Islington High School, 1992

Bill's expression was so comically outraged that John almost wished he had a camera.

"John!" he almost shouted incredulously. John looked around the hall apologetically as people started to look away from their dinner to watch them and made several frantic hushing noises. Bill, however, was not to be dissuaded from his righteous indignation, though he did lower his voice. "You skipped class because you suspected a fifteen year-old – your friend – of murder?"

He had to admit there weren't a lot of ways of phrasing it that didn't sound absolutely rotten. "Not – well – I just wondered – you can't tell me you didn't find him suspicious at the pool yesterday."

"I thought he was being inappropriate, sure, but that's not the same thing – Jim wouldn't kill someone, John!" Bill's hands were flailing to such an extent that the people down the table from them had moved away to avoid being spattered with butter chicken. John remained tactically silent; after a while, Bill sighed. "Where did he go, then?" he asked reluctantly.

"The pool," John said triumphantly. Bill's eyebrows shot up. "He was meeting that blond we saw him making eyes at."

The redhead nodded, his lips twisted into a wry grin. "You went all the way to Bloomsbury to watch Jim hook up with some burly blond," he confirmed. John shrugged, hoping desperately that Bill would laugh it off and change the subject. "Well, that'll teach you to follow people," the boy laughed instead, his face clearing almost immediately. "But none of that explains why you look like you've been dragged backwards through a box-hedge."

John opted to feign innocence. "What?" he said blithely, looking down at his clothes and shoving another forkful of curry into his mouth.

"You look like someone's been running their fingers through your hair and fiddling with your clothes," Bill persisted. John tried very hard to shake off the phantom sensation of Sherlock's long, desperate fingers tugging at his scalp and look as though the sentence meant nothing to him, but Bill's next screech of John! drew definite attention from the entire hall. John cringed.

"What's he done?" Jim asked curiously as he placed a tray of curry down beside Bill. John noticed amid the sense of impending doom that the Irish boy's hair and clothing were as impeccable as ever.

Bill's lips were curled back into an exaggerated snarl, but John could see that beyond the expression he looked vaguely amused. "John," he growled, leaning forwards over the table and thankfully lowering his voice to a dramatic stage-whisper, "has skipped class for a lusty rendezvous with a girl who I'm assuming is not his goody-two-shoes girlfriend."

Jim's mouth twisted knowingly as he looked John quickly up and down. "No," he lilted in amusement. "No, I would assume she wasn't."

John felt his face flush at the slight emphasis the younger boy had placed on the word she and knew that Jim had somehow figured out exactly what he had done. "Look," he started, but he couldn't finish any kind of sentence from there. How terrible was it that Sophie hadn't crossed his mind at all from the moment he had seen Sherlock? He had been so caught up in his unprecedented appreciation of his very masculine form and his fragile, reluctantly-expressive face. He'd felt as though he knew the other boy, as though he was someone vitally important, someone he couldn't allow himself to pass by. Someone who was, somehow, and it sounded absolutely horrible to verbalise it in his head, more important to him than Sophia. "I wasn't thinking, they caught me completely by surprise."

Bill looked disgusted. "Oh, and that makes it all right to cheat on Sophia, does it?"

"No," John protested, "absolutely not, but I –"

"What?"

At the sound of the high, vulnerable voice, John groaned and thumped his head on the table. Sophie carefully placed her tray on the bench beside his and frowned down at him.

"I think we should talk outside," he said quietly.

He hadn't meant to deal with this quite so quickly, but maybe it was for the best that he suffered through his identity crisis without buffeting the poor girl around as some kind of collateral damage. "I don't really know what to say," he said quietly, looking down into Sophie's wide brown eyes. "I didn't do it to hurt you. I'm still not even sure how it happened, but I went out at lunchtime and I met someone and everything happened so fast…" The girl raised an eyebrow, and somehow the gesture didn't seem as hurt as John had feared she would be and John was able to take a deep breath and say the hard part. "I'm really sorry, Sophie, but I think we should stop this. I need time by myself to think about whether this means I'm the kind of person that does this."

Not just skips class to snog strangers, he added to himself, but gets swept away so easily by a dashing man with a dazzling mind. Because that had been what it was, he was sure – Sherlock had been so brilliant, so singular, and when he had expressed his enthusiastic interest John had been so flattered and overwhelmed he would not have been able to say no even if he wasn't interested himself.

Sophia looked as though she would hit him for a moment, and then relaxed slowly. "I think I can respect that," she said quietly. "I know you, John. They must have been really special for this to happen." Sherlock's face, flushed with nerves and arousal, swam in front of John's eyes and he smiled at it and nodded. "If you decide that you're not the kind of person that does this, I'll still be here," she said.

John smiled weakly. "Thanks," he said. "I, um… I think I'll go upstairs. I'd mostly finished anyway, and I'd like a few minutes away from Bill – I think he's just as shocked as I am."

She smiled at him, but it still trembled as though she was fighting back tears. John felt like hitting himself. "Right. I'll see you around, John."

It was indeed only a few minutes that John was away from Bill – he had barely sat down on his bed before the redhead burst into his room with only a cursory knock on the door. John cringed, but Bill only flung himself onto the bed and studied John thoughtfully. "Tell me about it," he said after a moment.

John's mouth quirked into a half-smile. "What, you want the gory details?" he teased.

Bill's face blanched. "Definitely not," he rejoined. "I want the nice details. It's not like you to do something like this, so who was she?"

For a moment, John said nothing, weighing up how much to tell him. But Bill was his best friend, and he had been since their very first week at Islington High, and even if his judgment on matters of his own heart was often lacking he had always given John good advice and he would never laugh, or be disgusted, or say anything to make John feel worse. After the moment had passed, John sighed. "What would you say if I told you I was bisexual?"

The redhead paused. Then he said carefully, in the exact same tone as before, "So who was he?"

John blinked and tried not to laugh in disbelief. "That's it? That's all you're going to say?"

"What else am I supposed to say?" Bill asked, shrugging nonchalantly. "I think it's great. I'd be bisexual myself if I'd ever found a man attractive. Now you're going to get hit on by twice as many people."

This time he did laugh. "I'm not really sure it works that way, Bill."

Bill shrugged again, but they were both grinning. "The earlier question still stands. He must have been quite something to make you forget about Sophie. Which I still haven't forgiven you for, by the way."

Quite something was really rather an apt description of Sherlock, John mused, even as he winced at Bill's threatening tone. The only reason he hadn't considered the fact that Bill seemed to treat Sophie as a younger sister when he had solidified his relationship with her was that it really hadn't crossed his mind that he could hurt her like this. He hadn't ever planned for a situation where something – or someone - would be so much more important to him that it wouldn't even register in his mind that he shouldn't be doing what he was. But then, not having planned for Sherlock Holmes sounded like it could very easily become some sort of mantra to him.

"He was at the pool," John began. "He'd broken in – it was in the paper this morning, I don't know if you saw, and he said that he'd seen it and thought it looked suspicious because they hadn't mentioned having found Carl's shoes. Bill, he's an absolute genius. He had this whole chain of reasoning as to why missing shoes meant that Carl was murdered, and when I said it was amazing he looked at me and he could just tell all this stuff about me, even stuff I've never told anyone else. He was absolutely brilliant, but when I told him that he looked at me like no-one had ever said it before, like no-one ever complimented him."

Bill's face cleared immediately. "Oh," he said. "So he's another one of your fixer-uppers with no self-esteem."

John shoved at him. "Not like that," he said. "I reckon he thought pretty well of himself and just thought everyone else was an idiot. Like he'd never realised how nice it feels to have someone tell you you're amazing, you know?" Bill raised an eyebrow and shrugged pointedly, as though John had made this exact argument before, though he didn't remember doing so. "He was clever in the same sort of way as Jim, actually," John mused. "You know, observant and good at drawing conclusions."

"If you start trying to shag Jim I'm putting my foot down," Bill retorted. John laughed; it seemed so ridiculous to react the same way to Jim as he had to Sherlock. The curly Cuxton boy had been more open somehow, more willing to interact with people. John felt as though Jim had accepted their company because attempting to get rid of them would have been too much trouble, rather than because he wanted friends, as though he would be perfectly happy on his own. Sherlock's reactions to his praise, however, suggested a more natural desire to be wanted by someone, and John had always been unable to resist being that someone – particularly if he would be the only one.

"We arranged to meet up on Saturday," he told his friend quietly, not looking at him.

Bill moved his head until it was in John's line of sight anyway. "Of course you did," he agreed. "You couldn't just leave a bloke like that."

John fidgeted with his hands in his lap. "I wasn't sure I should go, actually," he said. "I still don't really know how it happened. I mean, one moment we were just sitting there talking and then the next he was kissing me."

"Stop there," Bill insisted, as though John had looked like he wanted to volunteer more information. He grinned at the redhead, trying to ignore the flashes of not stopping that were battering their way across his mind and distracting him from the disgusted look on Bill's face. "Just because I'm okay with you liking blokes doesn't mean I want to hear about it."

He chuckled. "I wasn't actually going to say anything about it," he said languidly. Bill flapped a hand at him. "I just mean… it's kind of scary," he admitted. "I've never even fancied a bloke before, and then suddenly I meet this one, admittedly incredible, guy and I forget about my girlfriend and start snogging him in a swimming-pool changing room – a crime scene. It's not like the me I thought I knew."

The redhead frowned at him. "It's not like the you I thought I knew, either," he said bluntly. "I'm utterly shocked. But… I reckon if this guy –"

"Sherlock," John provided, mostly because it sounded weird hearing the pale creature referred to as 'this guy'.

Bill gave him a Look. "I reckon if Sherlock was incredible enough to make you do this," he continued as though John had not interrupted, "then you'd be stupid not to take whatever more he's offering."

John had thought this too, at first – that Sherlock was so amazing, and wanted him even though he'd never wanted anyone before, and there had been something almost tangible connecting them, and didn't that make it absolutely essential that he follow this as far as he could? And yet… "That's just it, though – he's incredible. And he'd never realised that trying to like someone and being liked by someone could be so good before. Now that he knows that, he's not going to stay with someone like me for very long, is he? Not with his eyes and his cheekbones and… what if I let myself get attached to him and he found someone else?"

The taller boy rolled his eyes. "From the way you've described him he sounds like Jim. He probably makes more enemies than friends with his clever observations and deductions. John, you were probably the first person to ever try to like him. How likely is it that another one's going to come along right after you? Especially someone that he would think was better than you?"

"But he knows he wants people to like him now," John persisted. "He'll act differently. And even if he doesn't… he'd had… I mean…" he blushed. "He wasn't a virgin. He'd had casual sex with people before. What if that was all it was to him, and that's all he wants?"

Bill apparently had an inexhaustible supply of retorts and justifications. "The only way you can find out is to go," was the latest one. "You've only met the guy once, John. Meeting him and trying to start something with him is a risk in so many ways, but if he's really as amazing as you're saying, if it works it could be the best thing that's ever happened to you."

"If it works," John repeated dully. "We're such different people. He's probably already decided that it was a mistake and not to come on Saturday."

"You're talking yourself out of it," Bill informed him promptly, frowning heavily.

John cringed. "Yeah," he admitted.

The frown did not diminish. "Are you doing that because you don't want to go, or because you want me to talk you back into it?"

He hadn't really thought about either; did he want to meet Sherlock, completely ignoring all the reasons he should or shouldn't? "I don't know," he said finally.

Bill stood up abruptly, brushing imaginary dust or crumbs from his pullover. "That's okay," he said soothingly. "But make sure you think about it."

John snorted. "Are you kidding me?" he retorted. "Like I'll be able to think of anything else."

Bill left him alone until breakfast the next morning. John had, as predicted, got very little sleep in between fervent recollections of the swimming-pool changing-room and irritatingly-persistent erections. What little sleep he did manage to drift off to was invaded by dreams of sharp cheekbones and impossible eyes, of Sherlock's hands on him, Sherlock on his knees in front of him, John on his knees in front of Sherlock and being looked down at with that shocked, awed expression that had been on the boy's face in the instant before he'd kissed him –

"So are you going on Saturday?"

John flushed and looked up at Bill, who was once again leaning conspiratorially over the table towards him with a piece of toast dangling from his fingers dangerously close to his second cup of coffee. "I don't know, Bill," he said, allowing his irritation to show in his voice. "It's only Thursday, I don't have to decide right now."

Jim, who seemed to get up frighteningly early every morning and was always at breakfast earlier than the other two, looked curiously between them. "What's on Saturday?" he asked innocently.

Bill leapt at the opportunity. "Saturday," he said significantly, "is when an apparently dashing genius named Sherlock Holmes will be waiting for John at the British Museum, to be given either a romantic date or an enormous disappointment."

"A genius," Jim repeated in a mockingly interested drawl, raising an eyebrow at John.

"He sounds a bit like you, actually, Jim," Bill continued. "You know, the way you notice things that other people don't and use them to draw conclusions about people."

The Irish boy definitely looked interested now; John felt a flood of jealousy rush through him and almost declared that he was going on the spot just to stop Jim from attempting to go in his stead. "He thinks Carl Powers was murdered," he said instead. "He read about it in the papers and he thinks the killer stole his shoes."

This remark had the opposite effect than John intended; Jim's other eyebrow shot up and he looked not only interested but impressed. Sullenly, John bit back the you can't have him on his tongue and kept silent while Bill started up a sort of pep-talk of all the reasons John should go.

"He just sounds so sweet and vulnerable," he was saying. "Imagine what those eyes and those cheekbones will look like when he realises you're not coming."

For a long time afterwards, John would blame Bill's steady flow of teasing for his final decision. Bill was so determined that John should go that he found himself coming up with more and more reasons why he shouldn't just to counteract his friend's arguments. "I'm not going," he announced finally on Friday evening.

Bill's head snapped up from The Great Gatsby, his eyebrows drawing together. "Why not?" he asked suspiciously.

John sighed. "Bill, I just can't," he pleaded. "I've thought about everything – I haven't stopped thinking about it and that scares me. Sherlock's just so much it's overwhelming, and I don't think I can deal with that long-term, but I can't ask him to tone it down for me and I wouldn't want him to. We're just so different that it was exciting, that's all, but it could never actually work."

"So you're not even going to try?"

He struggled to phrase his reasons for not going in ways that Bill wouldn't immediately reject, but it was hard: he had definitely picked the weaker argument. And yet his most compelling thought when he imagined meeting Sherlock, promising something long-term, was an overwhelming sense of not being ready. Sherlock was a whirlwind; John had been with him for just over an hour and he already occupied 90% of his brain function. How long, if he actually dated the boy, before he became one of those obnoxious, obsessed people who couldn't talk about anything other than Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock? John wanted his own life before he let it get taken over by someone else's who was just so much more.

So many of his arguments focussed on long-term effects of a relationship with Sherlock that it was a problem in itself; if he went ahead and met the Cuxton boy, he would be preparing for something very long-term, surrendering to the fact that Sherlock was going to become the defining part of himself for the indeterminate future. Sherlock would, within their first walk around the British Museum, come to influence the way he thought about what he wanted to do in the future, from Christmas dinner to enlisting in the army. What were the chances that Sherlock was in it for the same?

"I can't," he repeated helplessly. "I'm just not ready for someone like him."

Bill frowned at him. "Okay," he said, in a tone of voice that quite plainly said the opposite. "It's your decision, John."

He was grateful that Jim wasn't in the room. He trusted Bill's feedback, and his friend seemed to have almost as much emotion invested in the saga as John did himself, but the Irish boy's sudden interest in Sherlock unnerved him and he really didn't want to have to think about that while convincing Bill that he really shouldn't go.

John should have known, however, that Bill had accepted his decision too easily.

"I wonder how long Sherlock will wait before he admits to himself that you're not coming," he said casually as John stood up to go to bed. "Will he sit there on the steps of the Museum, or will he just lean against something so that people don't notice he's been stood up?"

"Bill," John said firmly, quelling his friend's wistful expression, "I'm not going."

At precisely eleven-fifteen on Saturday morning, John realised he'd chosen wrong.

"Oh, fuck," he groaned, burying his head in his hands and attracting bewildered stares from everyone around their study table except Bill. "I've made the wrong decision."

Bill looked at him and nodded slowly, biting his lip and looking as though he was trying very hard not to say, I told you so. "Yeah," he agreed, looking away again.

John groaned again. "Oh, fuck." He looked up at the clock as though his eyes hadn't been fixed on it since nine o'clock that morning, frozen in the final stages of indecision. Eleven-fifteen, and even if he took a taxi it would take him at least three-quarters of an hour to get to London Central from here. He couldn't realistically expect Sherlock to wait for him for an hour.

He was too late.

"It was the first time he'd wanted someone," he moaned. Bradley and Matt shot alarmed glances at each other. "His first romantic experience, and I just stood him up."

Bill nodded again. "Yeah," he repeated.

"Fuck," John cursed. "What's he going to think of romance? I've just taught him that he can't trust anyone, can't venture his heart, all because I was scared to risk mine! What if he never tries again? What if he spends the rest of his life scared to get attached to anyone?"

Bill's I told you so look became even more pronounced. John felt like clawing out his own heart and flinging it desperately in the direction of London. No-one had ever told Sherlock he was brilliant before, and then just when he found someone who did, that someone abandoned him like he was nothing. John could see Sherlock's life spread out before him; would he shun human contact completely now, snap at the people who tried to help him? John could have changed that, could have made other people see how amazing Sherlock was.

Bill got up and crossed over to where John was sitting to clap him on the back. "John, mate," he said seriously. "You weren't ready. Maybe it's better that he be disappointed for a while and then move on than the both of you have false hope for however long a relationship might last."

John nodded half-heartedly, but he knew that not keeping his appointment with Sherlock Holmes was going to be one of the things he regretted most in his entire life, one of those things that kept popping up at inopportune moments to crush his self-esteem. Once, I showed a boy what a proper human relationship could be like and then snatched it away from him.

Maybe Sherlock's genius would get noticed one day, John reasoned. Someone had to listen to his little observations about crime scenes, surely. Maybe his name would come up somewhere and John would recognise it. If I ever meet him again, John promised himself, I will never stop telling him how incredible he is.