John sat across from Sherlock, arms folded, glowering balefully at the taller man who was slouching back comfortably in his chair as though he didn't have a care in the world. They'd walked back to the flat in silence, John chomping at the bit and Sherlock as expressionless as ever. Mrs. Hudson was out for the day, so it was just the two of them in the stuffy, cluttered quarters. Finally, after what felt like ages, John exploded in agitated impatience.

"Sherlock, why the hell did you cut your wrists?!" he burst.

Sherlock's eyes, which had been gazing quite intently out of the window, flicked to John, and a shadow passed over them, a shadow that lingered and seemed to darken until that gaze looked almost gray. The hairs on the back of John's neck stood up.

"I'm sure you've noticed what people say about me," Sherlock said, voice empty.

"Yes…" John said hesitantly. "But you always just ignore them."

"Yes, well, that was a learned habit. I wasn't always so…blasé about everything."

John blinked, a slight frown creasing his brow. Sherlock shifted heavily in his chair and crossed his legs beneath him, that same shadowed look haunting his eyes and giving John unpleasant shivers. That was not a look he liked on Sherlock. It was far too dark.

"I've heard those kinds of things ever since I was a child," Sherlock continued. "At first, I didn't really understand that what people were saying was meant to be mean, so I kept trying to make friends by impressing people with my talent. But, all I actually did was piss them off. They started saying all kinds of things—well, you can imagine, I suppose."

Slowly, John nodded, swallowing convulsively. Since he was a child? How could he still be functional, if he had been treated so poorly by everyone around him from the very beginning of his life?

"People only spoke to me if they needed something," Sherlock sustained. "Of course, even then, they were hardly what one would call friendly. Most of them were about on par with Anderson, albeit more mature."

Under other circumstances John might have laughed, but these weren't normal circumstances and, in any case, Sherlock wasn't trying to make a joke. What he'd said was simply something he had come up with as a slightly biased fact. Also, this wasn't a laughing matter to begin with. What person, however old, treated a young boy as something to be used and mocked at the same time?

"Well, as I grew up, I came to understand what was going on with my peers. I didn't especially care if they only talked to me because they had no idea who stole their bike. I was just happy that someone wanted my help. I didn't try to make friends anymore, and I tried to tone down my observations. For a while, it worked, and people started migrating toward me. I thought maybe that would be the end of it. But then puberty started."

John had to snort at the sheer drama of Sherlock's delivery of that final line. Sherlock raised an eyebrow at him, and he hastily sobered, gesturing for the man to continue.

"I never realized just how hard it was to control yourself until I had to deal with all of those abnormalities, those hormone changes. I started spouting off whatever I noticed again, and not only did the people I'd almost come to call friends vanish, but the mockery started all over again. I tried to block it out, but it really just didn't work. In my final year in secondary school, I entertained some…darker thoughts. I found I could empathize with those young teenagers who took their own lives, and on any number of occasions, I'd almost followed them."

"Sherlock!" John exclaimed incredulously, sitting straight upright.

"John!" Sherlock answered.

John glowered and slumped back down, gesturing for Sherlock to continue.

"I couldn't bring myself to do it, though. I was too much of a coward, and really, suicide the way teenagers do it is so dreadfully boring and cliché."

"So…you settled on cutting yourself," John said, ignoring Sherlock's attempt at humor in favor of his strange rationalization.

"It distracted me," Sherlock shrugged. "The physical pain released some of the emotional distress, I suppose."

"Sherlock, that's…" John trailed off, struggling to find words to express just how much he hated the thought of Sherlock like that.

"Shameful? Appalling? Disgraceful?" Sherlock offered with a bitter smile. "Oh, I know. I was absolutely pathetic then."

"No, Sherlock, that's not—"

"But I learned how to cope after that." He shrugged again.

"But, Sherlock…" John said, and very cautiously he reached out over the table and caught one of the man's hands, pushing up his shirt sleeve and turning his arm over to expose the vulnerable wrist. "Not all of these are that old."

Indeed, some were paler than others, almost nonexistent silver next to slightly pink marks of no more than a few years. Gently Sherlock wrested his forearm from John's grasp and pulled his sleeve down yet again.

"Anderson and that lot were the first people I'd spoken with since I graduated, with the exception of Mycroft," Sherlock shrugged. "They took some adjusting to."

"And Mycroft? Does he…"

"Of course not," Sherlock scoffed. "Imagine the look on his face if he knew I'd been so pathetic."

John was silent, staring at the other man with evident concern. Suddenly, Sherlock looked different to him. He saw in the consultant detective's place a high school boy, one with unruly hair, sitting silently at the back of a classroom with his shoulders hunched against the whispered assaults that battered him from nearby students. He saw the same boy huddled in the bathtub, drawing his mother's razor again and again across his white wrists, creating perfectly straight lines of red that stained his skin like a morbid watercolor. Then John pictured the present Sherlock, the one he knew, in the same position, and his fingers curled into the material of his shirt, right above his heart.

"Sherlock, that's awful," John said hoarsely.

"Yes, well, it's in the past," Sherlock said, standing up. "I don't see why it's important in any case. You have scars as well John, don't you?"

"One bullet wound," John said at once. "I didn't shoot myself, though!"

"Still irrelevant."

John opened his mouth, intending to explain to Sherlock exactly why it was important, but then stopped. With a start, John realized that he couldn't explain why this was of any relevance to him. What Sherlock had done in the past, and even in his private time now, should have been of no great concern to John, and yet he felt fundamentally wrong by letting this one thing go. It wasn't any business of his—he should just forget about it. As soon as John thought this, the image of that boy with his bleeding wrists came unbidden to his mind.

"John?" Sherlock said curiously, pausing in the act of moving away. "What's wrong? You're rather pale."

For the third time that day, John reached out and grabbed Sherlock's wrist, but he didn't pull up the sleeve of the violet shirt. No, instead John stood, and he pulled Sherlock toward him, wrapping his arms around the other man's torso and pinning his arms to his sides. Sherlock went stiff as a board, but didn't make to pull away.

"John, what—" he said.

"You're an idiot," John growled against Sherlock's chest.

"Sorry?" Sherlock replied, confused. He was most certainly not an idiot.

"How could you not tell me something like that?" he demanded, and his arms tightened slightly.

"It was irrelevant," Sherlock answered, voice implying it was the simplest possible conclusion.

"Irrelevant my arse!" John snapped. "You know everything about me, so why can't I know anything about you?!"

Slowly, Sherlock relaxed in John's embrace, setting his chin on the crown of the shorter man's head.

"I didn't think you'd care to know…" said Sherlock honestly.

"Idiot," John said again. "How could I not want to know?"

Sherlock was silent for a moment, and in that moment, John thought he might have sensed just the smallest, briefest shadow of loneliness flit in the other man's heart, and he held him even tighter than before, as if desperate to prove to Sherlock that he wasn't alone. He had a friend, a friend who was worried for him and who cared far more than he seemed to understand.

"No one else ever has."