Dannie took notice of the way John was watching Sherlock as they sat in the courtyard during lunchtime. The rest of the school had a clear view through the cafeteria window of the three of them sitting together, but John didn't care. All he could think about was his conversation with Mycroft and the patchwork of scars hidden under Sherlock's sleeve.
Struck by sudden boredom, Sherlock had gotten up and taken out his magnifying glass to inspect a deceased bumblebee lying on a nearby tree stump. That's when Dannie took the opportunity to switch over to John's side of the long granite table.
"You've seen his arm then?" she said casually.
John furrowed his brow. "You know about that?"
"Well, yeah. He never talks to me about it, but I know a fellow cutter when I see one." Dannie rolled back her sleeve and showed John her forearm, which was heavily lined with faded pinkish-purple scars.
"Oh God," John muttered, leaning back and closing his eyes.
"Relax, I haven't done it for six months." Dannie glanced across the courtyard at Sherlock. "Not sure how he's doing, though."
John shook his head solemnly. "Not good."
"I figured not." Dannie sighed. "If there's anything you want to know about this though," she said rolling her sleeve back up, "you can ask me."
He thought for a minute, and then asked, "What can I do to help him?"
"First of all, don't try to deprive him of sharp objects. That won't stop him. If he really wants to do it, he'll use anything he can find."
"Then how-?"
"Second of all, you need to understand how good this feels. Honestly, I miss it."
John raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't it hurt?"
"Not really. The endorphins your body produces when you're injured are designed to relieve pain. Plus, during an acute stress response your body has diminished pain perception already. All you're left with is the neurological equivalent of a friend wrapping their arms around you and whispering in your ear, 'It's okay. Everything's going to be okay.'"
"I suppose the real thing wouldn't comfort Sherlock all that much."
"No, it wouldn't." Dannie muttered. "That's one of the most dangerous things about doing something like this to yourself. It makes you want to push away people who care about you, because it hurts more when the evidence of your pain causes them pain."
"I just want to make it stop."
"The pain or what he does for it?"
"Just… all of it."
Dannie smiled at him sadly. "Ultimately whether or not he keeps doing this is entirely in his control. It just depends on whether or not he wants to. All you can do is try to help him not want to."
"How do I do that?"
"I wish I could tell you, but I don't know."
The University of Westminster was a few blocks away from Baker Street. Sherlock seemed to be inexplicably familiar with the campus and was able to direct John and Dannie straight to the library. The librarian eyed them suspiciously as they sat down to work on a research project for history class that was due next week. Sherlock and John browsed through large dusty volumes and Dannie took down notes, but soon enough Sherlock was bored.
"Don't we have something due in chemistry?" Sherlock groaned. "I can't look at these history books anymore."
"Not for a while," Dannie answered. "Anyways, your mind palace already contains everything there is to know about chemistry." She peered over at John's watch to check the time. "I hate to leave you two, but I've got to go help Mrs. Hudson with dinner."
"Wait," John said. "We need your left temporal lobe." He knew that Dannie had a purpose for leaving them alone together, but John was feeling a bit nervous about that now.
"I can leave my notebook with you, but I don't think you'll get much else done now that Sherlock's mind has run off the rails." She shot a glance at Sherlock, who was now searching though the encyclopedia for an entry on the element promethium. "Don't stay too long," Dannie said before departing. "It looks like it's going to rain soon."
Nebulous storm clouds were forming in the sky outside the window. Only the dim light of small table lamps illuminated the room. John looked up at Sherlock and watched as the boy's long finger traced over lines of black ink, his nose inches from the page. Finally John spoke up. "Anderson and the others have been leaving me alone since the… incident."
Sherlock was half-concentrating on the book, so it only took about three minutes for John's words to register in his overactive mind. "Oh," Sherlock said, straightening in his chair to look at him. "That's a good thing, right?"
"Definitely," John said, smiling. "I never really enjoyed their company much anyways. I did enjoy playing rugby though, with all the running and the tackling and the conflict, but now I'm thinking about quitting the team."
"Sorry about that," Sherlock mumbled.
"It's not your fault. It was my choice to pick a fight with them. Anyways, if I'm applying to university for pre-med, I'd be better off with an academic scholarship than an athletic one."
"I'm sure you'll manage that just fine."
"Speaking of college applications, I figured someone like you would be attending uni by now."
Sherlock sighed. "My parents considered letting me go early. They let Mycroft go to uni when he was thirteen, but after seeing how he turned out they figured that was a mistake, so they're having me take the slow path and stay at the same grade level as my peers. A lot of good that will do."
Feeling a bit agitated, Sherlock got up and traveled back into the maze of bookshelves. He thumbed over the spine of a familiar text and pulled it from the shelf. On the wooden panel behind it there was a smiley face drawn on with a sharpie. Sherlock remembered the thick, calloused fingers of the hand that had drawn it there. He could almost feel those fingers closing around his wrist. Wait, not almost, he did feel them. It wasn't his imagination.
A soft, high voice breathed in his ear, "Hello, darling. Miss me?"
Sherlock suppressed a shudder and slowly turned to face his aggressor. He tried to tug his arm away, but the man kept a firm grip.
"Come on, love. There's no need to be so coy with me," the man whispered. "I've waited a long time for you to step back into my web."
Staring into the cold, dark eyes of Jim Moriarty, Sherlock wondered how he had ever let this foul creature touch him.
The thing about Jim was that he loved to take beautiful, rare, precious things and slowly break them apart. He was all too eager to take fifteen-year-old Sherlock under his wing the day he found the boy wandering the halls of Westminster looking for a distraction. Jim thoroughly enjoyed watching that brilliant mind go blank, whether it was when he had Sherlock strung out on heroin or when Jim pinned the boy to the mattress and fucked him senseless. For the first two months Sherlock let himself believe that this was a normal relationship. He was too young and naïve to understand what was being done to him. Soon enough, though, Jim became bored and decided to change up the game. Then Sherlock understood.
Jim tugged at the hem of Sherlock's sleeve. "Tell me, Sherlock, who's supplying drugs for you now?" He pushed the sleeve back and tisked at the sight he found there. "Oh Sherlock, you're too pretty to carve yourself up like this. Then again, I'm sure you'd still fetch the same price."
"Still in the human trafficking business, then?" Sherlock said, leaning back against the bookshelf as far away from the man as he could manage.
"Of course not, dear. You know you're the only little fucktoy I ever rented out," Jim said, stroking the side of Sherlock's face with one calloused finger. "It's a shame I took so little time to play with you myself, but I did enjoy to watch." His finger trailed down Sherlock's neck to his collarbone. "Victor got a little carried away, though."
"You know what my brother did to Victor. Imagine what would happen if I told him about you."
"Oh I'm not worried about that. You're too secretive," he said, stepping away and tugging Sherlock's sleeve back up. "I've been keeping a safe distance for now, Sherlock, but I figured I'd stop by and give you this friendly little reminder: you are mine."
Jim gripped the bookshelf and thrust his hips forward against Sherlock's leg. Sherlock could smell the cigarette smoke on Jim's breath as the man leaned closer and ran his tongue along Sherlock's closed mouth. Then with one last sinister smirk, Jim slipped away into the shadows.
It took a moment for Sherlock to come back up to breathe. He felt as if he'd spent the last few minutes underwater and had just now resurfaced, shaking and gasping. Panic rose in his chest, a delayed reaction. Sherlock's fingers trembled as he reached into his pocket for his razor. Throwing aside caution, he pressed the blade down hard and made one quick stroke over the M-shaped vein formation on his wrist. The blood welled up, large drops spilling over and trailing down to his hand. Sherlock made a fist and let the blood spread over his palm.
Struck by a strange, morbid idea, Sherlock removed a few more books with his other hand and pressed the bloodstained one against the smiley face drawn onto the wood panel. He left the crimson handprint in plain view and returned to the table, stopping along the way to grab a Kleenex and dab the blood off of his hand.
It was very fortunate that John had already gathered his books and returned them to his rucksack, because by the time Sherlock reached the table, the librarian was on her feet shouting, "Oi! What have you done to my bloody bookshelves?"
Sherlock smirked at her choice of words. "Come on, John," Sherlock said quietly but urgently. "Grab your things and run."
John simply sat there with his mouth agape. "Why? What did you do?"
"Quickly, John," Sherlock hissed as he dashed towards the exit. He heard John's panicked footsteps following him as the librarian squawked, "Stop them! Stop those two!"
Sherlock and John sprinted down the main hallway towards the front entrance. A few paces away, John saw a security guard run up behind Sherlock and come dangerously close to grabbing him. John veered right and threw his left shoulder against the man, knocking him to the ground as Sherlock dashed out the door.
"Sorry," John muttered quickly to the security guard on the floor as he flew after Sherlock to try to catch up with him. The two boys didn't stop running until they reached the front steps of 221B Baker Street, where downpour of rain had already begun.
John clung to the railing and gasped for breath. "That was ridiculous," he said, grinning. "That was the most ridiculous thing I've ever done." He looked up at Sherlock, and his smile faded a bit. "What did you do to the bookshelf?"
"Nothing serious," Sherlock said, tilting his face up towards the rain, still high from the slight morphine buzz. "I just left a little… signature."
John chuckled. "That is so you."
"You have no idea," Sherlock muttered under his breath. The two of them were starting to get soaked, and so he took out his copy of the key and opened the front door. "Come on, get inside. I have a spare change of clothes upstairs."
The moment he entered the flat, Sherlock crossed the sitting room quickly and disappeared into the bedroom. John tried to follow but was met with a door slammed in his face. "Sherlock, are you okay?"
"Fine," Sherlock answered through the closed door. He cracked it open briefly to toss out a dark blue long-sleeved t-shirt for John to change into. John studied it, quite sure that any shirt that fit Sherlock's rail-thin body wouldn't fit him. "Sorry about the holes in the sleeves," Sherlock said, pushing the door closed again and locking it.
"Sherlock, you can change out here. There's no need to be so modest-" John stopped himself, baffled by his own stupidity. Of course Sherlock wouldn't want to take his shirt off in front of him. Taking a deep breath, John said, "Sherlock, it's okay."
"What is?" Sherlock was holding a towel against the fresh cut. He had to wait for the bleeding to stop before putting on the white button-down shirt he had pulled from the closet.
"I know about your arm." Sherlock's stomach turned cold at these words. "I'm sorry, but I got a look at it when you were passed out and I was trying to check your pulse." John jostled the door handle. "Just, please, let me in. I need to know you're alright."
Sherlock backed away from the door as he heard a hairpin scratch around the inside of the doorknob and the lock click open. John stepped inside and caught a glimpse of the bloodstained towel Sherlock was holding against his arm.
"Oh fuck," John whispered. He nudged the towel away and took hold of Sherlock's wrist to get a good look at it. Blood was still welling up from the wound. "Jesus, Sherlock. I think you might need stiches."
"I'll be fine," Sherlock muttered. "I've made deeper cuts than this."
John guided Sherlock's other hand to press the towel back over the cut and held it there firmly. "Can you tell me why you did this?"
"I don't want to bore you with the details."
"Whatever it was must have been pretty serious." Realizing that he was making Sherlock feel cornered, John let go and put up his hands. "Look, I understand if you don't feel like talking about it, but I want you to know that… if you ever… you can always tell me if something's bothering you."
"Well, right now you are," Sherlock said shortly. He regretted saying it as soon as the words left his mouth.
"Right then. Okay," John said in a wounded voice. "I'll just leave you alone."
Feeling a bit defeated, John picked up his rucksack from the chair in the sitting room and marched quickly down the stairs. He made it to the front step outside before he heard Sherlock calling him back.
"John, wait!"
Ignoring him, John continued down the steps and onto the sidewalk. Sherlock followed, feeling a sting in his arm as the rain poured down and soaked his shirt again.
"John, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."
"It's fine Sherlock," John said, turning towards him. "You don't have to spare my feelings."
"I just… you have to understand," he swallowed. "This hurts."
"Yeah, I bet it does."
Sherlock shook his head. "No, John. This," he held out his arm, "this doesn't hurt. It's just… the way you're looking at me now…"
"What?"
"I can't… I can't stand it when you look at me like that. Like you… care or something."
John smiled sadly. "Why does that bother you?"
"I don't know."
The magnetic field was drawing John in again. "If you want, I can do my best to hide it," he said, stepping closer until they were inches from each other. "God knows I've been trying, but the truth is I do care about you. More than you know."
Sherlock shivered as John reached up and cupped his face in both hands. The rain had chilled him to the bone, but John was radiating warmth like a sun. Sherlock found himself leaning towards him, staring into those deep blue eyes with a ring hazel around the middle. It had been so long since he'd actually wanted to be this close to another person. Not since-
Jim's face flashed before Sherlock's eyes, and he shut them tight. "Fuck," he whimpered softly, trembling head to foot.
"Shh. It's alright," John whispered, He crooked one arm gently around Sherlock's back and pulled him closer. "Look at me, Sherlock. It's okay. Everything is going to be okay."
Sherlock opened his eyes again. The corners of John's eyes were crinkled with emotion, and all the magical benevolence in the world that Sherlock didn't believe in was shining from his face. It was like daylight streaming through the windows of his mind palace, banishing the darkness and filling him with hope. Without thinking about it, Sherlock leaned down and pressed his mouth against John's slightly parted lips. John responded by making a little whining noise and opening his mouth more, his warm breath tasting of mint and tea as he kissed Sherlock back.
Entangled in Sherlock's arms, John gave him one last gentle peck on the lips before nestling his face against the boy's shoulder. "Wow," he said, heart still beating fast. "I wasn't expecting that."
Sherlock rested his chin lightly on the top of John's head. "Me neither."
They pulled apart when John heard a noise coming from inside 221B. The front door was open. Dannie and Mrs. Hudson were standing in the entranceway, both of them beaming. Dannie stretched her hands to the ceiling and shouted, "Yes! Finally!"
Mrs. Hudson shushed her and said, "Come on, let's leave them to it."
John smiled and rubbed the back of his neck nervously. He looked so bashful Sherlock wrapped his arms around him again and planted a kiss on his forehead. "Let's go back inside and see if we can warm you up."
