Sherlock x Reader

Four white walls and One white soul

Getting to sleep was always the hardest part of the day now. Sure, you could just stay awake. You'd done so for weeks before people started pointing out your red eyes and the bags under them. That's really what snapped you out of the death-like trance you had been living in up until then.

That's really what started your dependence on the sleeping pills.

See, you'd never been that person to ever think of using drugs to induce sleep and hadn't even imagined a situation so traumatising that it would keep you awake through the long, long, nights. But, as luck would have it, assisting in the death of the man you repressed romantic feelings for turned out to fall into the category of 'traumatising situation', and thus, the weeks of sleep-deprivation that led up to the sleeping pills began.

The books and the movies always said that it got better with time. But it didn't. That was the thing, it just didn't. At any moment, the weight of what happened could hit you and the blow felt just as bad the tenth time as it did the first. Mrs Hudson quickly learned to not panic when the weight of that drop showed through the pained, but almost blank, expression on your face, as did John. John. You had hoped to find some comfort in his presence, seeing as you'd genuinely been friends with him and you did enjoy his company. But when you finally found the energy to visit him in the flat, he wasn't there anymore. It turned out that he'd moved out as soon as he could scrape together his belongings and, of course, the money to live elsewhere. So it was just you and Mrs Hudson. But from the way that even she started to avoid you, you might as well have been living alone, with only your ever-increasing guilt to accompany you.

So yeah, you needed the pills.

But you didn't realise how much you'd come to depend on them.

The first time you took them, it was a relief. It was a relief to get into your bed and not feel suffocated by the covers. It was a relief to not constantly toss and turn, desperately trying to force yourself to sleep. It was a relief to open your eyes and feel well rested, to not feel weighed down with tiredness just from sitting up. But after a while, one pill wasn't enough. Well, you said a while. It was really a few nights. But you had to move up the dose to two, naturally. The maximum dose. But again, after a few nights, the pills stopped being effective. So then you took 3 pills. One more couldn't hurt. But again, they just stopped having any effect. Maybe you were just buying some really shitty drugs but John swore that they'd work. And you'd trusted John. You tried to keep it at 3 pills, you really did. But you couldn't cope with the sleepless nights anymore. 4 pills. 5 pills. 6, 7, 8 pills a night. In the space of a month, you'd consumed nearly a hundred pills.
You really should've known that nothing good could come out of that during that month. But you didn't think. You just didn't care anymore. When the pills first unfogged your sleep deprived brain, you found in yourself a new kind of recklessness, of carelessness, that blocked out the small part of your brain that tells you not to do something. You did things you would've never done before. You went to nightclubs, drank until you fogged your brain over again, danced in horrific ways against men just as drunk as you were. And even with the ever-increasing workload that you continued to ignore, you still preferred to keep going out and fucking every new guy you danced against. And because you wanted to feel anything other than that guilt and pain and misery, you didn't care about crushing the hopeful heart of anyone nice.

Like one of the nights about midway during your month of madness. You'd gone to a now familiar club after dumping more papers onto your small kitchen table, almost surprised that it didn't collapse under all the weight. You drank the same amount you usually did but the combination of alcohol and ever increasing amount of pills left you feeling slightly ill, so you hadn't been 'dancing' as you usually would be. After staggering about for almost half an hour, you finally found some shred of common sense floating about in your hammered head, and sat down at the bar, practically thanking your lucky stars that there even was a seat. But you wouldn't have if you'd seen who was sitting in the seat next to you.

Brown hair. Curly hair. What looked like a leather jacket. Collar turned up. Skinny and staring down into the vodka shot in front of his clasped hands. Well, you assumed it was vodka. It's what you would go for. And you didn't even realise you were staring at him so intently until he finally noticed your face looking in his direction, and looked back at you. Of course it wasn't... him. This guy's eyes were too dark. But he looked so similar...

"Um, hi? Are you alright?" The voice was wrong, all wrong. It snapped you out of your little daydream, the cockney tones destroying any weak hope you had. But he looked like him. It had only been a couple of months since his death, but you didn't realise how much you missed seeing his face until you saw something similar.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm alright."

And you kissed him. You must have caught this guy by surprise, because he didn't pull away instantly. But he did pull away. After about five minutes.

"I've just broken up with my girlfriend," he said softly, his forehead resting against yours, breathing unevenly. "It wasn't anything long term, but I felt... strongly, for her." He looked into your eyes, almost pleadingly. "I don't know if I can do this."

"Then why come to a club of all places, if you're not here to forget about her? That vodka wasn't going to drink itself, was it?" Using that low, alluring, voice you'd by now perfected you leaned back in, your hand tracing down his chest. You saw him smirk slightly at your comment. Someone else used to smirk like that, before he died. Before you killed him-
Enough. You had to stop thinking about him. You'd do anything to stop thinking about him.

"Ah, you've figured out my ulterior motive... How could I have possibly hoped to deceive you?" And he leaned in to close the gap between your lips but you stopped him. There was something about what he said that unsettled you. Trying to cover up your hesitance, you motioned to the shot glass.

"I can't just let a drink go to waste!" You leaned back in to whisper in his ear. "Trust me. It'll make you forget." For a while, you added in your head. You saw a brief flash of thought in the man's eyes. He downed the drink. He'd made his decision. This time you didn't stop him when he leaned back in, and you both left the bar, stumbling about, the lingering taste of vodka left in both of your mouths.

You woke up the next morning in his bed. Obviously. You could feel a banging headache coming up. It didn't matter. You'd have some breakfast back at your place. You looked around, trying to remember these surroundings. Bland walls. Some plants here and there. The bed was huge, like the apartment. The guy must have a great job, or he's got an eye constantly on the market. And on the bed, was the man himself. He had his arm under your head, and lay flat on his back. At least he wasn't snoring. But he was asleep. That was the way you liked them. You got out of the bed, ever so quietly, and put your clothes back on. Luckily for you, your walk of shame was never so shameful, as despite your radical change in attitude, you kept your evening attire more conservative than the strips of cloth that were rapidly becoming the norm. When you were dressed, you gathered the rest of your things together and took one last look at the apartment before opening the door and leaving. You never asked for the guy's name and you never gave yours out. And you would never see the guy again.

It didn't matter how nice the man was, you thought to yourself, a couple of weeks later. You just kept hurting everyone you met, controlled by your own selfish impulses. No matter how much you lashed out at yourself for being needlessly cruel and however much the guilt ate away at you, you couldn't change. Frankly, it scared the fuck out of you. But hey, that's what the pills were for, right? Right. So that night, you needed an extra one. Or an extra two, just to help you sleep through the night, knowing that your new realisation would keep you up if you didn't take enough. So maybe you needed more. 3 more. 4 more. Then the bottle was empty. And the last thing you felt was the bottle slipping out of your hands as it fell to the floor, as you slipped into a deep, dark, sleep.