Title: Addiction
Author: QrYx

Rating: PG13 for talk about drug use
A/N: Inspired after reading The Sign of Four as well as The Red-
Headed League and A Study in Scarlet.
Spoiler Warning: Mild spoilers for SIGN and STUD.

Addiction

From under hooded eyelids I watched you go through familiar motions.
You know I'm watching over the top of my newspaper when you rise and
remove the bottle from it's accustomed place at the corner of the
mantelpiece. The syringe follows from its bed of cloth and morocco
shell.

As you delve into the few minutes of quiet rumination, staring at
the dots and marks on your arm like you are trying to connect the
dots of a child's puzzle, I think about addiction. The many times I
speak up against this habit of yours while you ignore or brush aside
my concerns time and time again. Your habit of cocaine and morphine
ruins you body, destroying you health and polluting your cells day
by day. It is unhealthy, and like any doctor unhealthiness is my
enemy, just as criminals are yours.

Who am I to speak though of unhealthy addictions? You are my cocaine
and morphine all rolled into one. From the start since I moved in,
the puzzle that is you has unravelled my senses and sucked me into
its realm. And God help me, I do not want to leave its seductive
embrace. No, I want to spend eternity in its succour, languishing the
rest of my days contently like a nursing babe at his mother's
breast.

It started so innocently. So simply. When Stamford introduced us, it
was pure curiosity. His remarks just spurred my imagination on.
Spending days at a time bedridden while recovering first from my
wounds and then from the enteric fever gave me ample time to culture
a healthy imagination. Stamford and his talk about your mysterious
ways and your queer ideas lit a spark of inquisitiveness that since
then ignited a forest fire.

Daily, I sit here and observe you. First, it was like a game, with
me looking for a way to understand you better, to figure you out. I
couldn't believe that you were that complex a man. I just knew that
there was a simple and easy answer. All those days spent querying
you as innocently as possible, trying to dig deeper into your psyche
to discover what manner of man you were, making those silly lists to
try and sort it all out in my own mind. If only I knew then half of
what I know now. It was as if I had only gotten a whiff of opium and
hungered to know every aspect of the drug, the shape of every puff,
the essence and the body of it all.

Ah, at that time I had only taken but a few baby steps into the
twists and turns on the maze you call your mind. And I was lost.
Lost and I did not want to be found. No, I loved wandering about in
there. Learning to read you, your expressions, your movements. Every
gesture, every inflection burned itself into my brain. Intrigued,
absorbed and captivated but not only your brilliance, but also your
peccadilloes and your flaws.

Oh yes, you have your addictions, your craving for a good case, your
insistence on perfection while solving the latest mystery, your
cocaine and morphine, your music and your violin. Yes, those are
your addictions. You, you are mine.

TBC??

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