TW: mentions of dubious consent and rape, drug use
Sherlock was the perfect man to have them, wasn't he? These itching, burning, hateful ideas.
He wanted to die. He craved the last breath, the last beat of his heart, because he needed it.
He needed to shut off his brain. All it did was push people away.
The cocaine was a brief reprieve that left him sucking cock in back-alleyways for twenty dollars to lift himself off of the inevitable low.
He'd had sex, he'd been fucked, more times than he could remember, from the time he was seventeen and discovered that weed was for children. The all-consuming rush of cocaine was calling to him.
So were the thoughts. The thoughts of death and blackness.
Often, more often than was healthy, he remembered.
Twenty-one years old, at Uni, behind the library building. He took a professor's cock down his throat like a pro, fisting his hands in the man's dress shirt, letting drool run down his chin and onto the grass, his eyes wide and glassy and grateful because he wanted to be used, he needed to be used, he needed to be choked on someone else's dick, his vision greying around the edges and a fifty pound note wadded in his right hand.
He hated himself.
He hated himself for needing it.
He hated himself for wanting it.
He hated himself for failing to die when all he wanted was death.
He hated himself for choosing the pills instead of the gun.
He hated himself for crying on his brother's shoulder, screaming in pain.
He hated himself for hating himself.
Sometimes he still wanted to feel the rush. Sometimes he toyed with a syringe or scraped a razor on some glass.
But John. Oh, John, that one bright light in a field of darkness, in a world of vision greying around the edges because the cock in your mouth is being pushed just a bit too far...
John didn't want him to. John wanted him to be clean, and happy.
He hated himself for disappointing John.
He hated himself for telling John about the sex, about the fucking, about the money, about the pills, about the screaming, about the shame, about the gun, about the beatings, about the blood on the ground in a pool beneath a dealer's head as he ran until he couldn't run anymore.
He hated himself for not hating himself when John understood.
He could never hate John for that, no.
He loved John because he was always there. He always believed.
He loved John because he didn't want Sherlock to die.
He loved John because he didn't throw away the cocaine.
He loved John because he knew how to give Sherlock what he wanted, what he needed; how to push his cock down Sherlock's throat just far enough to make his vision grey around the edges.
He loved John because...
... because...
Because when John looked at him, he didn't see what Sherlock saw.
Sherlock saw rape. He saw blood and tears and bruises and needles and cum and death.
John saw love.
Love that Sherlock didn't believe anyone could give him.
The lure of death was still there. Knives and guns were always accessible, as were pills and water and fire and rooftops and bridges.
But John was there. And that was enough to pull Sherlock away from temptation.
The thoughts remained, yes.
When he was being brought back, when the grey was receding, when he was in the arms of his John and his face wasn't covered in cum and he wasn't shaking from the high and he felt love
the thoughts didn't matter.
Just a bit of grey around the edges.