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Sometimes, Sherlock just wants to scream. At John, at the world, at himself. He doesn’t really have a preference.
He wants to scream at the world to stop being so boring. He wants to scream at himself to stop being different. And sometimes, he wants to scream at John to not leave him. That he’s sorry, so sorry for everything he is, everything he’s not. But he doesn’t know how to say it. And he wouldn’t know what to do afterwards. He doesn’t do things he doesn’t know the ending to.
He wonders if they can tell how much it hurts. Because it still does to this day. Which is stupid. Because he has had a myriad of data from the past to tell him exactly how it ends every time. But still he falls.
He flaunts what he can do. He watches their faces, waiting for the awe and hopes that maybe today is the day their faces stay at awe. (Stupid). They never do. Somewhere, halfway, their faces always drop into jealousy, than disgust, than hate. He doesn’t know the exact trigger of why this happens. What makes people stop their admiration? Does a specific event happens that triggers the idea that “I will never be able to do that?” What is the timeframes of these changes?
He would do the experiment himself, but he’s quite sure (93.7%) that his experience with this phenomenon is abnormal. After all, his childhood was a perpetual state of “mummy, why can’t I be like them?” His results would be faulty and therefore useless. No point.
He lived this way for a long, long time. At least, it seemed like it. 27 years is hardly an eternity compared with the average British male lifespan (79.4 years). Human perception of time is a strange thing. It was all very miserable and predictable and boring.
Then came John. An anomaly.
He shouldn’t have been an anomaly. Caucasian male. Middle aged. Right handed. Plain. Boring. He was discharged from the army due to an injury of the shoulder. (Sniper. Probably dove to save a fellow man.) Psychologically-based limp. Slightly more interesting. But nothing warranted what he did.
His opinions did not shift from the positive feelings of awe and amazement to the negatives such as jealous and hate. His opinion still has not changed after all this time of living together (641 days). It was unexplainable. Sherlock didn’t do unexplainable.
He suppose this is where the saying “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” filters in. He’s never lived the way people have wanted him to live though. So he tries to figure out what makes John different. He doesn’t find out. All he does find out is that this man is quite possibly the most loyal, kind, brave to have ever existed. And that scares Sherlock, because that means he’s emotionally attached. Which has never ended well. Not with Redbeard, not with Victor, not with anyone. So he sits and waits for the other shoe to drop.
But sometimes, he wants to scream. He wants to tell the world how afraid he is, how alone he is. He wants to yell at John, to demand him to stay, to demand him to leave now instead of waiting and making everything more painful.
But he doesn’t. He can’t make himself do it. He’s selfish and desperately wants to enjoy every moment that he can. God, it hurts. Sometimes, he finds himself thinking about it, about ending this arrangement, this life, everything. It’s hard though because he’s selfish.
He hates that sometimes: Thinking. Every drop of arrogance that he bleeds is minute spent at night staring at the ceiling with his brain out of control, screaming why am I different? Why do they hate me? His brain is all that he has, and sometimes, it betrays him too.
Where was he going? He had a point. Strange. Study in why Sherlock is a sad, lonely man? That would go forwards well. The common rabble learning that he, too, was human. What a strange idea. It’s not going to happen. It’s ok. He was born different and unique, better in many ways, and the price he has to pay is being alone. It’s fine.
But it’s not.