A cold case. Not urgent, something to pass the time in between The Boscombe Valley Mystery and "The Next Big Thing". John was here and not; Sherlock was not sure how long it had been. Long enough and yet not so early he saw that which he should not, could not have seen. It was quiet, wonderfully and yet hatefully so. London was still in comparison to those days less bleached and frozen, and the hum of traffic had dissipated some time ago, leaving only the sounds of the flat and the fire and Sherlock's breath, in and out, to distract him. And therein lain the problem. An hour (was it?) since John had returned, and Sherlock sat nestled in his green chair, in his grey blue pyjamas and his duvet engulfing him in downy eggshell. The case was there in his meticulous ivory hands, but he had barely glanced at it, so seemingly entranced as he was with the flickering light of the dying fire. In actuality he was all at once beyond and buried deep within the walls of 221b, his mind coveting a singular substance (or perhaps dual--he could not decide between the two). He had been contemplating returning to it for a second time when John had come back early, and he was forced to leave his vices where they lay beneath the floorboards at the right of his bed. But, God, was the urge a consuming burn.
And, God, was the burn an ache. For hours, days, weeks, months. It almost never ceased, like a slow, steady, roiling, scraping and chipping away at whatever made him him, and here it was, so present and at the forefront of his thoughts, as it always was just after he had indulged himself. Indulgence begged for further indulgence, and John was what stood in the way at the moment. Sherlock's aquamarine eyes were trained, unfocused, on the flickering orange and yellow, falling down beneath the charred remains of a log thoughtlessly tossed within. He stoked the flames now, languidly and rigidly. Dichotomous.
As his actions, he, himself, was a dichotomy. His needs and desires, all contradictory, splitting him down the center, through and through. Opposing forces juxtapositioned like two selfish brothers, opposite in mind and speech, thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder, berated by a mother who only sought to pull the wool over society's singular eye. A false veneer. He let the cold case drop the floor, papers scattering like thoughts, and thoughts like dead leaves left over from a frigid autumn.
