[He's raw. Not just his skin. Everything is raw and bleeding, like a scab has been ripped off. The walls are down, and those are typically very carefully-constructed walls that are absolutely necessary for holding back the hordes of emotion. Ah, feelings. The fly in the ointment, the grit on the lens.]
[Irene had called him damaged and delusional when they first met, when talking about how his disguise had been a self-portrait. His brother had called him lonely and naive, and said he was desperate to show off. Those sorts of things rarely even register on his radar when they're usually said, because they conflict with his own image of himself--brilliant, unstoppable, always rational, always in control.]
[The truth is that Sherlock Holmes is a man that is full of so many contradictions that he can't even keep them all straight. He's a man with the mind of a scientist or a philosopher that decided to be a detective--when he could have just as easily been a criminal. He spent his whole life telling himself he needed no one--and still pretends that sometimes--but now he gets annoyed if best friend goes away for a weekend instead of running around the city with him. He labeled himself a sociopath but then tossed a man out the window for hurting his landlady because he cared that much. He hates his brother for spending a childhood trying to mother him because it rang with falseness, because he believes in his heart of hearts that Mycroft never actually cared about his well-being.]
[It took him 35 years to make a single friend and all 35 of those years he'd convinced himself he didn't need or want one. It took him even longer to feel anything even remotely akin to love, and yet longer still to have anything even remotely resembling sex, because he'd convinced himself that both were a waste of time, that they were weaknesses that he was completely above having.]
[Underneath the ice, underneath the carefully constructed facade that he presents to the world--and to himself--there is a young man that was a junkie because he didn't care about himself until a detective convinced him to get clean so he didn't destroy his mind. Underneath that is a younger man who spent his university days compulsively showing off how smart he was, pretending it wasn't because he was trying to impress, and getting called a freak until the word became something he stopped flinching at. Underneath that is a schoolboy who terrified the other students into leaving him alone, who got diagnosed for conduct disorder for setting fires and killing and dissecting animals, his curiosity and rationality (combustion was an interesting process and who cared about cats and frogs when people in other countries ate them?) mistaken for cruelty.]
[And buried at the very center, stuffed deep, deep down where he can't be hurt is a small boy that wanted to grow up to be a pirate.]
[It starts out very quiet. Just huffed breaths and the occasional shake of his shoulders. Then his shoulders shake more and a sob escapes his lips and he bites his hand to hold back the ones that threaten to follow after.]
[It's a catharsis more than anything else. It's shame at wanting and needing and feeling--and it's shame at lying to himself about not needing to want and need and feel. It's years of loneliness draining out of him in a rush and anger at himself for dealing with that loneliness with hostility and callousness so that he kept driving others away.]
[He feels pathetic and ashamed and humble and wanted all at once and he doesn't know what to do with it all, doesn't know how to handle it when he can't just shovel it all under the graveyard in the back of his head where all the things that are too intense for him to cope with rot and waste away to nothing.]
[There is a keening noise he doesn't even know that he was capable of--that he'd hoped he wasn't capable of--that comes from his throat, something mewling and pitiful. It makes the shame worse, but it feels good to feel the shame just because he's feeling something.]
no subject
[Irene had called him damaged and delusional when they first met, when talking about how his disguise had been a self-portrait. His brother had called him lonely and naive, and said he was desperate to show off. Those sorts of things rarely even register on his radar when they're usually said, because they conflict with his own image of himself--brilliant, unstoppable, always rational, always in control.]
[The truth is that Sherlock Holmes is a man that is full of so many contradictions that he can't even keep them all straight. He's a man with the mind of a scientist or a philosopher that decided to be a detective--when he could have just as easily been a criminal. He spent his whole life telling himself he needed no one--and still pretends that sometimes--but now he gets annoyed if best friend goes away for a weekend instead of running around the city with him. He labeled himself a sociopath but then tossed a man out the window for hurting his landlady because he cared that much. He hates his brother for spending a childhood trying to mother him because it rang with falseness, because he believes in his heart of hearts that Mycroft never actually cared about his well-being.]
[It took him 35 years to make a single friend and all 35 of those years he'd convinced himself he didn't need or want one. It took him even longer to feel anything even remotely akin to love, and yet longer still to have anything even remotely resembling sex, because he'd convinced himself that both were a waste of time, that they were weaknesses that he was completely above having.]
[Underneath the ice, underneath the carefully constructed facade that he presents to the world--and to himself--there is a young man that was a junkie because he didn't care about himself until a detective convinced him to get clean so he didn't destroy his mind. Underneath that is a younger man who spent his university days compulsively showing off how smart he was, pretending it wasn't because he was trying to impress, and getting called a freak until the word became something he stopped flinching at. Underneath that is a schoolboy who terrified the other students into leaving him alone, who got diagnosed for conduct disorder for setting fires and killing and dissecting animals, his curiosity and rationality (combustion was an interesting process and who cared about cats and frogs when people in other countries ate them?) mistaken for cruelty.]
[And buried at the very center, stuffed deep, deep down where he can't be hurt is a small boy that wanted to grow up to be a pirate.]
[It starts out very quiet. Just huffed breaths and the occasional shake of his shoulders. Then his shoulders shake more and a sob escapes his lips and he bites his hand to hold back the ones that threaten to follow after.]
[It's a catharsis more than anything else. It's shame at wanting and needing and feeling--and it's shame at lying to himself about not needing to want and need and feel. It's years of loneliness draining out of him in a rush and anger at himself for dealing with that loneliness with hostility and callousness so that he kept driving others away.]
[He feels pathetic and ashamed and humble and wanted all at once and he doesn't know what to do with it all, doesn't know how to handle it when he can't just shovel it all under the graveyard in the back of his head where all the things that are too intense for him to cope with rot and waste away to nothing.]
[There is a keening noise he doesn't even know that he was capable of--that he'd hoped he wasn't capable of--that comes from his throat, something mewling and pitiful. It makes the shame worse, but it feels good to feel the shame just because he's feeling something.]