Chapter Text
It’s not that Sherlock didn’t experience sentiment, it’s that he didn’t do sentiment. There’s a difference.
The more he outwardly dismissed the notion of sentiment, the thicker the walls around him became. His general oddities were enough to back the illusion and his declarations of sociopathy sealed the secret of his identity. People were relentlessly dim and too often took things at face value. That human idealism that trends toward trusting one’s fellow man worked heavily in his favour. His stern demeanour, morbid curiosities, and jarring physical presence were enough to stymie any further explorations, for the most part. And when someone was just a bit too perceptive and tried to dig past the surface, cutting deductions and scathing dismissals were almost always enough to evaporate the curiosity.
There were only a handful of people who could see through the façade; Mycroft, their parents, Mrs Hudson, and now John. But even they only saw glimpses, shadows behind the veil.
Sherlock didn’t think even Mycroft knew the extent to which sentiment ruled his little brother. He thought Sherlock foolish and poetic in his freelance battle against the criminal world. If Sherlock weren’t so sentimental he’d be in government alongside Mycroft, inciting international conflict and negotiating for the greater good. He thought Sherlock was wasting his brilliance, sullied by the abhorrent sentiment, that the cure for Sherlock’s infernal boredom would be policy development and global peacekeeping through clever strategy and passive manipulation. That Sherlock only turned to drugs because his mind wasn’t stimulated enough.
And this was a fiction that Sherlock was all too willing to uphold, especially when John began to ascribe to a similar belief.
The truth was far more jarring.
Neither Mycroft nor John knew the extent to which Sherlock would go to mitigate sentiment.
The sentiment that would burble up after a case that took too long to solve. When another body had been found before Sherlock could solve it and when the post-case high had faded into the oblivion of shame, regret, and self-loathing. When Sherlock would retreat to the shower and shut himself in his bedroom for days under the guise of recovering from the case. When his red rimmed eyes would prompt john to chastise him for not sleeping enough and working himself too hard.
Sherlock let John nag, let him fuss, and carefully upheld the narrative that he’d been neglecting his transport. Because behind closed doors was a horrible secret that he simply couldn’t afford to let loose.
This time, they’d been a little too late and an infant had been harmed. Alive, yes, but malnourished and filthy. She’d need a skin graft from the damage that’d been done being left in her dirty nappy for so long. Who knows how long shed been crying, cold and alone and in pain. At least shed been crying, her tireless screams had led them straight to her once they’d narrowed down the kidnapper’s location. If she’d been quiet the search would’ve stretched on far longer. It was too lucky, too close a call.
The wailing cries of the stolen baby were all Sherlock could hear as he stepped under the choking stream of water, desperate to wash off the dread that’d settled just under his skin.
And, finally alone, he was finally able to let loose the cloying sentiment that’d plagued him for days. The loo fan and the pelting shower drowned out the choking sobs that wracked his body, the build-up of empathy for the baby left alone to perish. He let himself crumple to the tubs floor, baptised under the steam filling the room, the gentle pattering of water on his skin. He buried his face in his knees, laid bare in his nakedness, in his naked display of sentiment. He let the horrors and the consuming hatred fill him and overflow in hot streaks down his face. He shuddered and choked and trembled and moaned until the water began to run cold and his sobs began to abate.
He climbed out of the safety of the tub and hastily dried himself, thankful for the door to his bedroom keeping a tight seal against him and the rest of the world. He unlocked the loo door leading to the main flat before disappearing into his bedroom and weakly climbing into bed, still naked as the day he was born.
Mummy had said he had cried like hell when he was born. So it was only appropriate that he remain unclothed as he continued his abhorrent descent into unrestrained sentiment. The wracking, throttling cries that’d overtaken him in the safety of the loo were gone now, replaced only by a steady stream of tears flowing down his cheeks.
When Sherlock cried, his tears simply poured out. Perhaps his strict containment of the sentiment bottled it all up and when he could let it all go, there was simply too much to form proper, romantic tears. No tasteful tracks of plump teardrops, no rhythmic plopping, or poetic drips. His sentiment was as unrelenting as a flash flood, a cascading river carving itself a canyon in his heart. And the torrent of tears poured, fell heavily like a crashing wave.
He was silent, though, cognizant of John’s presence down the corridor. John would be preparing himself for a much-deserved rest of his own, eager to get some proper shuteye after the days of perpetual motion and the emotional toll left by the infant’s condition.
Sherlock could picture it clearly, John puttering around the kitchen, tidying up after the whirlwind of their takeaway dinner, perhaps making himself a cuppa to ease his remaining adrenaline. He’d probably wait to shower until the morning, had complained more than once about Sherlock’s post-case showers using up all the hot water. Sherlock wondered if he’d complain if he knew the truth.
The thought only made Sherlock more painfully aware of just how alone he was, a pathetic puddle of goo leaking out over his bedsheets. The tears were still steadily tracking down his cheeks, his skin burned from the salt but it wouldn’t abate yet for some time. The sentiment was too overwhelming for a quick cry.
This is why—well, one of the reasons why—he’d turned to unsavoury habits. Why he’d turned to self harm and substances to drown out the creeping sentiment that lurked in the wings, waiting for the moment to come onstage and take over. His mind worked too well, too efficiently on cocaine and his senses were too dull on heroin or morphine. And the brief stint with the razorblades sharpened his focus enough to distract from the sentiment.
But those days are gone, he can’t bear the thought of rehab, or worst of all, losing John. So, instead, Sherlock maintained the careful facade, the cool, unaffected and borderline sociopathic demeanour that kept people and their insights at bay. He stayed stone-faced in the face of death and stoic in the face of decay. He belittled those who might attempt to deduce him and repelled those who might be perceptive enough to succeed. He cultivated an empty cavern where a heart might be, at least to an onlooker, and saved the burden of his sentiment for him and him alone to bear.
He’d fall asleep crying- he always did. And he wake up tomorrow with a headache, puffy eyes, swollen lips, and a red nose. He’d look like hell so he’d stay in bed, keep up the appearance of what John had deemed his ‘twenty-four-hour post-case-hibernation’. Then, at some point, the deluge would recede, the flood would ebb, and the pain in his chest would diminish. His breathing would return to normal, hunger would emerge, and he’d be ready to face the world once more. The shields would come up and the mask would fit itself back over his tear-marked face. And John would be none the wiser, for his sentiment would remain a secret for another day.