Beginnings—Werewolf AU

The first time he changes, it is painful beyond belief and when he awakens three days later covered in scratches and mud, he hopes it was all a dream.

It wasn't.

The alley is cold and he is naked-why is he naked? There are no track marks on his arms from a fresh high, no trace evidence of hallucinogens. Memories flood him moments later-strange and different from the sharp films he has stored neatly in his mind palace. These memories are painted with the senses-smell and taste and an instinct he is utterly unfamiliar with. It cannot have been real. It simply cannot have been. It's absurd, it's mad and he refuses to entertain it. He returns to his hunt for Moriarty's web, tracking down each connection.

But it happens again. It happens in a blur he awakens from, again naked and again in an alleyway. Impossible. Muscles he rarely used ache-his whole body aches with a heavy exhaustion. Werewolves are creatures of legend and certainly not of fact.

By the third month, he believes. He pays a good deal of money to be locked in the basement for three days with ample food and water, undisturbed. No windows. One door, steel, bolted and barred. He remembers this time, keeping a bit of his human self in the back of his mind, not unlike the 'sober' voice lingering in the backs of the drunken minds of ordinary people.

Changing hurts. Muscles stretch and twist, bones dislocate and relocate, things grow and shrink, altering his form from human to wolf. Hair thickens, lengthens, bursts forth with an itching burning sensation from his no longer human skin. He cannot control the wolf, but he can observe. Observe he does. The beast is strange and powerful and fascinating. It wants to hunt, and though the walls of the basement contain him adequately, it does not stop relentless pacing, snarling at the door, scratching on the cement walls. It does not stop the wolf from letting out a long low howl over and over through what felt like over a day, seeking a way out of the cage.

By month four he is overconfident and lets the wolf prowl, observing, trying to control the beast from the back of its mind. He is only partially successful. Things are going well, better than well when-there. Ears pointed forward, nose to the ground, the wolf rushing to overpower his fragile hold on the body now covered in fur, he catches the scent. Her scent. Casimir and vanilla and sex and a million other things, the wolf knows her. It smells her and an instinct deeper than he can control comes over him.

Pack.

Regardless if he is wolf or man, they are cut from the same cloth. She is kindred, regardless of the lack of beast in her veins. Even the great Sherlock Holmes is not strong enough to overpower the wolf as it catches the scent of one of its kind.

This is how he ends up in Irene Adler's home with a bullet in his shoulder, waking up naked as usual and irritated beyond belief.