originally posted at AO3 - 19/7/2011

It started when you were a child and straining to hear what your parents said in the kitchen downstairs, late at night.

Whispers at start, i hate you why are you doing this to our family you are ripping us apart and then louder, louder, louder, until they are speaking in your ear, just for you to hear. Their thoughts weave their way around your mind, so tightly that you sometimes can't tell the difference between their thoughts and yours.

You learn not to say them out loud, after the third time someone punches you in the playground and the principal called your mother.

freak freak freak goes their minds and fear fear fear say their eyes.

.

(once, just once, you tried to explain it to your mum. she called you a liar and threw a plate at you. a few days later she dragged you to a psychiatrist where you claimed you were just joking.)

.

Forensics, you decide when you are thirteen. Pathology. The dead have no thoughts for you to hear, no horrible secrets you don't want to be burdened with. The cool still silence of their minds and the morgue sounds like heaven.

.

You suffer through school for years, but you end up becoming quieter and withdrawing from your peers, with their deafening frantic thoughts and frantic movements. At lunch, you spend your time seeking out places where it will be quieter. Nowhere will be silent, perfectly still like a grave (you like graves, the wide space of nothing; it's where you are inevitably drawn when it becomes too much, everything just gets to be too much).

.

University is worse. People are everywhere, like ants in a colony. Moving, moving, always moving - their bodies and their minds, loud voices and louder contrary thoughts piling up on top of one another until you want to scream

you don't scream

you are quiet
too quiet

.

In your second year you suffer a nervous breakdown and are institutionalised for two months.

.

You graduate a year late because the university insisted you 'take a break' and it is obvious to anyone with eyes, let alone telepathy, that the professors dislike you. It doesn't really matter, though, as you leave with a First and top of your class.

.

Once you leave, you are swimming in offers from universities and hospitals, but you turn them down in order to work with the police. Your mother despairs and talks constantly of the money that you're missing out on and the opportunities to be so much better than what you're doing, but you tune out her words that taste like red wine on the air like you have done her red red thoughts for years.

.

The moment you meet Sherlock Holmes, you know that you're in trouble.

.

You like him. Of course you like him. Smart, and handsome, and truthful (painfully so).

He smiles and you melt as if his smiles were made of sunbeams instead of ice cubes - you let him away with everything, from the verbal abuse he hurls at you alongside his manners that he treats more like an unfortunate tic than common decency, to using the bodies in the morgue for his various experiments.

You wish you could stand a better chance against that killer smile and that knife sharp mind, wish you could stop him from invading your space, your sanctum sanctorum.

.

(they pity you, the officers. the ones who work with him. your crush is as clear as day, as is his lack of interest.

it doesn't really bother you, though. even if he were interested, you wouldn't do it. his mind is too busy, always working hard. you like the peace being alone offers you.)

.

One day there is a new man standing in your morgue, quiet and unassuming though his mind tells you otherwise. (it also tells you john watson brother soldier flatmate friend).

He's with Sherlock, grounding him. You wonder what that would be like; someone who knows and isn't afraid, doesn't think you're a freak.

The thought washes over you, and is gone - you are fine on your own.

.

Doctor Watson watches you, sometimes, curiously. His surface thoughts are bout what was on the telly last night, though, and you don't make a habit of snooping through people's brains, so you ignore it.

Once (just once) you overhear a thought about how Sherlock had better thank me for doing this to poor Molly and you freeze.

John is nice about it, though and offers to get you a cup of tea, says you're working too hard. You smile and shrug him off, but remind yourself to be more careful about Sherlock Holmes in future.

.