Chapter Text
“And the Iceman.”
Sherlock sat staring at his hands clasped as his forearms rested upon his bouncing legs. ‘It’s your own fault,’ a voice rasped in his head ‘You should run. You need to go. Go. Go. Run. Escape.’
A deeper, more familiar voice joined in the hidden conversation. ‘Don’t trust them. Don’t trust him. He’ll send you back. Back to me.’ A silky, sly laugh, bounded around his head, filling him with an old sense of dread. ‘You should finish the job. Finish the job.’
A hand on his shoulder brought him out of his spiralling thoughts.
“Sherlock, you with us?” John asked staring into his eyes as if staring into the depths of his darkened soul.
Sherlock nodded, not quite looking into John’s eyes. John took a seat on the coffee table in front of Sherlock, sitting so close that their knees touched. John was certain he wasn’t letting him out of his sight anytime soon. Greg took a seat on the sofa next to Sherlock, sitting so he would be able to reach the younger man should he need to, but far enough away that he wasn’t encroaching on Sherlock’s space. Mycroft resigned himself to standing in the far corner of the room, with an anxious and fearful face chipping at his usual plastered on knowing look.
John stared deeper into his eyes, “Sherlock, I need to know what drug you took.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes in reply, “I’m clean.”
John grabbed Sherlock’s chin to make the younger man’s eyes meet his own. “Sherlock, this isn’t a game. Tell me what you took.”
Both men stared into the other’s eyes, neither relenting.
“John, he’s telling the truth. He hasn’t taken anything illegal. Trust me he wouldn’t be sitting here if he had.” Greg stared into John’s eyes, imploring him to believe him.
John nodded once. “Okay. Okay then, we need to figur- wait. You said he hadn’t taken anything illegal, does that mean he took something else, something legal?”
Greg frowned slightly, “Yeah, just the tablets he got from the docs”
“You know I am right here right, you can talk to me. You know ask me a conversational question about my supposed drug habit everyone seems so obsessed with.” Sherlock added heatedly, which earned him a scathing look from Mycroft. Greg rolled his eyes at Sherlock but picked his way to the kitchen to extract a packet from one of the cupboards. He walked back over and tossed the box to John, just as Sherlock extracted Scrabble from one of the bookshelves and started to set it up.
“Let’s play Scrabble.” Sherlock announced from where he was sitting on a case file, Scrabble in front of him. “I’m really quite –“ Sherlock suddenly jumped back up, “No! Let’s play cards, I really am quite very good at cards, in the past I’ve won quite a substantial amount, in fact one time I even won a ho-“
“Sherlock!” Greg called getting his attention. “Come and sit back down over here, we could do with talking to you a bit, yeah?”
Sherlock stared at all the people in the room; Greg with his greying tussled hair, the bags under his eyes, and the worry sketched on his face, but that wasn’t the only thing, no he could trust Greg, kind reliable Greg, a sense of familiar safeness for when things went wrong.
Next John; who was staring curiously at the box in his hands, as always seeing but not realising, the tiredness in his face from having a packed few days, and the slight stiffness in his shoulder which Sherlock realised always came in bad weather, or when John was feeling particularly emotional.
Lastly to his older brother, his balding gingery hair as always held perfectly in place, as though it were made from plastic, who knows maybe it was, his suit was probably worth more than Sherlock’s rent, yet not the newest one Mycroft owned, so obviously his idea of casual wear, he sat with perfect etiquette, as though he had been trained by the queen herself. It was only Mycroft’s mostly hidden facial emotions which proved that he wasn’t a Victorian automaton: the fear hidden in the blue of his eyes, and the disappointed look his face relaxed into when he thought no one was looking.
Sherlock nodded and sat, although he was unable to stop his leg from jiggling. John blinked, as though trying to wake himself up from a dream, then having realised it was impossible to wake up from reality, cleared his throat to begin talking.
“Do… Sherlock do you know what these are?”
Sherlock nodded again, staring at his dancing feet.
“Okay, do you know why they may have caused an excess in energy in someone, and a complete turnaround in mood?” John asked, making his question generalised, as though he hadn’t already realised what was going on.
Sherlock nodded, “Those symptoms could be because the original diagnosis of clinical depression was made to seem worse than it was due to underline vitamin deficiencies, such as in vitamin D or Folic Acid, or in other physical ailments which could be detected by a blood test. Or perhaps if the person had other medications which would cause side effects with them. Or if the person has other previous mental health issues, such as bipolar…” He tailed off.
John nodded and a small smile played around the corners of his mouth, the way, Sherlock had noticed, he did when Sherlock did something John deemed good. His face contorted back into its professional set. “Sherlock, do you know why the tablets effected you?”
Sherlock hesitated, then nodded. After a minute of John staring at him, he relented and gave a verbal answer. “As a teenager, I may have been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder,” he then quickly added with a flustered look “but it’s not true I feel fine, great in fact. Honestly never better.” He froze when he saw John’s disbelieving face in front of his own. “Okay I get it, it’s fine honestly a bipolar flatmate isn’t exactly what you signed up for, or in fact what anyone, really, would want, Of course you’re welcome to carry on staying at Baker Street until you find new accommodation.”
John frowned, “Sherlock I’m not moving out just because I’ve found out you’re bipolar, I mean you really think this would be the thing to put me off? I mean you keep body parts in the fridge, and chase criminals for a living, trust me you having a mental health issue isn’t going to put me off.”
Sherlock took in the earnest face before his own and smiled.
Mycroft coughed awkwardly whilst Greg decided to busy himself attempting to make tea in the cluttered kitchen area.
“Well, this was all very touching, but I must be off. Doctor Watson I’ll leave Sherlock in your capable hands, I trust you’ll text me the medications you’ll need to start Sherlock on. Inspector.” He nodded at Greg, then paused as though he were about to say something emotional to Sherlock, instead he just nodded again and said “Brother Mine.” To Sherlock, before departing from the flat.
John and Greg shared a puzzled look at the lack of controlling Mycroft had done in the affair that night, which was soon interrupted by Sherlock saying, “He doesn’t do emotion.”. Before excitedly telling John about the ‘case’ he had found. John and Greg sat back and nodded every once in a while at what Sherlock was telling them, about his case, which John could tell by the way Greg was looking on, was not really a case at all.