Work Text:
Unholy Sleuth
Even as a wee lad Sherlock had always felt off. His parents were praising him for being clever but his big brother never failed to remind him that he was vastly less intelligent and made the little boy feel inadequate.
And then he was put in school. To make friends and learn more, allegedly. That. Hadn’t. Gone. Well. At all. The curly haired six years old hadn’t made any friends, he didn’t want to. The children in his class were all so dumb! And he wasn’t learning anything he hadn’t already found in books. Barely 9 and the teachers were recommending sending him to see a psychiatrist, because surely something was wrong with him according to them.
The diagnosis didn’t take long to come : his “asocial behaviour” towards his schoolmates, “impulsive” blurting out of everything he saw in people (“But it’s so obvious!”) and a “complete disregard of social norms” had him declared a high-functioning sociopath faster than you’d believe. The experts gave the Holmes parents sympathetic looks and wished them the best of luck. And of course having a name for the disorder didn’t help the teachers deal with him, especially when the hated freak nickname made it’s apparition. Children are not tender to the ones who are different while no adult would take his defense.
As he reached puberty he could already understand that he wasn’t really a sociopath as people imagined them : the unfeeling cold blooded murderer in the making. For one he must have had emotions since his elder sibling kept telling him that “caring is not an advantage”. Yes he complained a bit about the bullies at school, and the name-calling. How could he not care? But he knew as well that title gave him a good excuse not to change how he was, to be as ‘bad’ as he wanted to.
The bruises he got at school had encouraged his parents to enroll him in martial sports so he could defend himself. And maybe make some friends? They were intelligent enough to know that being a sociopath didn’t mean staying alone for life. Too bad he had already taken his mantra to heart : “alone is what protects me”.
Time passed and Mycroft was becoming more unbearable by the week, constantly reminding him that the East Wind would come for the unworthy, which meant for him if he didn’t behave. Young Sherlock could never figure if it was a way to make him work harder to prove himself or if it was a threat with his brother as the eastern purifier. Either way, the younger Holmes wasn’t impressed.
He had hoped University would prove less boring than high school and was sorely disappointed : the other students were no more intelligent than the cretins of the years previous. As a matter of fact, some were his former classmates. So to make sure no one would come close to him or even want to, he started deducing -as he called it- all the unsavoury aspects of the people he had to interact with. At least the insults he would get anyway would be somewhat deserved. But that method wasn’t much efficient on the inevitable thugs looking for someone to beat, even if the looks on their faces were always worth it. And the various fencing, martial arts, boxing and others he had practiced in the past came in handy to avoid most of the physical damage.
It was around that time that Mycroft had to leave the country for a long mission abroad. As a junior civil servant it was mandatory to serve in embassies on foreign ground. Sherlock took that opportunity to try out new… recreational hobbies. Sex didn’t prove to be overly interesting, with both men and women. Scientific methodology had made it necessary to test all possibilities. But the kind of people that would be willing to sleep with him had other less conventional habits. He had taken up smoking, of course. The nicotine pleasantly stimulating to his brain. But when dared to take drugs at a “fraternity party” a whole new array of possibilities opened to him. Most of what was available distorted his perceptions and if the other morons seemed to enjoy it, he certainly didn’t. His observational skills and sharp mind were his greatest pride and those being taken from him unbearable. No, he needed something different to help alleviate the hateful boredom he was suffering from without reducing his brain to mush.
And so, exploring London at night to familiarise himself with the capital’s every nook and crany, the student came across cocaine dealers. And how glorious that product was, for as long as the effects lasted ! He soon dropped out of university, and after forgetting to pay his rent a few too many times, he joined the ranks of the homeless.
At that point he discovered the joys of being virtually invisible, observing people and their behavioral patterns, high as a kite most of the time. A silent witness to many a crime, sometimes even getting money for his silence. Those people were most likely hoping he would use the money to OD and be rid of him soon enough.
Then one evening he was slumped near a crime scene, vaguely listening to the police officers sprout utterly stupid theories about the unfolding of the events and the culprit. Laughing at their absolute stupidity, still under the influence of his drug of choice, he started talking to himself aloud, correcting their mistakes and bemoaning their lack of observation skills. All the cops on scene ignored the divagating junkie and kept going as if he wasn’t there but, perchance, one young Sergeant actually listened. A couple of weeks later one Gregory Lestrade tracked him down to ask how he had known.
Little by little, in the span of a few years, the cop gained the genius’s trust and fed him some info on cases to get his input. However, when the uni drop-out asked to be let in on a very interesting crime scene, he was met with a sharp refusal. Unless he got clean, and that meant both corporeal hygiene and addictions wise, he wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a body. The tantrum that followed was of epic proportions, the sulking sociopath refusing to help the yarder for weeks on end.
Still, after a few months to think on it, missing the stimulation of the puzzles and an actual involuntary overdose that led to detox that a freshly returned Mycroft enforced, Sherlock Holmes started consulting officially for the newly promoted DI.
Things were starting to look up but it quickly became obvious that as ever, the self-declared Consulting Detective’s interpersonal skills were sorely lacking. No one even pretended to tolerate him aside from Lestrade who knew how they needed him on some cases. And after his disappearing act from University and subsequent dropping off the face of Earth his big brother, very nearly capitalised now, had him put under surveillance he knew.
It didn’t take long for the fury he was feeling at being looked down on, the jibes, the insults, and the so despised 'freak'’s return, to be further fueled by the always present itch for a fix. He was clean, yes, but an addict stayed an addict. The reason why he was doing drugs didn’t disappear with his restaured sobriety. So when he was assaulted in a dark alley by yet another moron, he snapped and lunged at the surprised thug. Quickly overpowering the other man, it was quite easy to end the life struggling under his lanky frame with his own knife. He didn’t even make the conscious decision to kill ; he followed his instincts for once.
Basking in the pure exhilaration of having fought for his life and destroyed his enemy for a moment, Sherlock realised he now had a body to get rid of. He couldn’t afford to let the CCTV catch him leaving a crime scene if the body was found. But Mycroft’s control obsessed tendencies were only making the challenge more interesting. By now the genius knew all of London’s streets and habits, so the fact was this alley’s dumpsters had been emptied the day before and wouldn’t be visited for a week in this area. One of them would be a perfect hiding place : the smell would cover early decomposition and the clues on the body would be either destroyed or contaminated by the others detritus put in. In case the body was found.
Leaving the alley at a leisurely pace, the tall man lit a cigarette nonchalantly. He felt much better now.
Time went, Sherlock making just enough money to afford a dingy flat when he wasn’t booted out because of his experiments, fits of horrendous violin playing, or occasional fake drug busts. Already his landlord in Montague street had left him an eviction letter.
Sighing, the detective headed to St Bart’s with his riding crop. He had a lovely place in mind, the landlady would make a discount for him but he would still need a flatmate. No way in Hell was he ever letting his “minor government position” sibling help him, which in truth would mean to collar him. And since the time his brother found out about his… occasional indiscretions in the form of bodies left behind, he was keen on avoiding owing anything to the insufferable prat.
When everything came to be too much -boredom, anger at being treated as below the morons he was helping out, insults- he would chose a victim, someone that wouldn’t be missed too much or too soon, and kill them. Since he usually didn’t have a good place to hide the body afterwards he would take great care to make it look like a petty crime gone wrong, a gang score-settling, or similar disguises. And always in CCTV blind spots. Of course the homeless never suffered from his fits of pique : he was one of them in a sense and they made a great information network.
He knew he hadn’t been denounced because having a serial murderer in the family wouldn’t be good for the elder Holmes’ career. His problem now being finding someone to share the rent with that would be tolerable.
So when Mike Stamford came back from lunch with an old acquaintance of his in tow he was really glad for the small and averagely intelligent ex soldier. Once the rules would be set, the man would follow them : one of the best attributes of soldiers. Little chances of snooping around, and less delicate than most to the experiments left in the kitchen.
Not even 24 hours later and the doctor -John- was surprising him. First, he proved useful on a crime scene, making Anderson redundant really was brilliant, but he had also fended off Big Brother, and killed for him. Someone had cared enough to shoot the cabbie and save him. But the icing on the cake was the absolute lack of remorse in the former Captain’s eyes and composure. He would do it again. For Sherlock he would. And wasn’t that exciting?
The next time kind Doctor Watson bedazzled his flatmate was when the genius realised he was flatsharing with a serial killer. An honest to God serial killer under his roof. The one man he usually employed as his moral compass at that! Absolutely amazing. Maybe next time the urge hit him he would invite John in for a joint work...