Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

He rolled his suitcase into the room, everything he owned condensed into a bag and a cardboard box. Placing the box on the bed with a muffled thump, he surveyed his temporary surroundings. It was nothing remarkable: faded, blue walls, single bed cloaked in a grey duvet, wooden chest of drawers and wardrobe, and a desk shoved in the corner next to the window.

“I didn’t get you a desk lamp or anything,” his aunt said from the doorway behind him. “I thought you would already have one.”

“It’s alright,” John replied, his voice shamefully weak, and he smiled at her over his shoulder to make up for it. “I’ll be moving into the college in a couple days anyway. I can pick one up on the way.”

She smiled back, a weak twitching of tightly-pulled lips, and then retreated back out into the corridor. “I’ll let you get settled in,” she muttered, and he nodded, closing the door as she left.

He let the suitcases drop unceremoniously to the floor, wincing at the thunderous sound, but he couldn’t be bothered to unpack at the moment. Walking over to the bed, he sat down on the edge, the springs creaking in protest beneath him. He traced his fingers over the worn cotton, watching the swirls and ridges of shifting air form and fall across the surface. With a sigh, he pulled his phone out of his pocket.

4 New Messages

He groaned, but slid the touchscreen unlocked anyway. Three of them were from Harry.

R u on the train? ?

Mum wants 2 knw if ur there yet

R u @ aunt claires? Mums worried

His mother did not want to know if he had arrived, nor was she worried, that much John was sure of. She probably wasn’t even awake yet, considering she had only just arrived home shortly before he left, sending him off with a muffled grunt of goodbye against the couch cushions.

When John’s aunt had suggested he apply to transfer to Langley College, a prestigious, private school on the outskirts of London, he had never dreamed he would actually get in. Transferring in for just the second year was practically unheard of, and his only connection to speak of was a friend of his aunt who worked as a secretary at the school. He was hardly a shoo-in. By some freak accident, however, he had gotten in, and he thought he ought to be a lot happier about it than he was.

Langley was the sort of place anyone who wanted to become anything went to. It was a fast track into almost any university you could dream of, and the website was plastered with glowing dossiers of students who went on from there to be prime ministers, ambassadors, scientists, and endless other professions in which they won numerous awards.

His aunt had known that, which was why she was so insistent that he try to get in in the first place. Doctors didn’t come from the nobody college in Kent he had been attending, and, though his mother thought he was just going through a phase, his aunt really did believe he could be a doctor.

He should be happy, ecstatic even, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Harry. He’d had to leave her behind, leave her to make her own breakfasts and lunches, to get herself to school, to clean the house while their mother snored on the couch, freshly back from yet another attempt to hit every pub in town. He made a mental note to periodically remind Harry about the bin he usually put out by their mother as he tapped out a response.

Just got in. Knackered. Talk to ya later.

Figuring that would ensure him some privacy for a while, he turned his attention to the last message in his inbox.

When ya movin in?

That one was from Mike Stamford, a friend from secondary school and the only person he would know going into Langley.

Sunday. Stayin at my aunts in London til then.

Why?

John lowered the phone to rest on his knee, looking out aimlessly in front of him. Why? Because his aunt had offered. Because he couldn’t spend one more day being guilted by his mother for accepting the rugby scholarship, for wanting to make something more of himself. Because he was tired of listening to her excuses and pretending to believe them for Harry’s sake.

More convenient to move from here.

It was true, and much more socially acceptable than the other answers.

Right. Get your room info yet?

He sat his phone down on the bed to rummage through the box beside him, his fingers searching for the folder he’d shoved all his school papers in, but his mobile buzzed loudly before he could find it. He glanced down at the screen, rolling his eyes and chuckling as he answered. “You couldn’t wait two minutes?”

“Hey, it’s not every day your best mate moves to your college,” Mike’s echoing voice snapped back at him, but John could tell he was smiling. “So what house are you in?”

“God, you’re clingy,” John teased, and he heard Mike huff faintly on the other end of the line. ”Just a sec,” he said, locating the folder and awkwardly flipping it open onto his lap one-handed. “I’m in Kingsley. You?”

“Same,” Mike replied, his attempt to sound nonchalant painfully transparent, but John could hardly blame him; he was excited too. “What room you in?”

“Um,” John murmured, his eyes scanning down the page, “117.”

“Roommate?”

John read the name twice before answering, unable to believe it could possibly be right. “Er…Sherlock Holmes,” he said, the name thick and heavy in his mouth, as if the posh syllables were fighting against passing his commoner lips.

The sound Mike made was an indescribable combination of a snort and a choke, and John jolted the phone away from his ear for a moment in alarm.

“Sherlock Holmes!?” Mike exclaimed. “Your roommate is Sherlock Holmes?”

“Yeah,” John replied, growing both anxious and annoyed. “Why? Who is he?”

“Oh, John,” Mike laughed, and John scowled at his patronizing tone, “you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

*****

“No,” he snapped as he glared out the window of the taxi.

“Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson sighed, leaning inside the open, car door, “will you please get out. The man has to go.”

He hesitated just long enough, and then huffed and slid across the seats the second before he knew she would scold him again.

“Cheers!” she called to the cabbie as she closed the door, but he merely grunted and waved absentmindedly over his shoulder before driving off. “Right then! Sherlock, can you grab my bag?” she asked, turning and walking back toward the building behind them.

“Why? You’re not staying,” he answered scathingly, crossing his arms across his chest.

“Sherlock, we’ve talked about this,” Mrs. Hudson said tiredly, and he glared at her as she grabbed the suitcase and began rolling it toward the door. “I can’t stay at Langley with you this year. You’re not making any friends.”

He scoffed loudly, forced into following her so she would hear it.

“You do need friends, Sherlock,” she answered, reading his mind in that annoying way she’d adapted over the years of being his tutor (and, in spite of his protests, babysitter when Mycroft was away -which was always). “Besides, I’ll be glad to get out of those dormitories. Honestly, the things you boys say.” She shook her head disapprovingly as she fumbled with the keys in her hand.

Sherlock could tell which one fit the door, of course, but he wasn’t going to help her. He didn’t want her living here anyway. He was just going to let her stand there and try one after another after another after-

He snatched the keys from her hand, flipping to the correct one and sticking it roughly in the lock as he tried to ignore the small smile he could see out of the corner of his eye.

“We’ll get mugged if we stand out here much longer,” he muttered in explanation. “This is a terrible neighborhood. Crime rate’s up 15% percent in the past three years.”

“You made that up,” she said, flashing him an infuriatingly warm smile as she passed him to enter the apartment.

He glared at the back of her head, and then turned his eyes to the door of the apartment that was stealing her.

221B stared back at him, the autumn sun glinting off the gold letters, and he thought he had never seen anything so loathsome in his life.

“Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson called from within, and he reluctantly stepped across the threshold.

The entryway was nothing spectacular, blue paint giving way to awful wallpaper as he progressed further inside. A staircase stretched up the left side, while the corridor continued to the right, leading to two other, interior doors.

“Well, don’t need to go down there again,” Mrs. Hudson muttered as she emerged from the door on the left, brushing her dress even though there was nothing on it. “Everything is falling apart, and it’s so damp!”

Sherlock’s mind sparked at the opportunity. “Perhaps Mycroft made an error in your accommodations,” he said as casually as possible.

Mrs. Hudson waved a dismissive hand in his direction, and his heart sank. “Oh no, that’s not my flat. Although, I suppose I do own the whole building now, don’t I?”

He didn’t see the need to respond, considering they were both perfectly well aware that Mycroft had bought the building in Mrs. Hudson’s name so she could stay close to Langley.

“Ah, here,” she said, sickeningly delighted as she opened the door to her flat, 221A.

His curiosity temporarily overtaking his completely righteous fury, he followed her inside, lips curling up in disgust as he surveyed the flat.

Mycroft had obviously taken the liberty of setting the place up for her, most of the furniture from her rooms in the mansion already scattered around the deep-pink living room. There was a myriad of doilies, patterned quilts, pillows, and a floral tea set already sitting out on the mahogany coffee table. It was painfully stereotypical, and Sherlock wanted to rip it to pieces.

Mrs. Hudson had apparently been speaking, because she was now looking at him expectantly.

He tilted his head in an unspoken inquiry, and she shook her head with a smile.

“I was saying, there’s another flat upstairs. Two bedrooms.” Her eyebrows lifted slightly, and Sherlock’s furrowed.

Something was being implied, something about those two bedrooms in the upstairs flat, something involving him. Was he supposed to stay there? During uni, maybe? After? But two, why would he need two bedrooms?

“Mycroft thought you may want to come here for leave instead of going back to the mansion,” she continued, but his eyes only narrowed further, knowing that wasn’t the whole story. “And, if you wanted to bring a friend back with you-”

His eyes widened. Oh.

“-you could. And you could always stay here through university. Maybe get a flatmate or something,” she finished, beaming as if it were the most wonderful idea in the history of mankind.

Sherlock snorted. “Don’t be absurd,” he scoffed, watching Mrs. Hudson’s face fall in his peripheral vision as he looked out the window. “Who’d want me for a flatmate?”

*****

 “John Watson?”

“Here!” he answered, and then immediately felt stupid for it as he pushed his way through the remaining students to reach the housemaster, Mr. Parish.

The man gave him a quick glance before turning back to the table behind him, plucking a small, white envelope off the blue tablecloth. “Room…117,” he said, his eyes widening slightly as he looked down at his clipboard. He looked back up at John, shock written all over his face for a moment before he collected himself, clearing his throat loudly. “Right. Here’s your key and your orientation forms,” he continued, handing John the folder hesitantly, his eyes flicking between the paper and John with trepidation.

There was a moment of tense silence, John’s fingers shifting anxiously on the handle of his suitcase.

“Is- Is that all, sir?” John asked tentatively, not wanting to be rude, but his aunt was waiting for him.

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Parish said, clearing his throat again as he nodded. “It’s just-” He paused, his eyes shifting side-to-side before he leaned down toward John. “If you have any…problems and want to switch rooms, let me know.”

John looked up at him, dumbfounded by the pity in his expression, as if John were about to walk to the gallows instead of a dormitory. “Er…thank you, sir,” John muttered, and Mr. Parish nodded in dismissal.

John walked away, his eyebrows furrowing down at the folder in his hand as his bag rattled along the uneven pathway. The number 117 was written across a white sticker in blue pen, and it looked entirely nonthreatening.

“Your roommate is Sherlock Holmes?”

Mike’s words rose up in front of him as he walked, and he looked down at the navy numbers with renewed interest. Was that what Mr. Parish had meant, that he would have problems with this Sherlock Holmes?

John couldn’t imagine that one boy could have made such an impact that even the housemasters were warning against him. What would someone even have to do to garner that level of a reputation?

“All sorted?” Aunt Claire asked, and he jumped slightly, hardly realizing his feet had taken him back to her while his brain was occupied.

“Yeah,” he answered, nodding with a small smile.

“Got your key and everything?” she asked, her eyes flickering down to the packet in his hand.

He nodded again. “Yeah, I got it.”

She smiled, but it slipped from her face as she turned, scanning the crowd and buildings around them.

“I know where the house is,” he offered, guessing at her thoughts. “I can take it from here.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, her expression concerned and caring, and not on a mother or father like it should have been.

“Positive,” he confirmed, bending to pick up the box he had left at her feet. He placed it on top of the rolling suitcase, leaning it against the handle. “I’ll be fine.” He smiled brightly at her, only forcing it a little.

It seemed to convince her well enough, though, because she smiled back, nodding. She hesitated, her arms twitching slightly, and he could tell she was struggling with whether or not to hug him.

“Thanks for helping, Aunt Claire,” he said, stretching forward to give her an awkward, one-armed hug.

She returned it with a full, forceful one, but quickly withdrew, and he felt immensely grateful for that as a group of girls walked past them on the pavement.

“You just let me know if you want to stay with me over leave,” she said, but the intensity in her eyes said so much more.

He nodded firmly, trying to show her he understood. “I will.”

She nodded in return, and then took a small step back, her car keys clinking together as she pulled them from her pocket. “You’ll do so well, John,” she assured, and his insides twisted as he watched her smile grow watery. “You belong here. I can feel it.”

John wasn’t exactly sure about all that, but he smiled anyway, and allowed her to pull him into a parting hug, mumbling a muffled goodbye into her perfumed jacket before she released him and headed back to the parking lot.

John turned and walked back toward the ancient, stone buildings, bracing the balanced box with his arm as it shifted. Following the directions Mike had given him, he managed to find Kingsley House, but he would definitely have to attend one of the tours later that afternoon, considering “the one with the orange banner, next to the wonky tree” didn’t exactly give him confidence in Mike’s navigation abilities. He pushed past the rowdy groups of boys running through the halls, turning his head wildly to take in everything.

There was a common area on the first floor of the house, splitting the dormitories in half on either side of it, where various game tables and televisions were set up. What a bunch of 17-year-old boys would want with a billiards table, John had no idea, but maybe that was just one of the penchants of the upper class. Although, there were already several groups huddled in front of televisions screaming at one another over Call of Duty, so perhaps it wouldn’t be as different here as he thought.

A sign stuck to the polished, grey, stone walls of the corridor pointed him to the left for his room number, so he followed the hall as it cornered, his eyes flicking side-to-side as he scanned the numbers.

111, 113, 115…

He stopped, his eyes scanning the empty stretch of wall in front of him. His eyebrows furrowed, and he turned back around, wondering if he had somehow passed it when a rustling sound reached his ears. Turning forward once more, he noticed a shaft of light stretching out into the corridor from somewhere around the corner and slowly stepped forward. He reached the end of the corridor, popping his head out around the wall to find a door standing ajar. Opposite the open door was another, closed one labeled “DANGER: Do Not Enter”, but John drew closer, trying to find a label on the open room.

Suddenly, the door jerked open, and John jumped backward as he came face-to-face with a petite, elderly woman.

Her brown eyes widened as she gasped, a hand clutching at her chest. “Oh, you scared me, love,” she chuckled, brushing a section of her light-brown hair off of her face.

“Sorry,” John muttered, backing up against the opposite wall to give her some space. “I-I was looking for my room.”

“Oh, you must be John!” she exclaimed, her pink-rimmed mouth stretching into a wide smile. “I was hoping you’d arrive soon. I wanted to meet you before I left.”

John gave her a shy smile, not entirely sure how to respond.

“Are you all alone?” she asked, stretching forward to peer around the corner.

“I- Uh, yes,” John muttered, the shock of the encounter wearing off enough for him to begin forming sentences. “They dropped me off at the gate,” he added, not wanting to specify that his aunt had brought him, knowing that would bring on questions he didn’t want to answer.

The woman nodded, still smiling brightly, but John saw that familiar haze of pity in her eyes. “Ah, well, let me help you with that, then, dear,” she said briskly, snatching the box from atop his suitcase before he could make a move to stop her.

“No, I- You don’t have to,” he spluttered, following her through the door she had darted back inside.

“Nonsense, it’s no trouble,” she insisted as she placed his box on the desk that was still bare. “Can you pass me the linens?”

“Can I- What?” he stammered, too distracted by the room to take in her words.

His bed was bare and untouched, as was his desk, bureau, and wardrobe, but the opposite side of the room looked as though someone had been living there for months. Papers were piled almost a meter high on the desk, bent and sticking out at odd angles. Several books lay open on the bed, various markings and highlighting exposed on the pages, but the bed linens themselves were smooth and unruffled. One of the bureau drawers was open, revealing meticulously folded and lined-up socks, and more books and scattered sheets of paper were stacked on the wooden top. A white, human skull crowned the tallest tower of volumes, the dark voids of eyes seeming to bore into John’s wide, blue ones.

“The bed linens, dear,” the woman repeated, and he snapped his mouth shut as he turned his attention back to her, hardly realizing it had been hanging open.

“Oh, right. Yes,” he said, retracting the handle of his suitcase and laying it down on the cold, tile floor. “But I can-”

“Oh, hush,” she interjected with a mock glare, taking the regulation, school sheets from him as he removed them from the top of his bureau. “I’ve lived with teenage boys long enough to know you’re hopeless at making your beds,” she added, flashing him a playful smile as she began tucking corners around the mattress.

The warmth emanating from her tugged at his chest, and he smiled gratefully back, somehow thoroughly at ease with her already. “Thank you,” he said, rising to his feet from beside the suitcase. “So, are you- Uh…” He trailed off, both not wanting to pronounce his roommate’s name wrong, and not wanting to get the relation wrong.

“Sherlock’s sister?” the woman finished with a wink, and John’s guard collapsed at the joke as he smiled. “I’m Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock’s tutor,” she continued, pausing in making the bed to stretch a hand out to him.

He closed his fingers around her small, frail ones, giving them a small shake. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

“Ma’am? Oh no, dear,” she muttered with a grimace, shaking her head as she released his hand. “Call me Mrs. Hudson.”

John smiled as he nodded. “Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Hudson,” he amended, and she positively beamed at him. “So, do you live on the grounds?” he asked as he bent down to begin unpacking his luggage.

“I did last year,” she said as she rattled his pillow into its case, “but I have a flat in London now. There are a couple extra bedrooms too, in case Sherlock wants to stay over leave. Oh, but I’m being rude!” she exclaimed suddenly, turning around to him. “Here I am, talking your ear off, and you two haven’t even met!”

John chuckled as he placed his folded, uniform trousers into a drawer. “It’s fine, I’m sure we-”

“No, no, no,” she fussed, swatting her hands at him as she urged him out the door. “You go on. I’ll finish putting your things away.” She paused, a nervous glance passing between him and his open bag. “I mean, if that’s…alright,” she added, eyebrows lifting as she watched him.

He tried to fight the redness climbing up his neck. “Er, yeah,” he muttered, clearing his throat. “Yeah, it’s fine,” he added with a strained smile, a little uncomfortable with the possibility of Mrs. Hudson touching his underwear, but more uncomfortable with what she would assume was in the suitcase if he refused her help.

She smiled, nodding at him as she bent to pull out a couple of his white, button-down shirts. “He’s just in there,” she said, pointing out into the hall. “Don’t bother knocking, he won’t answer, and you’ll probably have to talk a bit to get his attention once you’re inside.”

“In- In there?” John asked, jerking his thumb back at the “DANGER: Do Not Enter” clearly emblazoned on the door in yellow.

Mrs. Hudson smiled kindly at him. “Oh, don’t worry, dear, that’s just there to keep people out. If there’s no smoke coming from under the door, it’s perfectly safe.”

John smiled, ready to chuckle, but his face fell as Mrs. Hudson merely returned to putting his shirts in the drawer, his stomach tightening at the realization that that may not have been a joke. Shaken, he stretched his hand toward the door, pausing on the handle before gently pressing it down.

“Hello?” he said as he swung the door inward, half expecting to see the fuse burning out on a bundle of dynamite as he poked his head into the room. There wasn’t any dynamite, but he wasn’t sure if what he did see was much better.

The room must have been another dormitory at some point, but it had been thoroughly transformed into what could only be described as a laboratory. Shelves lined the walls, loaded with even more stacks of paper and a large assortment of rather unpleasant-looking things suspended in jars. Several tables lined the walls, scattered with books, beakers, phials, petri dishes, and all manner of scientific equipment. A microscope that probably cost more than his first semester’s tuition sat on the table to his right, next to an assortment of colorful petri dishes he made a mental note not to get too close to. On the table directly in front of him was a stainless steel microwave, looking oddly normal and out of place in the room he’d swear he’d just walked through a wormhole to get in. A hissing sound drew his attention, and he looked up to find a figure sitting at a metal table against the opposite wall, silhouetted against the light from the window in front of him.

He was wearing the standard, school shirt, the long, white sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he leaned over something on the table. Light filtered through his dark-brown curls, catching on the arms of the plastic safety goggles that stretched over his ears. His arm, thin and pale, stretched out across the table, long fingers plucking a pair of silver tongs off the surface.

“Er…hello,” John said, lifting his hand in greeting, and then embarrassedly pressed it back to his side as he remembered the boy couldn’t see him. “I- I’m your new roommate, Jo-”

“John Watson,” the boy’s deep voice interjected, though he neither turned nor looked up from…whatever it was he was doing.

“Um, yeah,” John muttered, his eyebrows furrowing at the back of the boy’s head. John waited, but apparently that was all he was going to say. “So,” John continued, clearing his throat, “you must be-”

“Sherlock Holmes?” he interrupted again, leaning to the side just enough for John to see the flame of a Bunsen burner stretching up in front of him. “I should hope so. Otherwise Langley has quite the security problem.”

John chuckled nervously, daring to take a few steps forward, if only to satisfy his curiosity on what exactly his wannabe-mad-scientist roommate was setting on fire. Stepping slightly to the side, able to see around Sherlock’s shoulder without getting too close, he saw the boy pinch something between the points of his tongs.

“What are you- JESUS!”

He leapt back as Sherlock put the object into the flame, a violent plume of orange and yellow bursting around it, leaving only a dusty, charcoal mess.

“Hmm,” Sherlock murmured, tilting his head as he twisted the tongs in his fingers, “interesting.” He laid the tongs down, taking up a pad of paper and making a note before lifting the instrument again.

John couldn’t help it. He stepped forward, standing at Sherlock’s right shoulder and peering down at the table. His eyebrows furrowed as he looked down at the piles of…crisps?

“Sherlock!?”

John turned at the voice in the door, but the boy being summoned did not.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Hudson hissed, leaning backward out the doorway to peer down the hall, and John marveled at the fact that she seemed to be more concerned with someone catching Sherlock blowing things up than Sherlock blowing things up.

“Testing the explosive properties of different flavors of Walkers,” Sherlock replied tonelessly, picking up what looked to be a piece of sour cream and onion.

John’s eyebrows furrowed, and he looked down at the top of the boy’s head. “Really?” he asked, his head tilting is disbelief.

“Obviously,” Sherlock snapped, and John’s eyes narrowed briefly, an inherent reaction to the sharp tone.

He suppressed it quickly, however, curiosity overruling offense.

“What’s winning?” John inquired, stretching his neck to read the notes over Sherlock’s shoulder.

Sherlock straightened and froze, slowly lowering the tongs back to the table, and John could physically feel the sudden shift in the air. “At the moment,” Sherlock said, soft but deliberate, “Tomato Ketchup.”

“Huh,” John huffed, but it sounded slightly strangled, his throat tightening with the rising tension in the room. “I would’ve thought it’d be Thai Sweet Chilli.”

Sherlock scoffed, and the hair on the back of John’s neck prickled with annoyance. “Typical,” he muttered dismissively, and John glared down at the mop of curls, the closest thing to the boy’s face he could see.

“Your hypothesis says Thai Sweet Chilli,” he muttered, annoyance emboldening him to stretch his arm out and tap the notepad, where the prediction was clearly written in handwriting that looked like it belonged on a royal declaration.

There was a snort from behind him, and he suddenly remembered Mrs. Hudson, but he was stopped in turning around as Sherlock finally looked up at him.

His skin was pale, stretching across prominent cheekbones that swept in sharp angles across his face. Brown curls hung haphazardly across his forehead, but it was his eyes that sent a cold shiver up John’s spine. They were pale, grey-green in the light from the window, and staring up at him with an intensity that froze him to the spot. There was something threatening in that piercing gaze, as if Sherlock could see every hope and secret laid out bare in front of him, and John screamed at himself to look away, but he couldn’t bring his eyes to do it. He started when the boy spoke, forgetting that time had not frozen quite as much as he had.

“Kent,” he said simply, his eyes narrowing slightly as they shifted between John’s.

“Sorry?” John managed to say after a moment, his voice humiliatingly breathy.

“You’re from Kent—Maidstone or Ashford, if I’m not mistaken—but you didn’t come from there this morning. You’ve been staying in London for at least”—his eyes scanned downward, and John realized he was holding his breath—“two days, probably with your aunt. You’re here on a sport scholarship for rugby, but you’re more the academic type. You don’t get along with your parents, but you have a younger sister you’re close to, and feel guilty for coming here and leaving her at home. You had a sausage roll on the ride in, along with a coke you only half finished, and”—his eyes met John’s once more—“you’re left-handed.”

Absolute silence stretched out endlessly around them, so quiet, John could hear his pulse pounding in his ears. He realized his mouth was hanging open, but couldn’t seem to summon enough brain power to close it, too transfixed by the grey eyes that seared into his skull.

Sherlock stared back at him so calmly, John could almost believe he had imagined the whole thing, but then an almost imperceptible smirk tugged at the corner of the boy’s mouth, and John’s brain clicked back into motion.

“How- How do you know that?” John breathed, his lips trembling slightly as he spoke.

“Know what?” Sherlock answered, his eyes glinting mischievously as he tilted his head.

“That!” John exclaimed, growing angrier as Sherlock got haughtier. “Everything you just said. How did you know that?”

“I didn’t know, I saw,” Sherlock answered irritably, as if John had asked him something painfully obvious, such as why the sky was blue, or the ocean wet. He turned back toward the table, picking up his tongs and prodding through another pile of crisps.

“Saw?” John repeated, leaning against the table now in an attempt to get back into the boy’s eye line. “What do you mean you-”

“I’m really rather busy at the moment, in case it’s escaped your notice,” Sherlock snapped, never taking his eyes off his progress of searching for the perfect crisp.

John’s fingers tightened into a fist as he glared, but he smothered his anger, crossing his arms firmly across his chest. “Fine. You tell me how you knew- sorry, saw all of that, and I’ll leave you alone.”

The air thickened with tension again as Sherlock stilled, but, after the longest few seconds of John’s life, he lowered the tongs, removing his goggles with a sigh before twisting his chair to face John.

“The traces of mud on your shoes have a slightly greenish hue to them, no doubt to the greensand deposits common in the Maidstone and Ashford areas of Kent. There are no trains leaving that area early enough this morning for you to be arriving here at this time, nor could you possibly have driven, so you must have been staying somewhere close. The general state of your jeans indicates you’ve worn them at least three days, and there’s mud splatter on the backs of the legs, suggesting you packed a single pair of jeans for a short stay in London, and that you were here for the heavy rain two days ago.”

John looked down at his jeans, his cheeks burning with self-consciousness, but the blue denim still looked perfectly fine to him, except perhaps some barely-noticeable brown smudges near his shoes.

“There’s a faint odor of perfume on your clothes, not from your mother or sister; they would have walked you inside. Could be a grandmother, but the scent is quite youthful. Aunt, then. Moving into a private school where you’ll be gone months at a time and your parents don’t bring you? Sure sign of a poor relationship right there.”

John opened his mouth to argue, but Sherlock had apparently only paused for air.

“Then there’s the matter of your sister,” he continued undaunted, as if he hadn’t noticed John trying to speak even though he was looking right at him. “The bracelet on your right hand is one of those ridiculous friendship things all the girls are doing now, obviously a gift from someone. Could be a girlfriend, but it’s faded, implying you’ve been wearing it for some time. A more permanent relationship, then, most likely a sister. Younger, of course, because that’s the age group most inclined to the trend, and you keep tugging and twisting at it, suggesting some sort of anxiety associated with her. You wouldn’t still be wearing the bracelet if you didn’t get along, so the stress must have some other cause, most likely worry and/or guilt. I suspect the and,” he added with a smug tilt of his head, but John was too shocked to feel patronized. “The rugby is obvious, what with the particular muscle groups that are more developed-”

John could feel himself turning scarlet at that. He was wearing jeans and a jumper; how the hell could Sherlock tell what muscles were developed!?

“-and coming in in your last year? Must be a sport scholarship, but the ink residue on your fingers, in conjunction with the recent paper cut on your left thumb, suggest you’ve been doing a lot of reading recently, probably familiarizing yourself with your schoolbooks, so your real focus is academics.”

John turned his fingers up, looking down at the faint, black smudges on the pads of the digits. “But…my lunch,” he murmured blearily.

“Oh, that part was easy,” Sherlock said with a shrug, waving his hand inconsequentially. “In addition to the perfume, you also smell faintly of sausage, and there are flecks of puff pastry on your left sleeve. That and the paper cut tell me you’re left-handed. There’s also a small stain of coke on your jumper, which is how I know you had half a can on the way here.”

“How can you possibly know I only drank half the can,” John muttered, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Simple,” Sherlock scoffed. “You wouldn’t need to drink that much with a sausage roll, and an athletic, health-conscious person like yourself wouldn’t drink an entire can of coke that early in the day anyway.” Finally finished, or so it would seem, Sherlock turned his chair back toward the table and replaced his safety glasses in one fluid motion of long, pale fingers.

John stared at his profile for a moment, utterly dumbfounded, and his mouth started working before he had completely decided what he was going to say. “That was…”

Sherlock stalled in his movements, the tongs holding a fresh crisp freezing in midair just shy of the flame.

“Amazing,” John finished breathlessly.

The crisp fell to the table, cracking as it bounced on the metal surface, and sent greasy shards shooting out like shrapnel.

“Really?” Sherlock murmured, and John was shocked to hear something close to uncertainty in the boy’s voice.

“Of course it was!” John exclaimed, smiling broadly down at the curious, grey eyes peering up at him. “It was…extraordinary!”

One of Sherlock’s eyebrows lifted up toward his curls as he continued staring, his eyes searching John’s face. “That’s not what people normally say,” he muttered.

“What do people normally say?” John asked, his eyebrows furrowing.

Sherlock paused, looking to the side for a moment as he thought. “Piss off,” he answered after a couple seconds, looking back up at John, and he said it so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that John couldn’t help but laugh.

It started as a chuckle, puffs of mirth bursting up his chest, but quickly grew into the kind of laughter he hadn’t experienced in a long time, the type that made you shake and lift a hand to your mouth to cover your idiotic grin. Evidently, it was contagious, because Sherlock’s low chuckles soon joined him, and he looked down to find the boy laughing down at the table.

The chuckling evaporated into the air shortly thereafter, leaving him staring down at Sherlock, remnants of smiles left on both their faces. The silence quickly grew uncomfortable, however, and John cleared his throat, pushing off the table and taking a few steps toward the door.

“Well, a deal’s a deal,” he said, smiling back as Sherlock turned his chair, following his progress. He glanced over his shoulder, making sure he didn’t run into Mrs. Hudson as he walked backwards toward the door. “I’ll, er…see ya,” he added, lifting his hand in a weak wave he berated himself for immediately after.

He turned after that, momentarily taken aback by the glowing smile on Mrs. Hudson’s face as he made his way to move around her.

“John?”

He spun embarrassingly quickly at the voice, his eyebrows rising.

Sherlock was standing now, his mouth opening and closing, and a lump moved down the front of his frail throat as he swallowed. “Do- Do you,” he stammered, pointing his thumb back toward his experiment. “Wanna see some more?” he asked, the words rushing out between his lips.

John looked at him, seeing him properly for the first time now that Sherlock was fully facing him.

He was tall, his legs long and thin in the black, school trousers, and his body was all edges and angles. His shirt was ruffled and only half-tucked, the other side draping down over his belt. The safety goggles were still perched on his nose, but his eyes pierced through them, wide and expectant, and John found himself unable to say anything but: “God, yes.”

Sherlock smiled, bright and mischievous, and John was returning it and walking back toward him before he was even aware of wanting to.

“What flavor ya gonna try next?” John asked excitedly as he drew level with Sherlock, who bounced into his chair and spun back to the table.

“I was going to do Cheese and Onion,” Sherlock said, picking up his tongs again, “but I think Paprika might be more impressive.” He looked up at John with a dangerous smirk.