Sighing, John walked down the street, groceries in hand, his arms shaking from the weight that rested on his arms.
"Damn it, Sherlock, why can't you help sometimes?" he murmured to himself before opening the door of 221B Baker Street. He walked briskly to the kitchen as he felt his arms giving out under the groceries, and plopped them onto the counter.
"Sherlock? Are you here?" he called out to the seemingly empty apartment.
No response.
This was unusual, as Sherlock would usually text him before leaving for Bart's or to a crime scene, and John decided to look around the small apartment to see if Sherlock was here, just sleeping, or merely didn't here him call out.
John took the stairs two at a time, bounding effortlessly to his room, throwing the door open to an empty room that was filled with the light of the sunset. He then proceeded to check all the rooms upstairs, before bounding down the stairs again. After checking the living room and the kitchen for the second time, when he opened the door to Sherlock's room, he was there. Lying on his side, his face pale white, and his phone lay in his hand. He was clutching it so hard that it looked like the phone was about to break in half.
In a state of sudden fear, John practically dived down to Sherlock's level, observing him more thoroughly. Sherlock's eyes looked dazed, and the light, vibrant blue of them had seemed to fade to a melancholic, deep blue. His knuckles were white where he was clutching his phone, and John reached up to slowly pull his fingers off the phone, fearful he could break a few bones in his hand. It wasn't impossible, he thought, he's seen something like that happen before. After all, he was a doctor.
Sherlock had a blank expression on his face, but John picked up a hint of pain across the man's face. Gently, ever so gently, he whispered to Sherlock.
"Sherlock, what...what is it? What happened?"
Finally recognizing that John was present, Sherlock's eyes moved to look into John's. He stared for a while, taking in John's worried expression, deducing what he felt inside.
"John..." Sherlock croaked out.
"I'm here Sherlock, what is it?"
Sherlock's brain started to finally register and operate again, and he sat up slowly.
"My father..." he murmured, looking away. "He died. Last night."
John was so taken aback that he was speechless. So many words, phrases and sentences ran through his brain, and he couldn't comprehend what his brain wanted him to say.
"I'm...I'm so sorry Sherlock. I didn't know you were close to-"
"I wasn't," Sherlock cut John off, looking slightly sternly at John. "I wasn't close to him. Not at all."
"Then why are you so ups-"
"I don't want to talk about it, John." he cut John off again.
"Please, Sherlock. I want to help, even if you say you aren't upset about it. I thought I was your...your friend, after all." He replied, looking into Sherlock's eyes again, recognizing the light blue colour slowly seep back into his eyes. The colour he loved most.
Getting up suddenly, Sherlock walked across the room, staring out the window of the second-story apartment, looking down at all the people passing in cars, cabs. People holding hands as they walked, people laughing, smiling. Oh how he hated those people. He hated how happy and carefree they were. He only wished he could be like that, too.
He realized that the only way to tell John was to show him. He couldn't put the numerous incidents into one speech that explained everything. Slowly, he started to unbutton his shirt, before silently slipping it off.
John stared as Sherlock's shirt slipped off his shoulders. Scanning his back for clues as to what Sherlock was actually doing, his sight froze on the middle of his back.
"Sherlock..." he whispered, taking a few steps towards him to get a better view.
Sherlock's back was laden with scars. Scars that were raised, scars that were deep, scars that weren't deep at all, and scars that were centimetres thick. White lines covered his back.
Turning around to John, Sherlock gave John a moment to process what his chest and stomach was laden with, too.
John gasped as he saw the large scars that were present on Sherlock's chest. They were much larger than the ones on his back. On his stomach were pink burn marks.
He stammered for words, taking in all the information he was just given about Sherlock. But when he looked up at the man before him, Sherlock was smiling.
"Why are you smiling?" John asked, looking inquiringly at Sherlock.
"Because, all this time, I've...I've been wanting to tell you. Trust me, John, I have," he looked down into John's eyes. "I wouldn't know how to explain to you if you just happened to see them one day, if, for some odd reason my shirt wasn't on," he continued, realizing how much that implied. "I'm not upset at my Father's death. Rather, I'm unscathed. I could not care whether that man was alive or not." Sherlock noticed John's puzzled expression as he eyed Sherlock up and down, observing his scars, the burn marks, occasionally touching them gently, a feeling Sherlock wanted to savour. No one had ever shown much care towards him as John did. But he dismissed the thought of John caring for him as a sign of attraction towards Sherlock. After all, John was a doctor. It was in his nature to care about people before him. Sherlock wasn't special out of all the patients he's cared about.
"It's not hard to deduce, John." he said, half-smiling. "My father was mentally ill, I'm sure my whole family was. At first, I thought it was just because my parents preferred Mycroft over me. I was always the sociopath. I was always locked away in my room, conducting useless experiments that my parents loathed. The amount of money I needed to conduct those experiments added to the tedium.
"One day my father had enough. He bought me into his room and took my shirt off. He..." Sherlock paused and squeezed his eyes shut, mentally kicking his brain for allowing the emotional pain enter his heart again.
"He started to whip me. I screamed and screamed, but Mother and Mycroft didn't hear me. Sometimes I wonder if they did, they just ignored it...
He whipped me almost daily. Whenever I entered my room for anything other than sleeping, he would do it again. As I got older, he started to resort in other means of pain for me, burning, cutting..." Suddenly, Sherlock laughed. "I've never really received love from anyone. I started to wonder why Mycroft wasn't harmed. Why..." his voice faltered. "Why didn't he hit Mycroft?"
"Sherlock..." John murmured, looking straight into the man's eyes. The look was reciprocated, and they stood like that for a few moments, savouring how they both felt when they stared into each other's eyes.
Sherlock abruptly looked away and grabbed his shirt, tugging it back on.
"I have to go out," he said sternly, stalking out of the room and down the stairs.
"Sherlock, stay, pl-"
The door slammed shut.