A/N: This is going to be a series of different AU meetings for John and Sherlock. The ratings will vary, but most will probably be T due to mentions of drug use or swearing. This chapter is unbeta'd (but not unedited) and unbrit-picked, and I apologize if I've got anything glaringly wrong. Constructive criticism is always welcome.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock. I've just got a DVD set and a few leather-bound books, and am making no profit from this.
…they met seventeen years earlier.
John Watson stumbled into the thick, oak door, fumbling for the knob as his drink-hazy mind hoped he'd managed to find an unoccupied toilet in the ridiculously posh townhouse where his mate, Stamford, had dragged him for a party. Much like the rest of the house this room was too dark for him to see much of anything, but it was far larger than any toilet had the right to be, and John would have left to continue his search had he not noticed a figure rise to its feet and cross a bit closer. Squinting, he made out that the figure was a kid, a bit taller than John was himself, but utterly smooth-faced and gangly, likely about fifteen or so.
"How'd you get in here?" the youth asked, a bit wary of the blonde twenty-year-old that had somehow managed to bungle his way into a room far from the rest of the partiers.
"Door was open," John managed to say without slurring. He squinted, noting the boys dark curls and sharp gaze, and added, "Aren't you a bit young to be here?"
"This is my brother's house."
"Oh." John teetered as the edges of the room got a bit soupy. As a wave of nausea washed through him he sank to his knees as gracefully as his intoxicated brain would allow. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took deep breaths until the desire to expel the contents of his stomach passed. Looking up a thought struck him, "How come you've shut yourself up in this room? When I was your age I'd have done anything for the chance to get pissed at a party."
"I'm supposed to be locked in," the boy drawled. Then he lifted his shirtsleeve to the elbow and presented his pale forearm. "Detoxing."
Had he been sober, John would have found this extreme candor odd, but he currently couldn't focus beyond the bruised track marks that littered the boy's arm. He wanted to say something insightful, or at the very least comforting to this kid who had already done enough hard drugs to merit an intervention. Instead he just said, "Oh," again.
Suddenly feeling intrusive John rose and blurted, "I'll just leave you to—" before another dizzy spell sent him back to his knees. Rather than saying anything the boy simply picked up a plastic tub and brought it to John; the message was clear, stay as long as you need, just don't vomit on my carpet.
"Sorry," John mumbled. "I really shouldn't be here. At all. I don't go to parties; I don't get invited to parties. Hell, I don't even usually drink, but a bunch of my mates dragged me here and there wasn't anything else for me to do," he said, as if it made up for his being in the room of a teenager going through withdrawal from what was likely a solid heroin addiction.
"Cocaine." The boy said, pulling John from his thoughts.
"What?"
"It was cocaine, not heroin." Then he added in answer to John's unvoiced question, "I could see you thinking it."
"Alright, slightly creepy Mind Reading Kid," John said, "What am I thinking now?" John then screwed up his face as he looked at the youth, who simply glared at him.
"It's observation, not mind reading. And the name's Sherlock."
"John," he said with a slight nod. Then he added, "You seem pretty lucid for someone just starting to detox."
"You seem pretty perceptive for someone who's too drunk to stand upright," Sherlock countered.
"The bruising's too fresh; your last hit couldn't have been more than a week ago." John then leaned forward, letting his mouth hover over the tub in case his stomach managed to start its proposed revolution against the tyranny of too much lager and not enough chips.
"Why do you think I have a puke bucket in my bedroom? I'm waiting for the symptoms to hit, they just haven't yet." Then he sat down at the foot of his bed. "Is anyone going to come looking for you any time soon?"
John glanced at the wall clocked and worked out, however slowly, that it wasn't yet 10:30. His stomach twisted and he asked, "Are you hungry?"
This time Sherlock was shocked. "What?"
"Are you hungry? I saw a chippy down the street when I came here. If you can get me there I'll buy you something hot and greasy. Who knows, it might be the last meal you manage to keep down for awhile."
"Alright," Sherlock said, almost too cheerily as he stood and moved to John's side in order to help him to his feet.
"And you have to promise not to give me the slip. I don't actually know your brother, but he doesn't seem like the type of person I want angry with me for letting you break house arrest and get your hands on some more coke." John leaned into the boy as he rose to his feet, letting his head rest against the youth's shoulder.
"I promise," Sherlock said as he took John's weight. "Right now food sounds good. My brother isn't particularly interested in keeping anything edible in the house. He's out too often."
Together they made their way through the dark house, avoiding as many drunken partiers as possible, exiting through the back door into an alleyway. The cool night air calmed John, his lungs grateful for a respite from the sour, overly warm breaths he had taken inside. The excess light from the street lamps and moon made him blink for a second before he refocused his gaze on Sherlock. Or rather the portion of Sherlock he could see, which amounted to little more than his left ear, his jaw, and a multitude of near-black curls.
Normally, John didn't like to pry into other people's lives, but he was too curious and too drunk to care. "Why are you staying with your brother to detox? And how'd you get so deep into the drugs that you need to detox? And how come you could tell what I was thinking?"
Sherlock didn't answer, he just kept John walking until they rounded the corner and he pulled him into the chip shop. He leaned John against the back wall, and John pulled out his wallet and gave him a tenner before covering his eyes against the insanely bright fluorescent lights in the shop. A few over-stimulating minutes later Sherlock returned with their paper-wrapped fish and led John out of the shop. They ate together in semi-awkward silence and John could feel the grease and starch soaking up the excess alcohol in his bloodstream. Sherlock had managed to get them to the back step of his brother's home and eased John down while also picking out all of the thinner, crispier chips and setting them on his own tongue.
"My parents didn't want to deal with my… problems and I refused to go to a treatment center," Sherlock said as he sat beside John on the stoop. John just blinked at him a few times with a piece of fish in his mouth. "You asked why I was here. That's the reason. Mummy said she couldn't bear to see it again and Mycroft volunteered his home."
"Again?" John asked after swallowing the slightly vinegary chips he'd been chewing. "How many times have you done this?"
"Just the first time and now; I got clean a couple months ago and then school started again and I got bored." He twirled a chip between his long, pale fingers. "Everyone has always said I'm too smart for my own good. And when there wasn't something interesting for my mind to play with, I went looking for anything to take the edge off. There was a boy in my form who had some coke, I tried it, and it made everything clear, and sharp, and it felt better than being bored." He looked over at John with his pale, pale grey eyes, like he was looking through him. "And like I said, I'm very bright. I'm also very observant. It's easy for me to perceive things—body language, clothing choices, stains—and extrapolate, quite accurately, what they mean. In some cases it looks like mind reading." He turned back to face the alley and slid the chip into his mouth. "And I've only been clean for three days. You were wondering again."
John sat absolutely dumbfounded. "Wow," he said, shifting his own position now that he felt more like himself and less like a plague victim in order to get a better look at the boy with the very odd name and odder skill set. "So, what else can you tell about me?"
Sherlock appraised him for the merest of moments before starting. Then fired off his deductions in rapid succession, "You have an older sister, but you don't have much contact with her as evidenced by the rather old family photo you keep in your wallet. You plan to be a doctor shown through your knowledge of both bruising and drug use, that or you've been around a lot of drug users, but you seemed rather surprised by my anecdotes about my coke habit, so it's far more unlikely. You don't have much money; this," he gestured to the paper-wrapped fried food, "was a bit of a splurge item and you'll avoid going out with your friends for the rest of the week. You have a girlfriend, but you're thinking about breaking it off since you don't love her anymore, also shown by a photo kept in your wallet, it's rather scuffed and pushed behind your ID card, showing it once had a position of prominence, but has since become less important to you."
John's jaw had slowly hinged open as he listened, then, a few seconds after Sherlock finished his deductions he said, "That was bloody brilliant."
Sherlock glanced at him, his left eyebrow quirked. "Really?"
"Yes," John said, "It was amazing; it's like having a super power. Why, do most people think it's weird?"
"I seem to recall your addressing me as 'slightly creepy Mind Reading Kid' earlier tonight," Sherlock said with a smirk playing across his lips.
"I was more than a little bit wasted, and I didn't know that was how you were doing it. Now I do. It's amazing, end of story."
"Well, thank you, I guess. And thanks for the late night chip run. Hopefully I won't throw it all up later tonight."
"Cheers to that, mate."
"Anyway, you shouldn't be hanging out with a fifteen year old drug addict for the rest of the night, John." Sherlock stood, crumpling the now empty, slightly grease-soaked piece of newsprint as he moved towards the door.
"Wait," John said as he moved to his feet, ready to follow, "I feel like I should at least get you back to your room in case you run into your brother on the way back, tell him I let you out."
"You really don't need to take responsibility for my actions." He paused and flashed a genuine smile. "It was nice meeting you, John. You're probably the best person out of everyone at this party to have accidentally wandered into my room tonight, so really, thank you for that. But I can get back safely without Mycroft being any the wiser. Go find your friends, have another pint, and forget about me and my problems." With that, Sherlock turned on his heel and strode back into the house, leaving John to stare after him until he rounded a corner and disappeared from view.
Several minutes later, John realized he was standing on the back stoop of a ridiculously posh town house where his mates had dragged him to a party. Inside that house was a fifteen-year-old boy who was about to go through the painful process of cocaine withdrawal, placed under house arrest by his older brother because his parents couldn't stand to cope with his addiction again. Also inside that house were vodka shots and several pints of lager that John intended to drink so he could try to obliterate his memory of the sad, lonely, utterly brilliant boy he had tried to help. If he didn't he felt he might go a little bit mad.