seemed to glow even under grey clouds or dim flickering street lights. They got a flat together. It was a tiny run down flat, in the very top of a 6 story building above a liquor store. The ceilings curved and arched, reminding them every time they bumped their head as they got out the shower, that they essentially lived in an attic. It was dusty and there were cobwebs everywhere, and both had so much stuff and so little storage that they treated the ground as if it was a bookshelf, and the hall way as a bike shed. If they weren't tripping over the piles of stuff, they were tripping over each other. The heating rarely worked and there were always drunks outside and they only got around an hour a day of natural sunlight, that managed, against all odds, to creep in through their tiny single paned window and fall gently on the bed as they woke up every morning. It would wake Sherlock up first, hitting his side of the bed, before slowly migrating across the bed. Sherlock would watch as it glided across James' body. His skin glistening under its golden rays. He'd watch his boyfriend slowly squint as he woke up, his eyes sparkling. James would immediately pull his head under the covers, he hated being woken up. But Sherlock would pull the covers down and insist James needed the vitamin D. To which James would reply "I need your vitamin D" and laugh. And they would giggle together, and kiss each other's skin, and trace their fingers over each other's bones, lace their hands through each other's hair, warm each other up under thin white sheets, until they finally, begrudgingly, pull themselves out of bed. Then they'd drink black coffee and smoke cigarettes, sitting on the small flat part of the roof that they have to climb out of the kitchen window to get to, and that they pretend is a balcony, watching as the rest of London wakes up, knowing that no one else gets to wake up as in love as they do.