Mycroft frowned for the fourth time that day. "Again?"
"I'm afraid so, sir." his assistant replied, avoiding all eye contact in order to not be at the end of Mycroft's foul mood.
Considering throwing a shoe at the face of one of his assistants in the hopes it would make him feel slightly better, instead Mycroft ran a hand over his face and sighed. "Fine, call a car around for me." he said with a dismissive hand-wave and heard footsteps hasten away on the stained wooden floors.
A quick glance to the painting above his desk, and another to the papers of urgent importance he knew were sitting neglected in the drawers of that desk, and one last shake of his head, before he grabbed his umbrella and left.
Sherlock scowled in the oversized uncomfortable leather chair and shifted against the lumpy stuffing of the armrests. Ridiculous.
"Mr Holmes has arrived," he hears a high voice announce and immediately mentally plans out all possible escape routes from the head-teacher's office. He is just contemplating the precise elevation angle needed to land onto the next building from the 7x10 single window when his brother enters the room.
Sherlock suddenly feels claustrophobic.
"Ah, Mr Holmes, thank you so much for coming in on such short notice" the plump greying man with the name of Mr Frays announces, and Sherlock entertains himself with the deduction of how Mrs Frays is cheating on her husband with a fireman from East London.
"It was no trouble" Mycroft supplies with a tight smile and squinted eyes. He sits gingerly on the other uncomfortable chair propped directly perpendicular to Sherlock's and makes a point of not looking at his younger brother.
"As you probably already know, Sherlock has been issued with another suspension, this time of three days away from school."
Mycroft barely contains an eye-roll. "I am aware. I would appreciate knowing the reason for your decision." he questions.
Sherlock distracts himself from counting each individual square tile on the ceiling (56 and counting) and interrupts. "This is really of the most unnecessary-"
"Sherlock," Mycroft glances at him, eyes sharp and challenging. Sherlock scowls at him in return and continues talking.
"This is all because of me simply stating the truth. Mrs Jacobsen does have alcoholic tendencies, she also does not understand the syllabus, does not know the meaning of cleanliness and is definitely a poor excuse for a teacher. I do not understand why I am encouraged to not highlight the truth when a teacher obviously incapable of teaching is dictating to me the importance of something as elementary as homework" Sherlock sits back in his seat with a wince at the uncomfortable backrest poking at his spine, turning back to glare at said opposing chair.
Mycroft stands from his equally uncomfortable seat and buttons his suit jacket, interrupting the spluttering head teacher from a predictable outburst at Sherlock's atrocious behaviour and gestures for Sherlock to stand and follow him. "I understand the situation, Mr Frays, I assume the suspension is active from today onwards?"
"I- well," the head-teacher harrumphs in displeasure. "Yes. It is." He stands behind his desk.
"Thank you, I will see to it that Sherlock does not stray from this arrangement." He smiles another false smiles and leads Sherlock out of the room without a chance for Mr Frays to respond.
The Holmeses exit via the main entrance and Sherlock purposefully hangs back as soon as they leave, shifting into the smoking area and fishing out a lighter from his coat pocket.
"Sherlock," Mycroft reprimands. "I believe we have had this discussion about smoking before. I believe we have also had discussions about your behaviour before. Must you be so tedious to force me to repeat myself every day?" he walks back over to his brother.
"It's not every-day, Mycroft, stop being so melodramatic" Sherlock taps the ash onto the floor and kicks it with the toe of his shoe.
"I am clearly not being melodramatic, since you have just been suspended for the second time this month. It is only the 10th."
With a sharp exhale of smoke, Sherlock yawns purposefully and turns his head away, clearly done with being in Mycroft's general presence or having to listen to anything he happens to say.
Considering giving up entirely and pulling out a cigarette of his own, Mycroft turns to the path again and begins walking towards the road where a car with tinted windows waits for them both.
With the prelude of heavy footsteps and laboured breath, Mycroft is chased down by a man with cropped hair and a striped blue tie blowing over the shoulder of his pressed white shirt. "Excuse me? Do you have the time?"
Mycroft turned to address the dishevelled man, only to be met with a soft exhale of "Oh, I-sorry," the man shook his head in what seemed to be confusion, and looked to the floor, then straight back into Mycroft's eyes.
"The time is 1:21" Mycroft replied without checking his watch.
The other man awoke from his daydream "Thank you, sorry...erm"
"Greg?" Another voice interrupted, another teacher exiting the school with her arms full of folders. "Aren't you supposed to be teaching now?" she questions.
Greg, Mycroft registers with vague interest.
Greg's eyes widen again, cursing quickly and thanking Mycroft once more before flying into the double doors of the school's reception and disappearing.
This is when Sherlock appears again, smelling of smoke and staring at Mycroft expectantly.
With another frown, Mycroft decides he has had enough of this place today and leads the way back to the car.
Sherlock stares pitifully at the ceiling and wishes for something interesting to happen in the next five minutes. Of course, nothing does, and he stays there with his thoughts for the next three hours.
Knock knock.
"Eat something." Mycroft's muffled voice demands through the door.
Sherlock scowls at the sound. "Go away."
He focuses of the sound of footsteps leading away into the library before he looks over to his collection of framed taxidermy spiders with a sigh.
Three days away from school, for Sherlock, is the worst punishment possible. He has barely anything to deduce to keep him occupied, having already inferred all knowledge possible about Mycroft's servants and secretaries and gained only boring unimportant information about adulterous crimes and strange sexual fetishes.
On the third day, he considers heading into town and immediately dismisses the thought. Dull.
With the final decision of breaking back into the school and spending the day in the chemistry lab he packs his coat pockets full of some of his best test-tubes, not intent on making do with the chipped school-provided ones; and leaves through the back door.
With well-practised ease, he slips in past a herd of younger students and blends into the crowd, surpassing the receptionist, turning up his coat collar and making a bee-line for the second floor steps.
Text Message: from Mycroft
What are you doing? MH
Sherlock grins and shoves his phone down as far into his deep pocket as it will go, returning to picking the lock of the laboratory door.
He pushes the door-handle sharply up and then pushes down, the door springing open as he slides his tools back into his coat, heading straight for the hydrochloric acid.
When Sherlock returns home later on with singed eyebrows and fingertip holes burnt through his leather gloves, Mycroft simply raises an eyebrow and returns to his phone call with the prime-minister.
Sherlock sees Mycroft again later on in the library, where he interrupts Sherlock's research into the world's most deadliest toxins.
The older Holmes brother entered silently, as he always did, though with eyes trained to the movements and speech of Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock sensed him immediately. He also deduced a change.
"You've been promoted" He stated into the silence.
"I have." Mycroft responded, settling into the chair opposite and straightening his pocket square.
"Aren't you hypothetically the British Government by now?"
Mycroft raised an eyebrow. "Slight exaggeration, Sherlock"
"No it's not," He said from behind his book, a quick glance up to his brother's face confirmed that he was right.
"I have to go away for a few days." Mycroft said eventually, dusting off invisible lint from his trousers.
Sherlock stared at him for a moment. "North America"
Mycroft smiles mockingly, "South."
Sherlock scowls at him and then berates himself for allowing his brother to outsmart him. Again.
"Why are you telling me this?" Sherlock drawls, flipping a page nonchalantly.
"Because I don't want to have to fly home on an emergency jet because you cannot control yourself for more than two days without being reprimanded for something or other."
"It's not my fault everyone is so-"
"People are dull, Sherlock. There is no getting around that fact, real people are just another one of those unfortunate things that we have to deal with in life."
"Boring" Sherlock stated, flipping over another page to make a point.
Mycroft silently agreed. "So, if you could try your hardest not to eviscerate anybody within the next three days, I would be much obliged." Mycroft squinted in the way that Sherlock knew was his brother's version of a smile.
"Laters" Sherlock states loudly, imitating slang in the hopes it would make Mycroft leave. It did, and he settled nicely back into his book of toxic chemicals.
Hearing the news of Mrs Jacobsen's inevitable refusal to teach the 'horrific Sherlock Holmes' any longer, Sherlock celebrated internally and simultaneously deflated, as this meant she was likely to be replaced with an even more unexciting and equally obese excuse for a teacher with their own predictable life troubles to accompany them.
So when Dr John Watson introduced himself to the class, first thing on a Friday morning, weather raging outside the shut wall of windows, needless to say Sherlock was surprised.
Surprised at the difference of this seemingly unimpressive man.
Ex-army doctor. wounded in action. flesh wound. bullet through left shoulder. relieved from duty and straight back in to education, to convince himself he had purpose in life? Unmarried. Stumbled upon teaching. found this job through a mutual friend. Mr Stamford. Met through training in a hospital. Strained relationship with family...
Sherlock frowned at the lack of data he was able to deduce from such a distance, his palms itched at the wish to know more about this stranger infiltrating his life.
"Okay, so I'd like you to pair up, please. It will just make this next task easier. Anyone pisses around with the bunsen burners, you're out. Got it?" Upon hearing the general murmur of agreement, he sent a satisfied nod to the students and returned to the seat behind his desk, hovering but not sitting down.
When Sherlock was predictably reminded that he would be working alone again by the vacant stares he was receiving from the eyes around him, he stretched back in his seat and then pulled his textbooks closer on his desk to send a clear message of the wish to be left alone.
When Dr Watson returned his sight to the class, and was met with the intense eyes of the infamous Sherlock Holmes, he startled. Realising that Sherlock was the only student without a pair, he frowned, but said nothing and launched into the explanation of the experiment.
John had tried extremely hard not to feel intimidated by his role of being elected as the new biology teacher of a class containing Sherlock Holmes. He'd heard about him, of course he had. The student from hell, apparently.
From first impressions, John didn't really see what the fuss was about. While a little intense and isolated, Sherlock wasn't the demon from hell he'd heard stories about and had been expecting. In fact, he hadn't heard a word from him for the first three lessons he had taught him for.
It was at the end of that third lesson, actually, that he'd even spoken to him directly at all.
It was a rule of thumb that most students were usually desperately running for the doors of the classroom as soon as the bell rang signalling the end of the class, but Sherlock waited until the end, distrustful of his surroundings and slow in movement.
John tried not to make it obvious he was watching the young man and turned his eyes to the papers on his desk students had handed in at the end of class. Sherlock in turn bought his paper up and slid it onto the top of the pile, pursing his lips with a frown when John thanked him.
He turned to leave and hesitated, his coat swinging around as he made dead eye-contact with John.
"You want to talk to me" he said, deep voice just on the edge of silk, completely without emotion and so downright true that John contemplated if he was hallucinating.
Dr Watson barely managed a confused 'huh' noise in reaction before Sherlock was crowding back around him, marching straight up to his desk.
"You want to talk to me but are considering whether to ask me to stay behind since there is no actual reason that I should be asked to stay after class." he narrowed his eyes. "You feel sorry for me"
This last statement made Sherlock seem more angered as his face scrunched up in accusation. John shook his head, wondering if his face was such an open book or if this was the way that Sherlock generally communicated, forceful and intrusive.
"Why?" he demanded. "You don't know me."
"Mr Holmes," John started, "Sit down please"
"Why should you care?" he repeated again in rapid fire questioning, not budging from the spot his feet were mounted on.
"Mr Holmes-"
"Sherlock." he said. "Mr Holmes is my brother." he said with a voice full of disgust.
"Okay...Sherlock. Take a seat." John was suddenly aware of how small he felt stood next to Sherlock. The teen was skinny, just on the edge of lanky, with an angular face and alien-liken features. Somehow, this didn't make him look as entirely unattractive as it should have.
Sherlock sniffed and sat backwards on to one of the lab chairs, crossing his legs and raking his eyes over John to the point where he felt self-conscious.
"Which other A-levels do you take? Apart from Biology?" John inquired.
"Chemistry, Physics, Forensics, Philosophy."
"Five?!" John exclaimed. "I didn't know it was possible to take five A-levels." he frowned.
Sherlock merely blinked in response and turned his head towards the window.
"Do you have many friends in this class?" John asked finally, to which Sherlock's head snapped back around to face him.
"Friends?" he scoffed. "I don't have friends."
"You...don't have friends?" John repeated.
"Yes. Do try to keep up." he snapped.
"Do not take that tone with me," John raised his voice slightly, to which Sherlock had no reaction, and turned his gaze back to the open window.
John sighed. "How are you finding the class so far?"
"Mildly stimulating" Sherlock drawled.
"Okay. Okay, good. That's good" John swallowed, not sure how to respond. What was going through this man's mind?
"Afghanistan or Iraq?" Sherlock asked suddenly.
"Excuse me?"
"Don't be so tiresome as to ask me to repeat myself" Sherlock sighed.
John paused. "Afghanistan. Sorry, how did you-"
"I thought so" Sherlock smirked to himself.
"Right," John patted his knees and stood, lifting the stool he was sitting on and shoving it back behind the tables. "Okay, well, I just wanted to know you were okay, I suppose" John scratched his head. If he was honest with himself, he didn't even know why he'd wanted to speak to Sherlock alone, was it to see if he lived up to the hype? To see if he matched all those rumours floating around the staff room?
Sherlock stood without a word, burying his hands in his pockets and heading for the exit.
"Are you?" Dr Watson called, last minute, before Sherlock opened the door.
"Am I what?" he replied, monotonous.
"Okay? that is."
Sherlock watched him for a few seconds, and then pushed down the handle. "How would I possibly know that?" he questioned, and then left with a click of the shutting door, leaving Dr John Hamish Watson completely and utterly confused.
John spent the rest of the afternoon in a daze.
As soon as he entered the staff room there were eyes on him. He headed straight over to the coffee machine, brushing shoulders with Greg Lestrade who instantly asked him what all of the other teachers were probably thinking.
"Oh hey John, how's it going mate? How's your new biology class going?"
"You mean the one with Sherlock Holmes in, right?"
Greg nodded, munching on a biscuit he'd just dipped in his tea.
John pulled a face to himself, trying to think of an accurate word to describe Sherlock Holmes. "It's...different " he supplied. "I don't really know what to expect if I'm honest, mate" John ran a hand over his face.
"Yeah I get that, I'm his tutor" Greg said with a laugh. "You'll get used to him eventually."
"Really?" John lead him over to the blue chairs in the corner, next to Mike Stamford.
"The thing is about Sherlock Holmes," he starts, "is you'll never really know if you're teaching him or if he is teaching you"
"That's a pretty accurate description" Mike interrupts. "Have trouble with Holmes, John?"
"He's not as bad as everyone told me he would be" John reasoned with them both.
"Give it another week" Greg laughed to Mike, raising his mug in the air.
Mike laughed and nodded back to him.
John worried at his lip with his teeth and let his head fall back in his seat, trying to push down the panic swirling around in his stomach.
Sherlock immerses himself in Dr John Watson from the second he leaves the classroom, fingers typing relentlessly on his mobile phone trying to find anything and everything on this man.
He finds an old army portrait, a news article published 3 years earlier, and a personal blog that has been password protected for 10 months or less.
Instead of attempting to hack into the blog (he still needed a bit more practise in online hacking skills, annoyingly), he sat back on the stairs at the back entrance of the building near the car park and reflected on their conversation in the classroom.
Dr Watson had shown unexpected caretaker qualities towards Sherlock, which threw his deductions off-guard. No teacher had ever asked him if he was 'okay', the thing that threw Sherlock off even more was that he wasn't even sure how to respond to that question. Irrelevant.
Sherlock had also deduced that Dr Watson had only recently recovered slightly from a psychosomatic limp, associated with his injury in Afghanistan. Obvious. Although the man still had a slight uncertainty to his step.
Sherlock tried to tame the numerous codes of data whizzing around his brain by recognising them and storing them in a new file created in his mind palace for his new biology teacher Dr John H Watson. What does the H stand for?
Becoming overwhelmed with information and frustrated at himself for not being able to handle it or store it effectively, Sherlock headed out the double doors into the drizzle of rain, to light a cigarette and pretend that today had not happened.
John eventually escaped questioning an hour later, patted his pockets down for his car keys and ran to avoid the automatic doors closing on him as he dashed to the car park in the steady rain.
He caught the sight of a figure out the corner of his eye, a tall man in a dark coat pressed with his back solidly against the brick wall of the back building. John had to squint through the rain to see if he recognised him.
Surprised to see anybody that wasn't a teacher around at this time after-school at all, John startled slightly when he recognised the alabaster skin and dripping wet dark curls, head angled away and exhaling a cloud of smoke.
For a reason he couldn't fathom, John barely held himself back from marching straight back over to Sherlock, but instead clambered into his car and turned on the windscreen wipers.
Sat sodden in his damp clothes, John watched from afar as Sherlock stamped out a cigarette underneath his shoe, turned up his collar against the wind and rain and stalked away towards the main road, a silent and lone stick figure in the haze of stormy weather.
"Why are you phoning me? We never phone each other" Sherlock accused as soon as he picked up the phone to his brother's caller ID.
"Could you get something from my desk?" Mycroft bounced back.
"Oh, so that's why. You're using me for something. Predictable."
"Sherlock-"
"I'm going. Do try not to have a heart attack, we both know how high your blood pressure is from all of those fatty acids you've been consuming. Putting on weight again are we?" Sherlock grinned to himself as he climbed the small staircase to Mycroft's office on the top floor, sliding his hand along the mahogany hand rest.
"Losing it," Mycroft snapped in return "Have you finished being irritating yet?"
"What do you want?"
"There's a key for my desk in my-"
"In the paper sleeve of your hardback cover of Moby Dick, third shelf on the wall by the sofa." Sherlock provided with a smug undertone to his voice, and Mycroft pretended not to be surprised that Sherlock knew this already.
"The folder entitled 'Correspondence'" Mycroft supplied, and Sherlock hears rustling and muffled voices in the background of the call and goes towards the locked drawer in Mycroft's desk.
"Yes?" He prompts impatiently, finding the folder.
"What is the time and date at the top of the fourth paper from the bottom"
"How very particular of you," Sherlock commented, sifting through the pile. "10:53 3rd of August 2009"
Mycroft scrawled down the information. "Interesting."
"Is that it? Do you have what you need to blackmail some country or other now?"
"No, but I do now have the potential to sentence a corrupt political leader in Islamabad to exile. How was school?"
"Fine."
"Did you-"
"Mycroft"
"I know, goodbye"
"Yes", Sherlock ended the call and tossed the phone onto the leather upright button-embellished sofa in Mycroft's overcrowded office.
Sherlock found his eyes wandering to the painting of a portrait of their parents above Mycroft's desk that he was almost always automatically drawn to. He scoffed. Sentiment.
He allowed himself a moment of missing his mother, trying to block out the perfunctory hand of his father's that rests on her shoulder. It was easier to pretend that he wasn't the reason the Holmes family was such a mess. Deceased parents and a pretentious, unrelenting older brother to deal with, thanks, Father.
Returning to school on a Monday morning and being greeted by the usual slurs of 'freak', 'psychopath' and 'weirdo ' was to Sherlock, predictable and tiresome beyond belief.
The one thing that surprised Sherlock, however, was the appearance of Dr Watson in the corridor, and the apparent anger on his face when he'd heard them. In fact, he had immediately loudly ordered a large rugby player to get to his lesson unless he wanted to be sent to the head's office for 'bullying'.
Pressed back against a wall of lockers, Sherlock sank deeper in his confusion of the enigma of this short man with his protective gaze over Sherlock.
John looked up after sending a student that was taller and definitely stronger than he was scurrying away instantly. For the third time, his eyes fell upon the steady gaze of Sherlock Holmes, the heady atmosphere in the air tense and thick, making it difficult to breathe, and John cursed himself for feeling so weak around a student.
Sherlock watched him duck into a classroom at last, wishing with every bone in his body that he could follow after him and question everything under the sun in the hopes of understanding this man. Because Sherlock wanted to unravel his mind, bury himself in the synapses and nerve endings of Dr John H Watson's brain and understand.
He needed to know why seeing him made his mind blank and deductions felt like he was desperately grasping at straws or forcing his mind through a garlic press. Sherlock wanted to know if everyone had this problem with Dr Watson, did everybody become so poisoned with confusion and contempt at the increase of heart rate for no logical reason?
"Sherlock?"
Anger rose to his chest at being disturbed, nevertheless he turned to be met with the face of Lestrade. "What?"
"You missed your tutor period with me on Thursday. Are you free now?" Greg stood with his arms crossed, hoping it made him look more authoritive, the only way to manage Sherlock, he knew from experience, was to annoy him until he complied.
"Fine," he hissed, muttering under his breath about the unimportance and irrelevance of tutor sessions. He followed Lestrade up to his classroom and slumped into his usual seat opposite his tutor's.
"So," Greg began, pulling out Sherlock's folder from his desk. "How have things been?"
Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him. "You've just been dumped by your adulterous long-term girlfriend."
He watched as emotion flickered across Lestrade's face and then sat entertaining the weaknesses of sentiment.
"Sherlock," he hissed. "What have I told you about inappropriate deductions?"
Sherlock appeared to think for a moment, trying to recall the conversation. "I don't know, I must have deleted it."
Greg pulled out Sherlock's progress reports and sighed. "How are your lessons? Are you finding them challenging enough?"
A scoff in return, "Barely" Sherlock picked at the wood of the table in front of him with his fingernails and refused eye contact.
"You are way above target for all five lessons. Impressive, as always." Greg thought aloud, flicking through more documents in the plastic sleeve.
"Yes, it would be impressive, to you." Greg pointedly ignored the attack at his intelligence and chose instead to move on to Sherlock's punishments.
"You've been suspended three times already this term. Not really a good start, is it?"
"None of which were my fault, might I add. I was just pointing out the truth to those who are too blind to see it." Sherlock protested.
"Just because you deem something to be true, doesn't mean it is, Sherlock" Greg argued.
Sherlock gave him a look in return so bewildered that it was like Greg had just told him the sky was green and the world was ruled by aliens.
"How is your biology class now that you have driven away Mrs Jacobsen?"
Sherlock's mind immediately returned to John Watson. If he was being honest, he really wasn't sure how to respond to Lestrade's question.
"You've got Dr Watson now, right? He's a nice guy, good teacher too." Lestrade nodded to himself. "Have you driven him spare yet?"
"No," Sherlock started.
Greg looked up for a second. "So...you're saying that biology is actually going okay?"
Sherlock grimaced at his shoes and actually came to terms with the truth. "It is, actually." He fiddled with his hands.
"Hmm," Greg paused, "Well, that's brilliant, keep it up."
The rest of the session was spent going over plans for university which Sherlock deemed as 'tedious and unimportant' and sat unresponsive for a few minutes before lapsing into his recent findings on the world's deadliest toxins when Lestrade had asked him about it.
With each tutor appointment, Greg felt like he was getting closer to understanding this isolated genius, rude as he may be, he was still human, and Greg felt like he had achieved something whenever he saw a glimpse of that human side leak out every once in a while.
Sherlock found himself in the chemistry lab after school again on the same day that Dr Watson had defended him from the stupidity of other students.
He was just jotting down notes from his observations of the breaking down of chemical compounds when the cleaner entered, propping the door open with her mop. The petite old woman was startled to see Sherlock, a silent and unmoving presence in the dimly lighted room, but her eyes lit up with recognition when Sherlock lifted his head.
"Oh hello, dear" she cooed, pulling in her cleaning trolley.
"Mrs Hudson," he acknowledged with a nod.
"Are you here dissecting animals again?"
"No, not this time." he squinted at the gritty particles gathering at the bottom of his test-tube.
She hobbled over with interest, and Sherlock deduced that her hip was giving her trouble again.
"Are you taking that medication I suggested?" he demanded as soon as she drew near to him.
"I was, but I seem to have lost them again, you know how I am" she chuckled to herself and went about spritzing surfaces with disinfectant, tutting at the cluster of equipment Sherlock had occupied the entire desk with.
"Sherlock," she scolded, noticing the puddle on the floor where green liquid had seeped down the side of the bench. "The mess you've made"
Sherlock rolled his eyes and ripped a paper towel off the roll on her trolley, bending and wiping it up in a single motion. "There, happy?"
"Oh, yes" she laughed again, a high tinkling sound. "Thank you, dear. You know how I can't bend down when my hip gets bad like this" she speaks to herself, tapping her hip and moving around with the cleaning solution again.
Sherlock hummed to himself in vague distraction, bringing focus instead to the results of his experiment.
"Oh Sherlock, dear?" Mrs Hudson called from the other room. "Could you give me a hand with this? I can' t reach it."
Sherlock lifted himself from the chair, pushing his microscope away and entering the store room where some of the equipment was kept. He reached for the jar she wanted in one fluid movement without stretching, passed it back down to her for her to dust and then placed it back on the top shelf.
"Why do they let it get so dusty? There were cobwebs hanging off of that one... oh dear."
"Dust is eloquent, Mrs Hudson" Sherlock replied in his deep droning voice to which she chuckled at again and returned to her trolley.
Eleven minutes later, Sherlock's stomach rumbles, which annoys him. "Shut up"
"Sherlock," Mrs Hudson scolded, "Have you eaten anything today?"
"Irrelevant" he frowned, adjusting the lens on the microscope.
He watched Mrs Hudson limp back over to her trolley out the corner of his eye and produce biscuits from her bag. "As usual then," she supplied, and slid the packet down the bench to him.
Sherlock took the packet without a word and ate for Mrs Hudson's sake, until she smiled with triumph and moved on to clean the sinks.
Sherlock crashes that night, he lies on the floor for 5 hours until his back is stiff and thinks, thinks, thinks.
He'd expected a text from Mycroft anytime soon, who probably knew Sherlock's thoughts from across the stupid wide world because Mycroft knows everything and just loves to point it out.
He considered for the fifth time that night, going out to purchase something to keep his brain from tearing him apart. Something that would slow him down, would let him rest and give him the answers he never knew he needed.
But he'd promised Mummy.
Instead, he lit five cigarettes at once and attempted smoking them together, nowhere near the same high, but enough to send his brain spinning and glue him even further to the floor as the nicotine sank into his bloodstream.
Text Message: Mycroft
Don't do anything stupid. MH
Sherlock stared even harder at the ceiling, wondering what the definition of stupid was to his brother, and who Mycroft must have paid extra to keep an eye on him while he was gone. Which one of the servants was Mycroft's messenger?
Sherlock stumped out the half finished cigarettes, rolled over and vomited in disorientation, the face of John Watson flashing tauntingly before his eyes before he passed out.
Sherlock wasn't in John's class on Monday, and he found himself missing the sarcastic commentaries that he sometimes muttered under his breath from the front row that usually only John could hear. It was true that the class was quiet without him, not only because the students had nothing to laugh at or taunt, they sat stoically and copied notes from the board.
Two days later, John stared blearily at the bottom of his empty cup, sliding around the remaining sugary contents of his tea.
"You okay, mate?" he vaguely registered Greg's voice bringing his mind into consciousness and shook himself out of a daydream.
"Wha- yeah, sorry, in a world of my own" John sighed at himself and stabbed a finger at the coffee machine, pushing his empty cup underneath the nozzle.
"Late night, last night?" Greg smirked at him, leaning cross-armed against the column next to the machine.
John dismissed him with a frown, laughing away speculation. "For all the wrong reasons unfortunately," he re-takes his cup "Was up marking papers until one"
Greg tutted at him, suggesting something about organisation and dawdled off to his office to make a phone call to a parent. Or at least that's what John thought he said he was going to do. If he was entirely honest, he couldn't remember where the hell he was supposed to be at that moment, let alone anybody else.
With a quick check to his timetable, he saw that he had a free period and thanked his lucky stars, scooping up his box of folders and ignoring the shoot of pain his leg sent him, a tell tale sign that it was getting worse again.
When he entered his classroom, managing to deposit his box on his desk and fall back into his chair before he collapsed from exhaustion, he eventually realised a difference.
There was someone else in the room.
In Sherlock's usual seat, there was a mop of dark curls face down in crossed arms on the desk in front of him, the boy's back rising and falling softly with a faint grumbling sound of a snore.
John frowned, why was Sherlock asleep in his classroom? Alarm bells in his head told him he should contact somebody and complain for a strike to be put on his record since he really shouldn't be sleeping in classrooms, let alone vacant ones, but the more dominant voice in his head told him not to.
Instead, he stood confused for a few minutes, watching the sleeping form of Sherlock Holmes and contemplated his sanity.
"Sherlock?" He decided to wake him, "Sherlock, wake up.", with a hesitant shake to his shoulder, Sherlock snapped awake immediately, startled at his surroundings.
"What?" he asked immediately, as if John were the one in Sherlock's classroom.
"Why are you asleep in a science classroom?" John crossed his arms.
"I don't remember" he frowned, straightening out his shirt.
John's eyes fell to the way the creases smoothed out under his fingertips, stretched over solid chest muscles. He shook his head. "You can't do that," he insisted.
Sherlock squinted at him, that look that made John feel instantly panicked, as if his mind were being read by the genius that very second.
"Where were you on Monday's lesson?" John inquired, walking back over to his desk as Sherlock stood.
"At home" He wandered to the back of the classroom.
"So you just decided not to come in? You're missing important lessons"
"I'm already ahead of the syllabus" he yawned, examining the rusting clasps of the bunsen burners shoved in the corner drawer.
John didn't even question that, "Still, your absences will go on your record" he threatened half-heartedly.
"I don't care" Sherlock said matter-of-factly.
"Of course you don't" John smiled to himself.
Sherlock is silent for the next two minutes, embracing the presence of Dr Watson and suspicious of how comfortable he feels around him.
"Don't you have a lesson?" John asked after a while, hoping Sherlock would say no.
"No," he hesitated. "Is this...okay?" Sherlock asked, hoping he would understand.
John lifted his head, registering the uncertainty splayed across the young man's face. "Of course"
Sherlock settled back, then, and John had to stop himself from grasping the opportunity of turning this into some kind of interview to find out more about the enigma of Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock watched him.
"Interesting," he said after a while, and John lifted his head with a questioning expression. "You are nervous."
"No...I'm not" John replied, thinking Yes, I am.
Sherlock stood immediately, "Do I make you nervous?"
John swallowed, staying firmly planted to his seat. "Why would you make me nervous?"
Sherlock frowned in return, moving closer to Dr Watson's desk. "I don't know. That's the frustrating part"
John blinked at him, surprised at the comfort he felt with having Sherlock so close. Simultaneously appalled with himself for letting himself feel like this with a student. Sherlock was a student. He withdrew from the closeness.
"Sweaty palms, fidgeting, lack of eye-contact" Sherlock deduced out loud and then stopped abruptly at the look on his teacher's face. "Sorry, I... is this inappropriate?"
John cleared his throat, not looking at his student. "Yes,"
Sherlock deduced the teacher's discomfort and withdrew himself, snapping back his mask of cool indifference and stepping out of the room, walking briskly away without looking back.
As soon as the door closed behind Sherlock, John let out a huge breath. His pulse was racing with anticipation and excitement and everything else that John probably shouldn't be feeling.
He had never had such an interest in a student before, even just generally. His job gave him purpose in his previously lone life and he took the good days along with the bad, but he had never singled any student out. Then what was he doing with Sherlock?
Breathe.
All John knew was that Sherlock was a locked door, an occasional peek through the keyhole allowed some of his brilliance to shine through, but not knowing whatever was on the other side of that door made it difficult to know if Sherlock was ever being himself, ever being truthful. He shut out John's attempt at questioning him, about himself, about his work or anything that he deemed unimportant.
John found himself wondering if it was just the mystery that attracted his interest in Sherlock Holmes...he had never felt...romantically interested in a student before, and he didn't even think he was romantically interested in Sherlock, he was just generally drawn in by him.
Sherlock, John decided, was like a solitary storm, dark and grey but full of flashes of light and intensity, he drew John in with his darkness, with his potential of destruction. But John was always on the outside. However much he wanted to be let in.