Amanda Blake had been found dead in the Thames with a bashed-in skull and the strap of her very expensive camera wrapped around her neck. The camera itself was found buried in pieces in the garden of a middle-aged man in Brixton, who despite being clever enough to avoid leaving personal forensic evidence back at the murder scene had not realised that the memory stick was what actually held the photos and left it intact in the smashed casing. The pictures were easily recovered and showed him in passionate embrace with a much younger woman outside a motel. Sherlock had written it off as dull the moment they saw the upturned dirt in the man's flower patch.
"But how did you know he lived in Brixton?" John asked as they made their way back to Baker Street.
"Amanda's family still lives there, she would have had reason to return often seeing as how she wasn't financially independent," Sherlock drawled. Then, seeing John's puzzled expression he added, "there was a cheque to cover rent made out to her from her parents on the side table by the television."
"Oh," John said, trying to remember if he'd seen that or not. There had been so many bits of discarded paper and trash strewn around the victim's sitting room it had been hard to make heads or tails of anything. He quickly gave up and moved on.
"So the girl went home for a visit and saw this bloke with his mistress. Snapped a photo because... well, I guess that's what she liked to do? Take candid shots of couples?" John raised his eyebrows mischievously, glancing sideways as Sherlock's face twisted into a vaguely pained expression.
"She was an unrepentant voyeur," the detective confirmed unhappily.
"That shot of you and your boyfriend was rather sweet though," John pointed out with a grin. Sherlock looked like he might be sick. "I thought Mycroft said you didn't date?"
"Mycroft has very little idea of what I did that year." Sherlock smirked a little, evidently relishing the rare gap in his brother's omnipotence.
"But surely he'd have noticed a boyfriend," John pushed. "You two didn't exactly seem to be trying to hide it."
"Didn't have to, he wasn't looking," Sherlock replied offhandedly. "Back then my brother was content just knowing roughly where I was and whether I was dead or not. There was none of this absurd spying from the street corners." As he spoke the detective glared darkly at a nearby CCTV camera, which turned to follow them as if illustrating his point. John eyed it with a sort of wary resignation. His friend's brother seriously needed a hobby.
"But, wait," he suddenly spoke up again as another thought occurred to him, "Forget Mycroft, you're always saying you never had friends. Romantic partners definitely count as friends, Sherlock."
"A mutually beneficial arrangement does not necessarily imply friendship," Sherlock drawled, speaking with the same tone of voice he used when explaining a particularly obvious point of logic. He shot John a 'stop being so thick' look for good measure.
John rolled his eyes. "You must have at least liked him a little."
"He was... occasionally tolerable," Sherlock conceded indifferently.
John snorted. "You're a right romantic, Sherlock."
"I do try."
They made their way into the flat, having walked back from the Chinese restaurant where John had managed to force his flatmate to eat some chow mein and half an eggroll.
"Tea?" John asked once they were up the stairs and hanging their coats.
"Lovely," Sherlock replied. He'd pulled off his suit jacket along with the overcoat- possibly accidentally, John couldn't tell- and the buttonup underneath was that odd shade of periwinkle John had come to associate with the detective forgetting to do laundry. As John made his way to the kitchen he heard his flatmate flop dramatically onto the couch with a gusty sigh.
When John returned to the sitting room he found Sherlock draped upside-down on the sofa- feet on the back with his head hanging off the edge of the cushions- using his phone to browse the internet in lieu of actually getting up to fetch a computer. John rolled his eyes and held out a mug of tea, which the detective accepted without a word and rested atop his stomach while he continued to scan whatever he was reading. John hoped the man would at least sit up properly before trying to drink, but said nothing for fear of giving Sherlock ideas for some kind of inverted tea sipping experiment.
His own mug in hand, John grabbed his laptop off the desk and settled into his armchair. He settled in for a quiet night of checking email and updating his blog while Sherlock worked through his post-case sulk. For several minutes the two men sat (or sprawled) in companionable silence, each busy with their own activities.
"Harry says hello," John muttered presently, because Harry had indeed written 'tell Sherly I said hi!' at the end of her last email. Sherlock didn't respond, too absorbed in dung beetle facts or whatever he was reading. John was just moving on to his next unread mail when a notice popped up on his client alerting him to a new message from New Scotland Yard. It was from Donovan, and the title simply read 'PLAY THIS NOW'. He took a sip of his tea and obligingly opened the attached video file.
Instantly the room was filled with loud, garbled noise from his laptop speakers. The video was a shot of some pub, with a band on stage and a young man yelling into a microphone. John winced and turned the volume down to minimum. Sherlock's head popped up at the sudden commotion.
"What's that?" he asked.
"Dunno, Donovan sent it to me," John answered. The screeching of the audience had died down somewhat so John turned the volume up slightly as the band started playing.
"I got a date, I'm a sword-swallowing whore
I'm burning up, I'm burning up so put some water on me..."
John felt his eyebrows climb towards his hairline, and glanced up to see what Sherlock would make of this. The other man had frozen in place, face twisted in an almost comedic expression of shock. John blinked in surprise at the unexpected reaction and looked back down at the video, trying to figure out who was in it and why Sherlock would make that face. He'd been staring at the strangely familiar guitarist for maybe half a second before the penny finally dropped.
"Oh god it's you!" John exclaimed with a sharp bark of laughter. He remembered the photos from earlier that day and realised in an instant where Sally must have gotten the video.
"John! Give me that! Turn it off!" Sherlock burst up in a sudden flurry of movement and stepped over the coffee table towards John, who clutched the computer protectively to his chest.
"Not happening!" he yelled, laughing. He dodged as the detective made a lunge for him and jumped up from his armchair to scuttle to the other side of the room away from Sherlock, turning the volume up to maximum as he went. The song was just now getting to the chorus.
"You better run, run, run and tell someone
You found a wishing well, the bottom of a barrel of a gun..."
"Ha ha! This is brilliant!" John grinned and sidestepped another grab by Sherlock. "You're even singing!"
"That file is evidence in a murder investigation, it is not authorised for release to the public!" Sherlock snapped as he chased his flatmate around the coffee table.
"Come off it, we've been running around London collecting unauthorised information all day!"
John was getting a bit winded evading his longer-legged friend, but luckily the song was almost over. With less than a minute left on the player's progress bar he stopped dodging and let Sherlock catch him. The detective tackled him to the sofa, snatched the laptop from his hands and snapped the lid shut, cutting off the music. He fixed John with a fierce scowl.
"Don't ever play that again," he growled in his best 'terrifying sociopath' voice. The doctor just chuckled.
"I thought it was quite good," he quipped lightly, shoving his bony flatmate off his chest so he could sit up. Sherlock slid down to perch on the cushions next to him and gingerly opened the laptop again, only to grimace as the video resumed where it left off.
"I'm burning up I'm burning u-"
"Ugh!" Sherlock closed the media player with as much vehemence as he could imbue in a single click and glared viciously at the email from Donovan. "If I find this on YouTube I am going to have Mycroft destroy the entire infrastructure of the internet."
"My blog's on the internet," John pointed out with a frown.
"All the better," Sherlock replied tetchily. He deleted the email before John could do anything about it, then handed the computer back.
"What makes you think Mycroft will agree to help you anyway? He'd probably be happy to find out what you were up to. Fill the gaps, so to speak." John relaxed into the couch and resumed checking the rest of his emails. He quickly hid the alert for a message from Lestrade with the title 'Photos - don't let him delete!' and glanced up to make sure Sherlock hadn't seen. The detective was glaring at some point in the middle distance, arms crossed over his thin chest like a pouting child. His hair was mussed from running around, making him look about twelve. John resisted the urge to smile indulgently.
"If Mycroft tries to argue I will publish every single embarrassing moment of his childhood to as many websites as possible until he has no other choice but to assist me," Sherlock huffed and looked down at John. "I will start... with the baby photos."
"God no," John said with a bemused smirk.
"Yes. And following from there the ones where he's too fat for his primary school uniform," Sherlock glowered at John's email client and John laughed at the mental image of a chubby little Mycroft twirling a miniature umbrella.
The two of them sat in companionable silence for a few minutes while John checked his blog and Sherlock sulked. Finally John closed the laptop and looked over at Sherlock.
"I don't see why you're so embarrassed, it was a pretty good band," he said. Sherlock didn't respond, so he continued with, "I didn't even know you played guitar."
"Learned in less than a week; it's a boring, unsophisticated instrument," Sherlock snapped, arms still crossed. "And the band was not 'good', it was dreadful. Generic structure, pointless lyrics. I hated it."
"Why'd you play, then?" John asked.
"Devin gave me a discount on cocaine for helping out."
John wrinkled his nose in displeasure. He supposed he really should have known it had something to do with drugs. "Devin?" he asked instead, hoping to avoid the more obvious subject.
"The drummer," the detective clarified, then continued; "he had a brother who smuggled narcotics for a living." Sherlock's face had darkened considerably, and he brought his legs up to his chest as he glared out at the room. "They were not good people, John. That band was just an excuse to get as many impressionable idiots in a room as possible so the dealers could pass out samples and create more clients."
John balked, remembering seeing a few older men milling around in the audience and in the backgrounds of photos. He'd had a vague idea they were older siblings or music enthusiasts- it hadn't even crossed his mind there would be drug dealers at a pub. He glanced at Sherlock and hesitated only a moment before putting a hand on the man's tense shoulder.
"Hey, if it bothers you we'll just tell Lestrade to delete it, yeah?" he offered. Sherlock shot him a dark look.
"As if the others would pass up the opportunity for ridicule," he spat bitterly. "The entire Yard's seen that video by now, John. And the photos. Delete that email by the way, I saw it on your alert queue," he added with a nod to the laptop.
John bit back a sigh- of course Sherlock saw- and opened his computer to comply. His flatmate watched him with a look halfway between a pout and a scowl.
"There, see? It's gone," John angled the screen towards his friend and Sherlock nodded once, then looked away. The doctor thought about getting up to go back to his armchair, but decided it was probably better for him to remain next to his friend. Talking about ex-lovers didn't appear to have opened any of Sherlock's old wounds, but the band certainly had, and the irascible man seemed to handle emotions somewhat better whilst in proximity to John.
"Should have deleted everything back at the crime scene," the detective grumbled to himself. Then, more loudly: "Bloody Amanda and her bloody camera!"
"Sherlock, it's honestly not that bad," John said, trying to placate the younger man. "Nobody's going to think less of you for-"
"I don't care what people think, John!" Sherlock interrupted churlishly, fixing him with a glare.
"No? What's this all about, then?" John set the laptop on the coffee table and turned to regard the sulking man beside him. Sherlock shifted his attention to scowling at everything that wasn't his flatmate. Tense silence stretched like a wall between them for several minutes.
Finally, just when John was beginning to lose hope of getting any sort of answer out of his moody companion, Sherlock spoke.
"It's an unpleasant period to remember," he uttered tersely. He shot John a brief calculating glance- probably deciding if he should elaborate or not- and shifted to lean his head back against the sofa with hands pressed together between his knees. John recognised this as one of his friend's many 'thinking poses' and carefully kept his mouth shut.
It was a few seconds before Sherlock continued. "John you must understand, I was a very different person back then," he explained. "I lived for cocaine. Didn't matter what I had to do to get it. Whether it was playing in a ridiculous band, or-" Sherlock's teeth clicked as he snapped his mouth shut on whatever he'd been about to say. After a slight pause he added more quietly; "Well... suffice to say I was not the most well-adjusted of individuals."
"Glad that's changed then," John muttered sarcastically before he could stop himself. The corner of Sherlock's mouth twitched up in a wry grin, eyes glancing at the bullet holes in the wall behind them.
"Fair point," he conceded. "Still, I no longer endeavour to spend every waking moment in a haze of liquor and stimulants. That's got to be some improvement."
John hmm'd in agreement. "Could definitely be worse, I'll give you that." Sherlock smiled.
They sat in silence again, companionable this time, as each fell to his own thoughts. After awhile John glanced over at Sherlock. He was sitting in a half-curled slouch, hair still mussed from their romp and a reflective expression on his pale face as he studied the cracks in the plaster above them. He looked so young. Seeing him like this made it hard to believe he'd ever been so much as a teenager, let alone some desperate uni kid doing unspeakable things for a hit of cocaine.
Words from a case months ago suddenly came unbidden to the front of John's mind: Sebastian Wilkes smirking, saying 'we all hated him' in that arrogant voice as Sherlock's eyes darted away in silent hurt. John frowned.
"Did you start doing drugs at uni?" he asked, breaking the silence. He hoped his friend hadn't already decided to shut down verbally for the day. If they were going to have this kind of discussion John would really prefer it happened all at once, not fragmented and scattered over weeks in their usual manner.
Sherlock thankfully still appeared to be in a talking mood. He made a vague affirmative noise.
"Mycroft's spies kept distracting me from coursework," he said in a bored voice. "Needed a way to focus."
John's eyes widened momentarily, wondering if Mycroft knew about his part in driving his younger brother to addiction. Sherlock glanced sidelong at him and caught the look.
"Of course he knows," he drawled, deducing his flatmate's train of thought from his expression.
"Did he ever apologise?" John asked. He thought he might be beginning to understand some of the motivation behind the brothers' 'childish feud'.
Sherlock scoffed. "If kidnapping someone and trapping them in a rehabilitation facility for three months without a word of contact counts as an apology, then yes of course."
"He kidnapped you?"
"Well I wasn't about to go willingly."
John shook his head in disbelief. Next to the Holmes brothers he and his sister were practically best mates.
"No contact?"
"Not even a letter. Too busy running the world to waste valuable time talking to his disappointment of a sibling, I expect." Sherlock was trying to keep his tone light, but his voice had gone low and bitter. This was obviously a sore subject.
John made a disgusted noise at the elder Holmes' behaviour. "No wonder you hate him," he muttered.
"Indeed." Sherlock sunk lower into the couch and rested his feet on the coffee table as he glowered at the ceiling. "He also... let Father find out," he added in a low murmur.
John's face pulled into a gentle wince of sympathy. "And your dad wasn't the understanding type, I'm guessing."
"He disowned me," Sherlock confirmed flatly.
John grimaced.
"You didn't relapse, did you?" he asked, dreading the answer.
"You saw the photos, John. Did that man look sober to you?"
John felt his heart sink. "Those were... after the-?"
"After rehab, yes." Sherlock nodded. "Without a trust fund there was no way to continue at Oxford, so I decided my time would be better spent pursuing... other interests. It wasn't all bad of course; street life turned out to be very exciting," he added blandly, as if dropping out of university to become a homeless addict had just been another of his madcap bids to escape boredom. John tried to keep the pitying expression off his face.
John desperately wanted to ask his friend to elaborate, but Sherlock's demeanour was quickly growing maudlin. He cast about for something slightly less bleak.
"So how'd you end up in a band, then?" he asked lightly, hoping that tale would be a little more cheerful. Sherlock had, after all, managed to find a boyfriend by that point. And acquaintances. Surely things had gotten better.
Sherlock turned his head and regarded his flatmate carefully. John stared right back.
"Do you really want to know, John?"
"Yes," the doctor replied without hesitation.
"... Why?" Sherlock sounded genuinely curious. And maybe a little confused. Like he still wasn't used to people being interested in his life beyond the deductive capabilities. John felt his expression soften.
"Because I want to know more about my friend," he explained patiently. Sherlock's eyes brightened like they always did at John's use of the word 'friend'. The doctor continued- "I've told you stories about my time in the army, haven't I? Turnabout's fair play."
Sherlock seemed to consider this for a moment. Then abruptly he sprang up from his slouched position to sit cross-legged on the cushion facing John. He brought his hands up fingertip-to-fingertip below his chin- another 'thinking pose'.
"It's not a happy story, John," he warned. One last chance to back out.
John didn't bite. "That's fine."
Sherlock took a deep breath, eyes falling gently closed. He began to speak.
"It started at the end of my first year..."
A/N: Sherlock's tale has been written up as an enormous prequel fic titled 'Can't Rewind Now We've Gone Too Far' which is now complete. As Sherlock says it is not a happy story - it's rated M for sexual themes and drug use (though nothing too explicit), and is overall more than a bit depressing. You've been warned!