Oh look, I accidentally another Insomnia!fic. I hope this story reads as well in daylight as it does right now, to my sleep-deprived and noticeably addled brain, but the quality of my writing seems to be inversely proportionate to how much sleep I've had, so that bodes well for this one. Enjoy!

String. Stringstringstring, where would someone like Sherlock keep string? He had said "top drawer" when he had asked John to fetch it, but Sherlock had at least four things in his bedroom that could be considered a "top drawer," including – tucked in his closet - one in a Victorian era Louis Vuitton trunk that would have looked more at home on the Titanic than in Sherlock's oddly sterile bedroom. Maybe it had been on the Titanic. Seemed appropriately macabre. John had decided not to check that one first.

What seemed likely – and the most logical in John's mind – was the top drawer in his chest of drawers, so he made for that first, and upon pulling it open had found a litany of very odd things, none of which were string, but all of which captured his interest so thoroughly that he momentarily forgot his objective. What he found were at least twenty-five different currencies' worth of coins, the skull of what looked to be a cat, a Weatherman penknife, an iPod, several unidentifiable power cords, a red gemstone as big as the pad of his thumb on a bed of white velvet in a clear case, two plain silver men's rings, a passport, a small pair of binoculars, a venetian mask, six police ID badges that had once belonged to Gregory Lestrade, a guidebook of Dubrovnik, and a very well-worn cigar box. It was only when he saw the cigar box that he remembered: string. He was looking for string. Old cigar boxes were a pretty reasonable place to keep string. For most people, anyway.

Careful not to disturb the other contents of the drawer too badly, he closed his hand firmly around the water-stained cardboard and removed it. Before venturing to open it, he ran his fingers over the lid. Sherlock didn't seem the type to have ever smoked cigars – not quite suave enough for him - so where had this come from?

Resigned to the fact that he would never know, he casually flipped open the lid – which crackled slightly in protest – and then...stopped.

There was no string in the box.

There were photographs.

A small stack of perhaps three dozen photographs, all of different sizes and ages and states of neglect.

John Watson was not the sort to go rooting through other people's personal effects, and had the photo on the top of the stack been anything other than what it was, he would have immediately closed the box and gone back about his search.

But that photo...

John blinked in a combination of bemusement and astonishment, because this was exactly the last image that he would ever have imagined Sherlock would keep, and revealed something about the detective that John would never have dreamed.

In it were two young men, perhaps late teens or early twenties, one the very definition of charm with his wavy blond hair and his vibrant green eyes and his well-fitted grey cardigan, leaning endearingly and with a smile to kiss his pale, dark-haired companion. Both were seated perhaps a foot apart on a wooden bench, their noses and cheeks slightly pink from the cool wind that swept their hair, their heads angled toward each other in just such a way that their lips met perfectly in spite of their shy but unapologetic grinning, and the blond boy's careful fingertips resting lovingly on his companion's delicate, angular jaw.

John stared at that photograph for a full ten seconds and even after he had convinced himself several times that it couldn't be Sherlock, he found himself no less positive that it was, in fact, definitely Sherlock. The man had hardly changed in...eighteen or twenty years? In spite of the very short haircut and the dark blue blazer over the thin cream-colored jumper, it was without any reasonable doubt, Sherlock Holmes, kissing a striking blond with pierced ears. Never had he seen Sherlock with such unguarded humanity as he saw him now, in this long-past instant, and he marvelled at it.

So entranced was he that he couldn't help but look at the next photo in the stack, and then the next: pictures of Sherlock and Mycroft, both easily recognizable even as children, pictures of what he could only imagine was Mr. And Mrs. Holmes (Sherlock looked very much like his father, where Mycroft seemed to have taken after mummy), Christmas dinners, if the garland was any indication, a chocolate Labrador puppy, photos of Sherlock at Uni, wearing lab goggles and hovering over a dish, and one of a dark-haired man he didn't recognize sprawled in an armchair.

John was so thoroughly absorbed in the tiny hall of wonders he had found that he didn't hear the soft sound of bare feet on the wood behind him, didn't notice until a pale, slender hand reached over his shoulder and gently relieved him of the stack of photographs.

"Distracted, John?"

"Sherlock...I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to - "

"Oh do spare me, you aren't all that sorry." Pensively, as John turned to look at him, Sherlock began flipping through the photographs himself, his expression remote, impassive. "Incidentally," he added, glancing up at John with a sigh. "I suppose that's what I get for keeping them." He rested his elbow on the chest of drawers and stopped his shuffling at the first, the one John had been so astonished by. He was silent, still, as he regarded the image, and almost without thinking, his thumb brushed gently over the blond boy's face.

"I'd never shown this to anyone," he divulged tersely, glancing pointedly at John, "not since it showed up in an envelope ten years ago with no note and no return address. I had never known until that moment that there even existed such a photo. I've no idea who took it or how he got it, but there you are."

"Who - " John had to stop to clear his throat, "who is he?"

Sherlock's lips twitched into a distant smile. "His name was Victor, we were at Uni together."

"And the two of you were..."

"Yes."

"Well...where is he now?"

Sherlock snickered dryly. "Don't know, he hasn't really been in touch. Don't blame him, either."

John cleared his throat, knowing he was dangerously close to something delicate, something precious, but afraid to touch it for fear it might shatter.

"I suppose you'll want to know all about it."

He did. "Only...if you want to tell me…about…it."

Sherlock smiled in that mirthless, almost self-deprecating way, and his eyes fixed on something far distant. "He was enamoured with me," he began, "he was charming, very popular, very sought-after, my polar opposite, as I'm sure you can imagine. He could have had literally anyone, but for some unfathomable reason, he was obsessed with…me. What I wanted was precisely nothing to do with him. He said I reminded him of poetry." Sherlock scoffed patronizingly, "he was something of an artistic type, hardly fell within my scope of interest. He was dogged, though, very persistent, hardly left me alone for a moment, and to my immense surprise I began to find him…tolerable, and then amusing, and then rather endearing and then, well, by the eighty-eighth time he asked me to kiss him, I was just fed up enough to do it.'

'We were inseparable after that; he was like my shadow. For the first time in my life, I had lost a battle of wills, and I rather admired him for besting me, to be honest. And although I was hesitant to admit it, he was good for me. He looked after me, he kept me focused. It was so strange to have someone who cared for me, John, so strange...I was so used to doing everything alone. For the brief part of my life that he shared, he made me sort of... almost normal."

John braced himself for the "but," yet as the seconds ticked by, Sherlock offered nothing further, only stood, lost in thought.

"So...personal differences, I guess?" John prompted hesitantly. He was loath to press the matter, but he absolutely couldn't let it go at that.

Sherlock scoffed again. "Oh, you could say that," he murmured, "you could also say that it's one thing to ask 'kiss me, Sherlock, kiss me and you'll love me' and another to say, 'just a touch Sherlock, please, then you'll love me, let me touch you,' and yet another to ask, 'make love to me, Sherlock, please, just love me,' and then..." he paused, and the next sentence seemed to stretch out for eons, "something else entirely to beg, 'why don't you love me, Sherlock? I've given you everything. Why don't you love me the way I love you?'" Sherlock swallowed thickly, his tone flat, as though he frustrated even himself. "And I couldn't answer him."

John's chest was tight. "That isn't love," he said determinedly, "love isn't like that, if he had really loved you, he wouldn't have cared that you didn't want to kiss him or sleep with him or..." he swallowed and simply repeated, "that isn't love."

"I know." Sherlock muttered, and he met John's eyes for just a fraction of a second, tongue moistening his bottom lip "I know that now." The seconds stretched between them like birds on a line until Sherlock finally sighed, pocketed his hands, and decided. "Well, it wasn't his fault. Not really. He and I were just too dissimilar, we wanted different things. I suppose really it was I who broke his heart, and not the other way round. And don't be dramatic" he gesticulated dismissively, "it wasn't some great tragedy. It was...good, Victor and I. It was a positive time for me, I just...I just wasn't what he needed, and he wasn't what I needed. I mean, even the sex wasn't terribly disagreeable, it was just...well, you can fuck a stone wall, but it's going to be cold and abrasive and…not terribly reactive…"

John was powerless to stop the decidedly awkward rush of blood that tinted his face pink, but Sherlock seemed to realize on his own that the conversation had turned slightly inappropriate, and cleared his throat with a hint of finality.

"Why - " John had begun the question without thinking, and decided immediately that it shouldn't be asked, but the expectant glance that Sherlock had turned on him wouldn't have let him escape it. "Why did you keep it?" He asked hesitantly. "Why keep any of them? I mean, you've always been so down on sentiment, why make an exception?"

Sherlock reached out to take the cigar box from John's other hand and casually replaced the stack of photos, closing the lid with a hollow tap and sliding it back into the drawer, just behind the Dubrovnik book. For a moment, it seemed as though he had deigned not to answer, and John had already resigned himself to accepting yet another mystery among the many that comprised Sherlock Holmes, but as he pushed the drawer closed the detective seemed to stick midway through the motion of turning to leave, as though he had suddenly lost his motivation.

"Because," he began, so softly and so belatedly that John nearly jumped. "Because what I've chosen to keep is what I find myself most constantly tempted to delete. I need those photographs to remind me…why I can't do that." His face remained in profile, and John couldn't quite read his expression. "There are events that shape us, John, as people, and if we forget those, then we forget who we are. This…stuff…it's not important to forensics or psychology or casework but…those memories are integral to how my mind functions and to alter any of that would be to tear bricks out of a foundation. For better or worse…they're things I can never let go of."

John, as he stood motionless in the weighted silence, felt a strange, dull pang of what he could only have called surrogate pain. Sherlock's face remained familiarly impassive, but such was the nature of John's empathy that he could feel the unnameable things that Sherlock didn't even realize he was feeling.

Inescapably cool, Sherlock tuned for the door, leaving John consumed by his thoughts, and pausing only to add, "by the way, John, the string is in the nightstand drawer."