Chapter Text
Sherlock and John met accidentally.
Sherlock was in his first year at university in London at 17 studying chemistry; he was trying to get body parts to perform experiments from the morgue at St. Barts to stop himself from taking drugs all because he was bored.
John was on the first placement of his third year studying medicine to become an army doctor, he had always wanted to be a doctor and help people, but he comes from a family with very little money, therefore, couldn’t afford to put him through medical school, so he had to do it through the army.
They met when they ran into each other, literally, when Sherlock was high and about to pass out. John took him back to his flat, where he looked after sherlock for the rest of the night. The next morning, once Sherlock realised where he was and what has happened, he proceeded to deduce Johns whole life story and family history in 5 minutes. Instead of being insulted, John found it “wonderful” and “brilliant”. From that moment they were best friends.
During the next year, John and Sherlock became closer; John became the only person who could put up Sherlock's deductions and experiments. Not many john’s other friends could understand why he was friends with sherlock. The more time john and sherlock spent together, the further they fell for each other romantically, even though neither would admit it. John was still trying to convince everyone he was straight, even though the only person he was fooling was himself. Sherlock had always thought that romantic and sexual relationships were ‘boring’ and an ‘unnecessary distraction’. A year after they met, john and sherlock started living together in the cheapest flat that they could find in London; two months later, John went away for the army's basic training for 6 months.
In those 6 months, sherlock found it very hard to cope without his best friend/person he was falling in love with and started using again. Sherlock used drugs to replace the feelings of missing john and became dependent on them like he had become dependent on john being there every day.
It took John 3 days to find sherlock once he had returned from basic training; it was the most worried John has ever been in his life about anybody. Once John had found sherlock, he got him back to their flat and proceeded to look after him and sober him up just like the first time they had met. As they call it, ' The Incident caused them both to confront their feelings for each other and admit them to the other person. After sherlock had sobered up and felt better, john and sherlock had and hart to hart where they talked about their feelings for one another. After a very long and hard (for both Sherlock and John) conversation, where sherlock made john promise to always come home to him, and john made sherlock promise to stop using drugs, john asked sherlock to be his boyfriend, and their relationship began.
Two months after they started their relationship, john got his first call up to the army. This upset sherlock to the point where he started to recoil into himself, but john stopped that from happening by making them talk to him about his worries. A month later, John was due to leave, and the only communication they would have was over buffering skype and letters they would write to each other. On the morning that John was set to leave, they recited the promises that they made to each other just months previous at the beginning of their relationship.
During the first year of Johns deployment, sherlock found it harder to live without john than he did when John was at basic training; whether this was because he was actually out getting shot at or because they were dating, Sherlock didn’t know, but he didn’t want to dwell on it.
D.S. Greg Lestrade found sherlock in the morgue at St. barts as he was looking to get body parts for experiments from molly hooper. Greg would be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued by the young genius who somehow managed to solve his case without knowing all the details or even seeing the crime scene.
Less than one week later, Greg was messaging Sherlock to help at the crime scene, and that’s where Sherlocks love/hate relationship with the new Scotland yard began. This was also what sherlock met D.C. sally Donovan and Forensic scientist Philip Anderson; both immediately hated sherlock for his abilities and how he could solve crimes like they were nothing but simple puzzles when they struggled even to find a starting clue or piece of evidence.
This was the start of a new ritual for both NSY and Sherlock; Lestrade and his team would be out of their depth, so they would call sherlock, who would solve the crime and find convicting evidence in less than a day, all while insulting every member of the team, which made them dislike him more and more. As the months went on, Sherlock replaced his need for drugs to solve crimes and kept going to the yard to get more cases, which ended with Sherlock solving many cold cases to keep himself busy. The help that sherlock provided led to Lestrade being promoted to Detective Inspector and Donavon to Detective Sargent.
This all came to a stop around a year later when John was granted a month leave. Sherlock stopped answering texts from the yarders in favour of spending time with, in his opinion, his hero boyfriend. Sherlock and john only left the flat to get essentials such as food, despite Sherlocks protests, which worried john that he wasn’t eating. John told sherlock many stories about his time in Afghanistan and Sherlock told John how Lestrade had saved him when he was about to turn back to drugs; John made a mental note to thank Greg if he ever got to meet the inspector.
John and Sherlocks Month together came to an end quicker than either man wanted it to. The night before John was due to leave, he proposed to sherlock, who quickly said yes. It wasn’t big or fancy, just the two of them in their little cramp flat just how they like it. The next morning john left for the airport to promise that he would have to return in one piece because he really wanted to marry sherlock.
The next day, after having a minor mental breakdown over the fact that John had left as quickly as he came home, sherlock was back working with Lestrade and his team, who had started to call him a freak. He said nothing about the month he was off, simply reminding them that he didn’t work for the yard and didn’t have to tell them anything. Sherlock kept the ring that John had given him on the pair of johns’ dog tags that he had stolen from john after he couldn’t cope with him being gone after basic training.
With the work sherlock was doing with the police, he started to get more and more publicity. With this newfound publicity, sherlock started getting people turning up on his doorstep wanting his help. This ranged from helping a child find a missing pet close to his heart after what happened to his childhood pet Red Beard to ensure that a charming lady’s abusive husband died on death row in Florida. Sherlock also Started a website called the science of deduction, in which he posted the results of his many experiments and how he solved crimes using his deductions. This was when he started calling himself the worlds only consulting detective.
14 months later, when John was on 2 months leave, Sherlock and John got married. It was a small and intimate service with Sherlock's brother Mycroft and Johns sister harry as witnesses. They swapped heartfelt vows stating how much they loved each other and how committed to the other they were. This sort of sentiment would usually make sherlock roll his eyes and make a sarcastic comment about how unnecessary the whole ordeal was. Still, as it was with John, he found himself unable to stop himself from feeling the day's emotions, and if he started to cry, no one said anything about it.
After the wedding john and sherlock spent 2 weeks in a cottage in the countryside. Sherlock didn’t see the point of going to a different location to have sex but gave up arguing when john insisted saying that people usually went on a honeymoon after they got married. Sherlock was glad they did when it came to john having to leave again.
Sherlock continued to conduct his experiments, both at home and in the labs at St. Barts hospital, where he also got the body parts he experimented on from, with the help of Molly Hooper. Throughout the years that sherlock had been working in the labs, Molly had started to fall for the consulting detective and had many failed attempts to flirt with sherlock awkwardly. Molly had come close to just telling him of her feelings straight out, but the fear of rejection always stopped her. Molly liked to think that sherlock never responded to her advances because he was too unfamiliar with social interaction. Rather, he was just flat out ignoring her or was already with another woman. The truth was that sherlock knew that Molly was trying to flirt with him, and it made him severely uncomfortable, partly because he was in a relationship with John. Partly because he didn’t know how to respond without upsetting Molly, sensitive social situations were not his forte or any social situations with anyone other than John for that matter.
John was Honourably discharged 18 Months into his 2-year deployment due to the bullet wound in his shoulder and psychodynamic limp, which is due to his PTSD. It was a shock to sherlock to see him home after minimal warning; this caused him to worry about john’s health. John returned to London to find that sherlock and all their stuff had moved from their tiny flat in a ruff part of London to a much bigger one on the other side of the city, which was a lot more central and closer to St. barts hospital. It was owned by a lovely old lady called Mrs Hudson, who gave them a reduced rate because of the help sherlock had given her a couple of years ago.