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It was, Sherlock reflected, like being high again. The way he thrilled when John looked his way. The rush of their fingertips almost touching when John handed him a phone, a book, a map. Sherlock was glad of his lack of boundaries, asking for a phone in his own pocket. The contact was illicit and satisfying, and Sherlock was even more pleased that he knew how to hide the signs of being high. How to move slowly. The best part was that he barely had to hide around John.
John was a trained professional, but he didn’t seem to notice Sherlock was strange. Or he knew and regarded whatever Sherlock did as Sherlock-normal, perhaps, and disregarded other possible explanations. His shock at Sherlock’s past addictions made him an excellent object of Sherlock’s present one for him. John would never know unless Sherlock told him, and considering John’s reaction on their very first case, Sherlock preferred not to see what it would be when presented with an actual man who wanted him.
The amount of contact that was required on a case pushed Sherlock up and up until he was flying, words tumbling out of his mouth like a battering ram, his brain always pushing ahead, unable to stop. It made perfect sense, then, that in between cases, when John went away to tend stupid people with common ailments, or just to pretend that bodies mattered, shopping, Sherlock came down, suffering in darkened rooms with no stimulation, physical or mental. He was lost in the undertow of his freight train of a mind, lipping full and spilling and sucking itself down, a black hole collapsing under its own pull.
Sherlock did try to escape from it eventually, of course, the questions that always plagued him requiring an attempt at answers, experiments designed rigorously to test Sherlock’s mind. Playing chess against himself was not as much of a bore when he used the natural world to inspire one side, and humans to inspire the other. What happened when humans did this? How would nature respond? Science was a steady balm against his swirling morass of chemicals inside, channelling his desire into something logical and achievable.
And then the cycle repeated. A case presented itself in the form of Lestrade’s harassed face, or a client rapping against their door, and the looks between him and John deepened, sparking. On the hunt, they moved together, cataloguing information, John the channeller of Sherlock’s lightning, providing a way for it to move when the circuit wouldn’t close. And Sherlock fell a little harder, flew a little higher. They achieved incredible heights together, Sherlock a kite on the wind, John the man on the ground, holding the string.
Together, they broke cases, solved mysteries, played the game of being detectives, and Sherlock’s frustration at being met with inferior minds who only stumbled on genius, or simply repeated the age-old pattern of motive and means, was soothed by John’s touch, handing him a clue, brushing shoulders as they walked together. John was Sherlock’s newest drug, and Sherlock took a hit as often as he could.