There Is Nothing Wrong With Me

The One Who Used To Walk These Halls

John POV: Mondays were always torture; it seemed to be written in the unofficial rules of the world that everything bad would happen on a Monday. Well, this Monday was off to an excellent start, of course, when both Greg and John somehow managed to sleep through the wakeup call. So instead of eating breakfast and fueling up for the day they instead rushed around, trying to get their uniforms in order and make it down to class in time as to avoid any type of punishment. Thankfully John had done all of his calculus homework, however it would seem Greg had been planning on doing it over breakfast, because he was scribbling frantically on a piece of notebook paper while the teacher was beginning to plug in the projector to get class started. John sighed sleepily, knowing that if he dared put his head down to rest that he would fall asleep and most certainly get a detention, or worse. So he kept his droopy eyelids open for a last as he possibly could, knowing that his future most likely depended on his staying awake this period. It wasn't like he had stayed up late either, he had gone to bed at a reasonable hour the night before, however he had a dream, some might even categorize it as a nightmare, and he had lie awake in bed for a couple of hours around one o'clock in the morning. It hadn't been much, simply flashes, images, and feelings, however he remembered it all so vividly it still sent shivers down his spine. It had been the boy, the same boy from the dance of course, and yet this time when he kissed John it was from the front. His head had been nestled below John's neck, he had been kissing his shoulder and his chest, he had been running his hands down John's back and through his hair, it wasn't anything, the dream meant nothing of course, and yet the very fact that it had popped into John's unconsciousness was enough to scare him. He wasn't so much afraid of the boy than he was of himself, of what his brain was beginning to suspect and what his heart was beginning to concoct. There was something, some sort of emotion, buried deep inside of him somewhere, projecting these images into his mind as he slept, and he could do nothing to stop them. God, he didn't even know that boy's name and yet he felt like he knew him personally, intimately. Every time his thoughts wandered towards that boy the back of his neck tingled, everywhere those lips had touched burned as though someone had set them aflame, but he felt no pain. It was intensity, it was heat, and yet it didn't hurt. It was a pleasant touch, soft and gentle, not unlike the original sensation. It was very odd indeed, and yet as much as John insisted upon straying away from these thoughts for good, he always found himself staring into nothingness and seeing that boy staring back.
"Could I borrow your chemistry homework?" Greg pleaded with a smile over their table at lunch. John paused from eating his chicken noodle soup, giving Greg a glare that should most likely speak for itself. However Greg was persistent and he fought back with his puppy dog eyes, an expression that was so undeniable he only used it for special emergencies.
"Why didn't you do it over the weekend?" John wondered, glancing down to where his bag lay at his feet, overflowing with papers and books only about two weeks into the school year.
"Well, you know I was busy." Greg insisted with a shrug, trying to make it seem like he had been on some perilous journey over the weekend when in reality he had just been shut up in his room, talking to Mike about Molly Hooper.
"You weren't busy, you were slacking." John insisted with a frown. Greg scowled right back, pulling some sort of face to make himself look offended.
"John I never slack, I'm just selectively motivated." Greg defended, sitting up nobly in his seat. John just hunched once more over his soup, watching as the carrots floated around in the tasteless broth. He wasn't hungry, but then again he's noticed that he was never hungry, and he was probably starving himself without meaning to. So he was force feeding himself today, and it was making him rather...yucky.
"My homework is in my bag, in the blue folder. But now you owe me one, and I won't forget this time." John insisted, kicking the bag over to Greg's side of the table and pretending like he didn't notice as Greg dove under the table to retrieve it.
"Thank you John, you're a life saver." Greg breathed, pulling out John's chemistry homework and beginning to copy it down onto a piece of notebook paper. John ignored his praise, focusing more intently on eating his soup before it got cold, and in turn even more unappetizing. Greg was very quick at work, and soon he was shoving the homework back into the folder and stuffing it back into John's bag, singing songs of praise as he shoved the bag back under the table and continued on with his lunch. John was silent, but he felt Greg's eyes fixed on him, as if he were doing something interesting other than eating soup. The air hung with that dreadful feeling of one way amusement, he could just tell that Greg's mouth was contorted into some sort of smile, but John had no idea why. Nothing seemed remotely funny on this dreary Monday.
"Hey, could we run up to the room quick? I think I forgot my geography book." Greg muttered miserably, rooting through his books to try to make sure he was mistaken.
"I'm not running up there just because of your idiotic forgetfulness." John snapped, sitting back on the bench even though he had finished his lunch and had no reason to sit around here any longer.
"Well it's not my fault, we both slept in, and you usually wake me up. And I always pack my stuff in the morning, which means it's your fault for sleeping in that I don't have my geography book." Greg deduced, sitting forward on the table with a smile, as if he were proud of himself for somehow managing to pin this all on John.
"It's your fault for depending so heavily on me." John defended, shaking his head flatly. To make it seem like he was needed in the dining hall he grabbed a roll from his plate and split it in half, buttering it with a little plastic knife and pretending to have forgotten all about Greg's makeshift problems. Greg was patient, and he stared at John over the table while he buttered the roll, as if he was expecting John to suddenly jump from the table and aid him to the best of his abilities.
"I'll owe you two, which is double than one. That way, even if the task is way out of line even for me, I still have to do it because I owe you double than what I would usually do." Greg decided, staring up at John helplessly, as if he wanted him to feel bad. John sighed, dropping his half buttered roll and looking up at his friend with annoyance.
"What does double count for then?" John wondered.
"I'll help you do anything, I don't care. Smuggle a girl, smuggle you, get some alcohol or cigarettes, and I'll pay for them too!" Greg assured desperately. John didn't know why he wasn't willing to just go get his book alone, because frankly this had become quite pathetic. Loneliness wasn't worth expulsion and debt.
"Oh whatever, but I'll remember this one. You owe me two." John decided finally, getting up from his seat and grabbing his bag from under the table.
"Thank you John, thank you!" Greg exclaimed, hopping up from his bench and scampering out of the dining hall. John took his time up the stairs once more, listening as Greg's loud footsteps ascended at about twice the rate John was. Greg would be down and back in two minutes, and John's only purpose here was to be his companion in case he got in trouble. Greg always liked to have a wingman because he hated to sit in detention alone. So John just gave up climbing, leaning back on the polished wooden railing and studying the pictures that hung before him on the wall. He was somewhere around two years ago, back when he hadn't even attended the school. But it looked the same, the same uniforms, the same happy but confident looking boys smiling up into the camera; almost all pictures looked exactly the same. However there were little differences, boys absent, boys present, teachers and assistants swapping out as the years went on. No two pictures were the same, just like no two years were the same, and it seemed as though the school wanted to honor ever class and every teacher that had wandered into their halls. John scanned the picture in front of him, looking for a younger looking Greg Lestrade of course, and running his finger through the lines of boys, trying to account for which rows he had studied and which he had not. A steady stream of dust started to collect under his finger tip, and he could only imagine that it was the accumulation of two years of careless housekeeping that was smudging across his skin. The boys were never in any sort of order, except for grade of course, but since John didn't know where the grades ended or began, he just kept going. As the boys started to age he felt more confident, Greg had to be in with the masses somewhere, smirking and looking childish. However John's finger paused on a boy that didn't look anything like Greg, and yet somehow his subconsciousness stopped his scanning, landing his finger right over a grainy shape of a boy, a rather familiar looking boy...
"Oh my God!" John exclaimed, jumping back from the picture for a moment and trying to process just what he was looking at.
"Nope, just me." Greg said with a laugh, reappearing down the stairs and landing right next to where John was clutching to the railing. John went up to the picture once more, not taking much notice of Greg's presence, and scanned the picture once more for the boy he had been staring at. There he was, sitting in the Wisteria uniform, with curly black hair and pale skin, though nowhere near as pale as he had been in that gymnasium. He looked healthier in this picture, happier even, sitting up straight and beaming into the camera as if there was nowhere else on earth he would rather be than on the lawns of Wisteria. But if he was at Wisteria then, how could he have been at the dance the other night? Had he snuck out the window as well, and John just didn't notice him? No, surely in his years here he would've taken note of a boy like that; he was too distinctive, too strangely beautiful to simply pass off as a face in the crowd.
"Who is that?" John wondered, pointing at the boy sitting in the picture for Greg to see. Greg cleared his throat, bending close to the picture and squinting his eyes until they were almost slits.
"Where?" he wondered, even though John was pointing right at him.
"There, right by my finger." John snapped impatiently. Surely John would've noticed him, or this boy would've noticed him, or maybe he had? Maybe this boy still attended Wisteria, and that was why he had picked John out of all others in that crowd, maybe he just lurked in the shadows, where John had never noticed him before. Greg let out a laugh, finally standing up straight and looking at John with an expression of utmost concern and amusement.
"That's Sherlock Holmes." He said with a little laugh, as if that name was supposed to mean anything to John. Well, the name itself didn't, but the boy it matched meant a lot more. He had never heard that name before, but as soon as he heard it he knew that it had to be the stranger, it was too beautiful and too complex of a name to fit to anyone else.
"Does he still go here? I don't recognize him." John asked, looking at the picture once more to try to get a clearer picture of this supposed Sherlock Holmes. Greg just laughed again, leaning up against the banister and looking at John curiously.
"No of course not, he got expelled just last year. Didn't you hear about that?" Greg wondered, his eyebrows knitting themselves into a thoughtful line. John shook his head, looking at Greg curiously, but before he could open his mouth to ask any more questions there was a sound like stampeding buffalo, and suddenly a wave of kids from the dining hall came rushing out, all packing up the staircase and trying to get by. Greg and John got caught up in the torrent of boys in uniform, and they were involuntarily dragged from where they were standing, and in turn, from their conversation. John sat in frustration for the rest of the two class periods, tapping his pencil irritably against his desk and trying to think more about this Sherlock kid. It was undoubtedly the boy who had kissed him at the dance; there could be no mistaking that. But what had he gotten expelled for, what could a boy like that possibly have done? Did he get caught sneaking out? Or maybe with drugs? It was before John's time, of course, so he hadn't heard the gossip, but the key to knowledge was here, sitting in this very room, trying to pass off his copied homework as legitimate. Might this count as his plus two? John could hardly focus in any of his classes, and by the time the final bell rang he had made up so many ridiculous theories as to what Sherlock Holmes might've done that he was starting to doubt his own sanity. Surely it was a simple explanation, maybe he just flunked out, so why did Greg seem like it was such a big deal? Why did he find it funny that John was asking about him? Surely he didn't suspect that it was Sherlock with John at the dance, surely with his pathetic little brain he couldn't piece together the facts to see the whole picture? John would have to be more careful then, much more careful. He had to make it look like he didn't care. So John waited, feeling the questions bubbling up in his chest all throughout dinner and homework time. He kept to himself, as did Greg, both of them hard at work trying to get their homework done before lights out at nine. John finished first, thankfully his homework hadn't been as extensive as it had been over the weekend, and so he propped himself up against the headboard of his bed and read for a little bit, trying to make it seem like he wasn't too interested in the boy with all the answers on the other side of the room. It was working of course, Greg took no notice of him, however John simply couldn't read, he couldn't concentrate. He just flipped the same page back and forth, staring at the words until they became block blobs and waiting until it seemed reasonable enough to turn the page. Why was he so obsessed with that boy, what was it about Sherlock Holmes that made John so eager to learn everything he possibly could? Was he a bad kid, was he a trouble maker? Or was it simply a misunderstanding that got him kicked out of school? When finally the call for lights out came John was already under the covers, waiting for Greg to tuck his books away before he turned out the lamp and lay in the darkness. Now was his time, as he listened to the heavy footsteps of Mrs. Hudson prowling through the hallways and yelling at kids to shut of their lights, now was the time.
"So what did that Sherlock kid do to get himself expelled?" John wondered quietly, listening to Greg's breathing from the other side of the darkened room.
"I forgot you weren't here for that, I thought everyone knew." Greg started with a sigh, seeming to have been expecting this conversation. He didn't sound very amused anymore, more regretful, as if the story was unusually intense for the wooden walls of Wisteria.
"I don't know." John said obviously, staring up at the ceiling and watching as his eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight, finally able to make out a spider's web tucked in the corner of the wooden walls. The web gleamed and sparkled, but it seemed like the spider wasn't at home. If it were under any under circumstances John would be up and calling for a flamethrower, however he knew if he went on a spider hunt now Greg would never tell him the story, so he stayed quiet, and tried to focus on another section of the wall.
"Sherlock Holmes was in our year; he went here since first year, as did his brother. They were both the top of their class, effortlessly smart, so smart that it almost seemed unfair. I always hated him, simply because he wanted everyone to know how superior he was to them, but other than that he was quiet, reserved. He didn't have any friends, not only because he was egotistical, just because he was shy. It was just last year that this whole scandal happened, and honestly I would never have pegged him to be the type of kid that did something like that...it was just weird. Disgusting really. There was this kid named Victor Trevor, he's still here, and still in our year. Well, they got to be friends I guess, but it turns out that Sherlock was, well, homosexual. He didn't want to be just friends. And I suppose that he just got frustrated you know, with Victor turning him down and such. And one night, when Victor's roommate was down in the hospital wing for the flu, Sherlock came in and raped him." Greg's voice trailed off for a moment, letting those words hang in the air for a while. John lay stone still in his bed, his muscles seemingly tensed up and his breath coming in short, difficult gasps. No, that wasn't...that couldn't be right. That smiling boy in the photograph, the terrified, timid boy at the dance? Was he really capable of such atrocities? Then again, it wasn't like they knew each other, it wasn't like John had given him any sort of permission to kiss him and to get so close. And Sherlock hadn't waited for any sort of okay, he had gotten real friendly real fast, almost like he wouldn't take no for an answer... A shiver went down John's spine, not wanting to imagine what might've happened if he hadn't turned around and scared the boy off, what might've happened if he hadn't escaped.
"Well Victor, of course, went to the president and told the whole story that morning, completely broken; you should've seen him John. I saw him while he was walking back to his dorm, he was a ghost, he was shaking all over, at that time no one knew anything, so we all just assumed he had the flu as well. There wasn't any evidence against Sherlock, it was just Victor's word against his since no one had heard any screaming or ruckus during the night, but they expelled him anyway, trying to keep it out of the newspapers and such. But he wasn't arrested, I don't think, they claimed that he was just mentally ill. I agree, of course, I mean who would do such a thing? Ew it's just...it's disgusting." Greg muttered.
"You two, shut up!" Mrs. Hudson's voice roared from the hallway, her fist banging repeatedly on the door as they sat in a stunned silence. John still couldn't move, paralyzed, it would seem, from the shock of Greg's story. He heard Greg roll over in his bed; however John felt that the conversation wasn't finished yet.
"Why are you so curious about Sherlock?" Greg wondered in a very tense whisper, knowing that Mrs. Hudson was still prowling around as they could hear her high heels on the hardwood outside.
"I um...I think I met him." John admitted finally, his voice so quiet that he doubted Greg could even hear him. But Greg's silence was telling enough, his breathing told John that he had understood just fine. However there was nothing he could say, nothing he could even think to say that it, because as soon as the words left John's lips Greg had rolled over once more, facing the wall.
"Goodnight John." he muttered sleepily. John couldn't say anything; he just stared back up at the spider's web with alert, awake eyes. He saw that the spider had returned, cowering in the darkness and sitting still in the web, as if it had been attentive for the whole of their conversation. John couldn't sleep, he couldn't even move for the rest of the night, his eyes remained open and his body remained still, horrible scenes flashing by in his head. Now he didn't look at that boy as some sort of drifting Romeo, he didn't look upon their encounter as magical or as romantic even, he saw it as criminal. He had met a criminal, been in the arms of a rapist, and to think he had been fantasizing about it for days! It almost seemed too impossible, so impossible that it simply had to be true. And John couldn't help wondering what other secrets lurked inside of these walls, what other stories got hushed up behind the smiling faces of the boys lined up for their photograph? And to think...to think that Sherlock had managed to smile, not knowing, it would seem, what kind of monster he would become.