Whoops, this took longer than expected! I'm so slooowwww... Sorry! But, thank you to W. Y. Traveller for being my beta, you did an awesome job c:

This was actually the first one-shot that I wrote for this story; but I was super nervous because I wasn't sure how good it was. I did change a few things, and again, W. Y. Traveller really helped. Enjoy the one-shot!

When Sherlock came home from school, he scaled the tree next to the laundry room and knocked on the window. The sound startled the newer maids, but the older maids simply sighed, dropped the linens and went to unlock the window.

"Holmes," greeted Silva, a woman with brown hair, brown eyes, tan skin and average everything. She was rather boring, but still the most interesting person in the house. Silva turned around to have their usual banter, only to realize the boy was already gone. She huffed, but let it go.

He was already racing through the halls, making a beeline to the bathroom, locking the door tightly behind him. He sighed, looking in the mirror. He couldn't help but feel the urge to want to cry again. Instead, he turned on the tap, dipped his thin fingers into the water, and rubbed furiously at his forehead. After five minutes of doing just that, he let out a breath, a little puff of air.

Sherlock sat on the toilet, with the seat and lid down, holding his head in his hands, pulling at his curls before moving on to silently rocking a bit, back and forth with his nails digging into his arms.

Fuck.

Sherlock slipped silently into the dining room, his steps rushed and eyes trained steadily on the ground, curls falling in front of his eyes. That is how gravity worked after all; hair falls down to the same direction your eyes are going when your head is lowered.

He slunk his ornate chair across from Mycroft. The table was long and thin, taking the length of the room and meant for at least twenty people, not four. It was decorated with a simple white tablecloth made of some expensive fabric that no one but Mummy cared about.

Sherlock didn't really expect the silence to last long, and rightfully so. He slipped no more than six bites of the roast into his mouth before he heard the clattering of a silver fork drop down onto a porcelain plate. He could hear the steam coming out of her ears, but still, she gripped a steely smile that told everyone that she was anything but happy.

She was a real stickler for manners. Whatever Sherlock expected his mother to say, it wasn't what she did say, as per usual.

Tight lipped, the woman looked at him with a deathly glare. "William," she began, taking note of her son's flinch at the sound of his own name. She paused and pursed her lips, but it didn't take long for her to decide what to say. "Do you have an erection?"

The young boy fought the urge to lurch his head up in response as she obviously wished him to. Red seared his neck and ears, and he could practically feel Mycroft's face lighting up just the same.

"What?" Sherlock sputtered, eyes darting to the right, where his mother was not sat, although she was all the way at the end of the table. Meanwhile, Mycroft timidly went back to picking at his meat.

"Well, you've kept your head down for all of dinner and it's really rather clear that you don't wish to put it up, as one would when having a polite dinner," Mummy replied haughtily, her sickly-sweet smile dripping with disgrace. "And your arm, of course."

He slipped his arm up from between his legs, where he'd previously had it. Mummy was not happy with his manners, that much was obvious. Slouching and keeping his head down. Did he have a death wish?

It seemed he did, for not a moment afterwards, he heard the screech of a wooden chair against floor and then the click-clacking of his mother's red heels on the floor. He flinched before she grabbed his curls, shoulders finding the way up to his chin. Suddenly, his eyes met with old, harsh eyes without a wisp of grey hair clouding her vision. Upon seeing his face, the only thing clouding her vision was the red she was seeing.

Scrawled across his forehead, written very clearly in bold and large letters was a very simple word. But looking at Mummy's face, it wasn't the culprits that she was angry with.

Dull. Boring. Grey. Tedious. Monotonous. Trying. Bland. Mind-Numbing. Dreary. Vapid. Insipid. Uninteresting. Lackluster. Stale.

Those were a few of the words Sherlock would bother to use to describe school. He was hit with another paper ball, poorly made, falling apart the moment it hit his head. He didn't bother to look at was written on it; he already knew. He listened to his professor's unvaried speech about the importance of Shakespeare instead. He already didn't like this man just based off his name. William was truly the worst name.

The professor – Gerald or something, droned on about Hamlet and how it was the same as video games or something, something about rotting brains and death. His voice was droll and not worth listening to, and he didn't bother to take note about the whispers hovering around his classroom. Some words that certainly went under the 'not nice' category.

Another paper ball. Ninth one today. Ninety-seventotal. How … mundane. They were getting sloppy this year. A true pity, only ninety-seven from September to December.

"The bell rang, freak," snorted some classmate he didn't know the name of. Sherlock lifted his eyes to see them snickering at him. He glanced down at his hand, realizing it was still moving. He dropped his pencil to read what he'd been writing.

Oh.

Basically, every thought that'd ran through his head throughout the class in a messy jumble of sharp letters.

"Does he really still not know the name of Mr. Davis?"

No. Sherlock thought bitterly. No I do not. Nor do I care.

Floating through the hours, swiftly being hit by a few more paper balls and some well-aimed spit balls, Sherlock didn't really remember anything from the day.

Wait a minute.

He checked his watch. Oh. It'd only been ten minutes. It was still lunch. One hundred two.

"Hey, Sherlock!" called a way-too-enthusiastic voice.

Sherlock ignored the voice, no one in this school called him Sherlock, nor did anyone at his home, aside from Mycroft, but he didn't count.

He vaguely felt a hand on a shoulder, and the hand was making him face a face.

"Yo!" grinned the boy. Of course it was a boy; it's an all-boys school. Sherlock stared blankly at this brown-haired guy. The brown-haired guy who was now rolling his eyes at him.

"It's Victor," he snorted. "Have you deleted me again?"

Oh. Right. Trevor.

"Hi."

"Yeah, hi," Trevor replied, hitting him in the elbows. When Sherlock made a pained face, he snorted again. "Right, forgot you're a weakling."

"I know jujitsu," Sherlock volunteered in a growl.

"Yeah, yeah, but you're the only one who knows what that is."

"Their loss."

"Or yours."

"Why?"

Trevor shrugged in reply. "I'll tell you the same time you stop calling me Trevor."

Sherlock frowned. "Why?"

Trevor gave a little laugh. "Because my name is Victor! You can check my birth certificate if you want."

"I'm not in the mood to find your certificate."

"Ooh, caught you in a bad mood, did I?"

"Maybe." Sherlock sighed. "Not sure what my mood is, myself."

"How can you always turn a joke into something utterly dreary and depressing?"

"What? I didn't say anything dreary or depressing."

"He's gone into Defend Mode, folks!" Trevor said loudly, grinning. Sherlock gave him a bitter, black look.

"Don't talk so loud," he hissed.

"Why?"

"People will hear you."

"I care why?"

Sherlock was hit by another ball. It seemed he wasn't the only one that found school uneventful. He supposed he should feel proud he was the school's entertainment. Sherlock turned to look at his acquaintance, whose mouth formed a little 'o'.

"Number?" he asked.

"One hundred three."

"Today?"

"Ten."

"Congratulations, you're Sherlock's tenth today!" Trevor shouted behind him, and Sherlock felt a rash crawl up his neck.

"Oh, don't be so embarrassed."

"You make it sound like I had sex with them."

"Ten dudes in one day? Wow, close to breaking a record!" Trevor grinned enthusiastically, his grin growing when he spotted Sherlock shrinking into his clothes, rash reaching his ears. He mumbled something undecipherable.

"Can't hear you when you talk so quiet, not all of us are superhuman."

Suddenly, the rash was on his face. He bit his lip, realizing they were suddenly outside.

"Yes, we walked outside," Trevor said, probably noting the surprise on his friend's face. He added, "It's lunch."

He set his rough hands on Sherlock's shoulders. "Sherlock."

"What?"

"It's all okay, you know."

"What's okay?" Sherlock asked, lifting his scarlet face to look at Trevor. And then, suddenly they shared the same rash. Pleasant image that Sherlock had thought up there.

"Being … you know," Trevor said, scratching the back of his neck. Sherlock leaned his neck forward, waiting for him to continue. Trevor pulled at the ends of his shirt instead.

"No, I don't know," Sherlock huffed. "Do go on."

"It's okay to be, like … uh."

"'Uh' isn't a thing you can be," Sherlock said impatiently, lips pressing together when Trevor laughed.

Trevor replied to him, finally squeezing the words out. "It's all fine. Fine to be … gay."

Sherlock blinked, for the first time in who knows how long, surprised.

"I mean like, you have a crush on me, don't you?"

Suddenly, Sherlock was gone. Back to class for him, he supposed. This was why he always deleted Victor Trevor. Same talk, every day. A place where no one would hear. And Victor stayed, hoping Sherlock would just say yes. Like he had the first day they'd had this conversation.

The first day with the conversation when Victor had kissed Sherlock Holmes.

And this was the last day of that conversation, when Joshua overheard Victor say that Sherlock Holmes was a–

"Fudge packer."

Sherlock's nose wrinkled. That was new. Fudge packer?

"Yeah, I'm talking to you."

As if that wasn't obvious.

"Ay, it ain't nice to ignore someone."

"Isn't." Sherlock sighed before he realized he had. Sometimes he wasn't sure that his mouth and brain were connected.

"What?"

"You said ain't," Sherlock said, sighing when he realized what he was doing. Who was he, spell check? "Ain't isn't correct grammar."

And suddenly he found himself being pulled by the ears, made to look at the brute. Rich, obviously, but fancied himself a tough guy. Blonde, brown eyes.

"You're a poof, 'Olmes."

Suddenly, Sherlock didn't have to be held to look this guy in the eye. He vomited out the word, but it came out harsh and hardly below a squeak. "Sorry?"

"Poof," he grinned. "Gay. Cocksucker. You suck cock. It's no wonder you go to an all-boys school."

Sherlock's face had turned red, and he was busy convincing himself it was because he was cold. It was cold out, right?

The brown-eyed guy obviously saw this as an opportunity to continue speaking, unfortunately. It was Sherlock's own fault for going mute at the worst time.

"You've probably banged every single guy in the school. Jenkins was your lucky tenth, huh? Break a new record, wasn't that what your boyfriend said?"

Sherlock gritted his teeth. How dumb do they get? Here he was, with everyone thinking that he'd fucked the whole school, when really, he hadn't banged anyone. That he could remember. But they would've had to have been really dull if he'd deleted their sex together. What makes sex memorable anyway? It's a basic form of reproduction and–

"I bet you've banged Victor more times than even you can count," interrupted the boy, whose blonde hair was suddenly looking quite familiar. Jamie? Jimmy? Donald?

Seeing a not-kind looking fist coming to his face, Sherlock ducked away from this guy (Joshua?) and started to run, feet pounding on the ground, heart racing, begging to break free from his rib cage, face soaring into the light, of rainbows, gay unicorns and–

His pale, fragile face met cold, hard ground, uneven and gritty and he was sure he'd broken his nose. A tooth chip too, probably. He groaned, feeling smooth, moisturized hands, cheap moisturizer; make their way to his neck.

"What, this isn't one of your kinks? Thought all gay fuckers had these kinds of kinks," the guy hissed. He was definitely Joshua. He had the high score with how-many-paperballs-can-you-hit-the-freak-with-in-under-an-hour-because-I'm-failing-school-and-this-guy-doesn't-do-anything-but-is-still-at-the-top-of-class-because-he's-a-motherfucking-genius.

Sherlock writhed under his grip, his heart pounding quickly, too quickly, pounding in his ears, blocking out any hope of sound. He didn't even realize his own hands were trying to take Joshua's hands off his neck, clawing like a wild animal, most certainly scratching Joshua's hands.

But that wasn't important. What was important was that Sherlock could not breathe, he was like a cat or something, hoping for air in the wide ocean when he couldn't swim, drowning in the deafening sound of his heart, because how long could someone live without air?

Joshua let him go, just as his vision started to turn black. He stood from his kneeling position, happy about a job well done. Obviously, adrenaline still pumped through his veins. He grinned at Sherlock, who still couldn't breathe.

Sadist.

Sherlock let in a wild, heaving breath, rolling over and attempting to get up, only to realize that, in order to stand, you need to breathe, something his lungs was doing quickly, unevenly and the owner of said lungs was feeling quite delirious. He had no choice but to stare at this man, the man who could kill him right now if he wanted to. Not at all intimidating, sure, sure.

Instead, he pulled out a pen, writing in neat letters across Sherlock's forehead, owner of said forehead not even bothering to try and stop him, too busy trying to remember how to breathe.

Jesus Christ.

Jesus fucking Christ. Oh, God.

He didn't even hear the guy proclaim him a name, the guy who he couldn't see because he was too busy blearily looking for some sort of escape route, or he would at least pretend that because no one needed to know that Sherlock Holmes was crying.

No one but this guy, who proudly proclaimed, "Faggot."

"Your forehead," Mycroft dumbly stated. Sherlock foolishly felt the need to cry, his eyes already making his vision a bit blurry.

"Faggot," Mummy declared to their father who sat quietly at the end of the table. The word was still very visible, but now it was written on a red, scratchy, annoyed forehead instead of a pale, pristine one.

It'd started to bleed a little before he'd come to dinner, the word a few angry slashes and washed out, but still very clearly there. Not only that, but his suspicion of a tooth chip was definitely true, and his nose was more than a little crooked. His neck was full of already purple bruises.

Mummy narrowed her eyes. "We gave birth to a faggot."

She dropped her son's hair, letting him run out of the room, slipping on the floor before he got through the doorway, but not before he received a hard slap on the side of his face.

He scrambled to his feet after falling so that he could race up the stairs, slam his bedroom door, and flop onto his bed, shouting already echoing up to the second floor. He swallowed, looking up at the ceiling as tears trickled down the sides of his face.

Pathetic.

His life was exactly that: Pathetic. He floated through school, deleted the one moment in his life that could change everything every day, stayed quiet at home, pretended to be smarter than he was, failed, got hit with whatever was on hand, and then slept. Entertainment.

The boys could find a better source of entertainment; Sherlock Holmes couldn't be that interesting, right? No, of course he couldn't. Because Sherlock Holmes wasn't anything but a pathetic faggot used for entertainment.

A mistake. Cocksucker.

He rolled over to face his window, suddenly wanting to speak to the maids, the only thing helping him make it through life, aside from whatshisface. Andrea– sorry, Silva wouldn't pity him. She also wouldn't show any interest.

But what Sherlock Holmes really needed? A gun, probably.

Mummy went to bed at ten, because before that time, she went out to dinner with friends, despite always having dinner beforehand. Father was always drinking in his study, and Mycroft would be studying at this time.

So, that night, Sherlock stole into his father's study, "borrowing" something from the high-end study. His father couldn't bother to notice, his head lolling off his chair, broken glass underneath his hand.

Sherlock then crept into Mycroft's room, where Sherlock was certain he wasn't in.

So when Sherlock was busy rummaging around his brother's room, rummaging through his drawers, he wasn't really expecting his brother to actually show up.

"Hello, brother mine."

Sherlock spun, every muscle in him tensing. His eyes were wide like a deer in headlights. The hunter only raised his eyebrows, giving Sherlock one of his infamous, unimpressed looks at the bottle of vodka placed neatly behind him. It was an expensive French bottle, obviously from fathers.

Mycroft held up exactly what Sherlock was looking for: a gun.

"I suppose you're looking for this."

The younger brother went a shade of white, the deer shot and a ghost in its place.

"Suicide?"

Sherlock went two shades whiter, the pink streaks from crying still left over. Mycroft sighed, but before he could get another word in, his brother finally blurted out, "It isn't as if my life is actually worth anything close to living. It's pathetic; there's no use to it. Nobody likes me anyway. I know what they think of me. I don't even have to deduce anything, that's how stupid the powers of deduction are, people just tell you everything anyway. I'm a stupid gay fucker who has no reason to live so if you stop me, I'll just … I'll just–"

"You'll just what?" Mycroft asked, and that was when Sherlock finally looked at Mycroft's face. It wasn't angry. It was a little bit sad. Sherlock squirmed, pressing his lips together before slumping down onto the floor, on purpose this time.

"I'm not stopping you," Mycroft sighed, noting his brother's hand beginning to grow a little wet.

Sherlock looked up at his brother. Crying in front of big brother? Another thing to add to the Why-Sherlock-Is-Pathetic list.

"I'm just going to tell you I'll miss you." Mycroft said, shoulders drooping although his eyes were still cold and calculating.

The younger brother sniffed, not realizing that he couldn't really breathe at that moment. Not realizing his brother was holding him. Not realizing his brother was gone. Not realizing his brother quietly taking the alcohol away. Not realizing the gun was on the floor.

Realizing.

He lay on his bed, gun stuffed in his mouth. Gay fucker. Another one of his kinks.

Suddenly, there wasn't anything in his mouth. I'll miss you.

Gun in mouth. After one day of shouting and his Mummy disapproving, he's already committing suicide? Incredibly pathetic.

Gun out of mouth. But Victor likes him. His existence isn't pointless.

Gun in mouth. He doesn't like him, not worth living for. It's no wonder you go to an all-boys school.

Gun out of mouth. He wasn't doing this. He'd stain the sheets. Stain the sheets? Oh, right, Mummy would be angry.

Gun in mouth. But Mummy wouldn't get to be mad if he was dead. He could leave all this behind. Finish his stupid existence.

Gun out of mouth. Dammit.

Gun in mouth. This was the time. There wasn't any reason to stay alive. No one to stay alive for either. Victor wasn't worth it. He'd leave once he realized who Sherlock really was. He's just a pathetic waste of breath. His face puts people off. Whenever he goes onto a street, everyone leaves.

Pulling trigger. Almost there.

Anyone who's gay doesn't deserve to live. They should just … fit in with everyone else. They're just… "fudge packers". Faggots.

Gun out of mouth. Gay people are worth it. Gay means … happy.

So why wasn't he happy? Was he that undeserving?

That night, Sherlock Holmes shot his arm instead. Mummy would be very angry about the sheets.

The next day, Mycroft and Sherlock moved out. Sherlock never saw Victor Trevor again.

The next month, Mycroft sent Sherlock off to rehab after finding him high in his living room.

The next year, Mycroft sent Sherlock off to rehab again before his little brother briefly went missing. Briefly for six months.

Mycroft found him at a Pride Parade, happily kissing another man he probably didn't even know. He looked drunk.

And then … Sherlock found John Watson.